Paris, November 9 {No.99-249} - UNESCO has awarded its 1999 Web Prize to Nirvanet, an artistic e-zine, and to a website featuring the life and works of the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro.

Nirvanet (http://www.nirvanet.com) presents cultures and places around the world through art, music and video. The UNESCO International Web Prize Jury hailed Nirvanet as a "subtle mix between global and local", and as an "excellent combination of audiovisual arts, advanced technology and cyberculture". The site, offering a "new vision of a multi-cultural world", is available in four languages contributing to enhancing multi-lingualism on the web. Nirvanet was created by an international team of web designers based in Brussels, Belgium.

Vicente Huidobro (http://www.uchile.cl/cultura/huidobro), created by a team of students and professors at the University of Chile, offers a selection of poems, narratives, letters and manifestos of the Chilean poet. The site, in Spanish and French, also includes a biography, images, critical texts and bibliographical information. The jury stressed the high quality of the site and hailed its "unique and tasteful" design and its logical navigational system. It was also awarded the Prize as an example of an artistic presentation of literature in the public domain.

The two prizes, each given 5,000 dollars, are awarded annually for outstanding artistic websites in two categories: for the best website on a free theme related to international co-operation in education, science, culture and communication, and for the best website on a specific theme, which this year involved the creation of a website offering access to texts, music or art in the public domain.

In the "Free theme" category, two honorable mentions were awarded by the Jury to Mondomix (http://www.mondomix.org) created by Marc Benaiche and his team (France), dedicated to highlighting world music and making it more accessible to the general public and to Moondance, Celebrating Creative Women (http://www.moondance.org) created by Loretta Kemsely (USA), an on-line magazine supporting and promoting art and literature by and about women.

In the "Public domain" category, a honorable mention was given to Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (http://www.w-a-mozart.com/mozart), created by an international team (Belgium, Brazil, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the USA).

The international jury, composed of seven jurors from different regions of the world, selected the winning sites from almost 500 projects submitted by web designers from 71 countries.