Italian digital artist Giuseppe La Spada has scooped a prize at the annual Webby Awards, considered the Oscars of the Internet.
La Spada won the People's Choice Award in the Net Art category, organisers announced on Thursday.
The Italian, who has already bagged a string of prestigious prizes for his Web design and photographic art work, was awarded for his project 'Mono no aware' created for Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
The design, showing fluid exchange between two horizontally-placed bottles, is to be found on the stop-rokkasho site launched by the Oscar-winning composer to protest against the opening of a nuclear reprocessing plant in the Japanese village of Rokkasho.
Mono no aware is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of the transience of things and a gentle sadness at their passing.
La Spada has a long career in web design and has worked on projects for New York University, Coca Cola, Siemens, Telecom Italia and Pirelli, among others.
The only Italian to receive an Webby Award this year, La Spada will pick up his prize at a ceremony in New York on June 5.
The Webby Awards were created in 1996 and are given out by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, writers, artists and celebrities including Internet pioneer Vint Cert, Simpsons' creator Matt Groening and Virgin founder Richard Brandson.
The awards contain more than 100 categories with two awards in each - the Webby, which is decided by the academy, and the People's Choice, which is decided by members of the public.
Other winners this year include the BBC News website, YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley and online actress Jessica Lee Rose, better known to Web video viewers as Lonelygirl 15.
The winners were chosen from some 8,000 entries from 60 different countries.
