Written by Peter Lunenfeld, The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading is a book about using digital technologies to shift us from a consumption to a production model. After half a century of television-conditioned consumption/downloading, Lunenfeld tells us, we now find ourselves with a vast new infrastructure for uploading. We simply need to find the will to make the best of it.

Continue reading.... The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading [Books, iPad]

Our friends at Interactive Things and authors of Datavisualization.ch have just told us about their new pet project, called Substratum. It’s a series of inspirational interviews with some of today’s most influential designers and artists. 10 questions per interview, 2 interviews per issue, 1 issue per week until Christmas.

They started yesterday with the first issue titled “Space” containing interviews by Marius Watz and Theo Watson & Emily Gobeille. There is a total of 14 interviews in the pipeline with release on weekly basis. The complete list of names featured in Substratum remains secret, but includes people like Ben Fry, Nicholas Felton and Golan Levin.

Continue reading.... Substratum Interview Series [News]

“New Art/Science Affinities” is a new publication focusing on artists working right now at the intersection of art, science and technology. Co-published by The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University and the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, this 190-page book was written and designed in one week by four authors (Andrea Grover, Régine Debatty, Claire Evans and Pablo Garcia) and two designers (Thumb) in a collaborative authoring process known as a “book sprint” (derived from “code sprinting” for open source projects).

Continue reading.... New Art/Science Affinities [News, Books]

Since it’s launch in 2008, CreativeApplications.Net has become a prime source for latest in new creative software and platforms. It continues to play an integral part in the debate about digital art and software. Inspiring thousands of visitors daily, CAN has become an institution for creative app app development. Together with a number of high profile writers, we continue to influence both online media and printed press on the direction of new media and digital arts.

We are 3 years old tomorrow and to celebrate we are running a fundraiser. CAN takes 300+ hours a month to curate & edit, between the blog, Twitter and Facebook. Please help!

We kindly ask you that if you find any joy & value in CAN, please consider a modest donation by clicking on the PayPal button below..

All your donations go to CAN, for development and to continue to bring you great content.

Even better, every donation equal to or over $35 will receive CAN logo shirt – new dark grey style with light grey logo. The t-shirts will go to print in November, with estimated delivery before Christmas (all via our partner Allmightys.com). Once you have made the donation we will get in touch with you for desired t-shirt size and your postal details. P&P is included. (New CAN T-Shirt is only available through donations until October 31st).

UPDATE 07/10/2011: Tshirt are available in both Male and Female models.

…and as a thank you we are making all the CAN apps free for only one day. The special price starts at midnight on the 5th October around the world ending the day after. Here is what’s included:

SpringMesh by Ricardo Sanchez $1.99 Free
Interactive cloth for iPhone and iPad you can twist, pull and deform using multitouch or gravity.

SKTCH for iPad and iPhone by Filip Visnjic $1.99  Free
Generative drawing application for iPhone and iPad using 16 presets created by digital artists around the globe.

Voidie by Francis Lam $1.99 Free
Voidie is an abstract depiction of the Great Void for iPad and iPhone using a particle system which reacts to sound and illustrates the activity around it.

ANE by Brendan Dawes $1.99 Free
News browser for the iPhone that uses serendipity to discover articles.

asdfbmp by Kim Asendorf $1.99 Free
1bit Bitmaps are a special kind of art. Shuffle the pixels, play with them on your iPhone!

RetroScreen by Mike Tucker $1.99 Free
Inspired by the screensavers of an older generation, RetroScreen is an interactive incarnation designed for the iPad and iPhone.

Thank you!

Our good friend Brandon Boyer, Offworld.com editor and IGF Chairman, has just launched a campaign on Kickstarter for VENUS PATROL, his upcoming successor to the Offworld. Within 5 days the campaign has reached the target but Brandon needs all the support he can get. The larger story is that a ton of amazing people have given their time & talent over to giving away some super incredible stuff for people who donate which include an exclusive wallpaper painted by KATAMARI DAMACY & NOBY NOBY BOY + MINECRAFT character skins from Pendleton Ward, creator of Adventure Time ((1$ donation only!), new games exclusive to the Kickstarter by CANABALT creator Adam Saltsman + RADICAL FISHING/SUPER CRATE BOX creators Vlambeer ($25!!), a new SWORD & SWORCERY 7″ EP + so much more for $75….and the list goes on!

Don’t miss this, only 23 days to go!

Support on Kickstarter

Hi, I’m Brandon. I ran a blog about videogames called Offworld for Boing Boing from winter 2008 through autumn 2009, and doing so changed my life forever. It wasn’t the first time I’d written about videogames ‘professionally’, but it was the first time that doing so started to make me feel like part of a bigger and entirely amazing community. A community of artists, musicians, designers, coders, nearly all of whom had taken the terrifying risk of jumping out of the rat race and trying to live life on their own terms: by creating things they know only they can create and trying to find an appreciative audience who might support them.. read more…

Zach Gage has just announced that Bit Pilot 2.0 for iPhone/IPad is about to hit the AppStore. To celebrate, Zach has made a desktop version which is available for download now (link below). It is the first application to use Apple’s Magic Trackpad as a wireless controller and although you can still use your MacBook’s trackpad as input (tested and working great), it is with magic trackpad where the game really shines. Bit Pilot for Mac is nearly a full game for free and includes all the features of the original Bit Pilot 1.0.

Download (Mac)

The Bit Pilot version 2.0 for iPhone/iPad launches this evening. It includes retina display support, 3 New Tracks from Sabrepulse, 2 New Modes, New Taunts, Vs. Friends Ranking through openFeint, Game Center Support, Cumulative Score Tracking and In Game Achievements Screen. See preview videos below.

For those that missed our review of  Bit Pilot, you can read it here

If you enjoyed Canabalt, fast paced, heart pumping action, Bit Pilot will fit right into your collection of games on the iPhone. If I was going to give one gameplay advice, it is don’t panic! Take a deep breath, sit back, relax, thumbs on the screen and enjoy. Bit Pilot is absolutely fantastic!

Project Page

Platform: iPhone
Version: 2.0
Cost: $0.99
Developer: Zach Gage

Also, check out recent Interview with Zach Gage at Rhizome.

Fortune Boat Workshop – Lao Jianhua, V&A Designer in Residence

The V&A and the Sackler Centre for arts education has just announced has a new opportunity, for a small group of designers/makers to have a studio at the V&A for six months commencing 1 July 2011.

Proposals are invited from UK based practitioners who wish to develop their practice and engage the public in participatory programming connected to the Museum’s collections and Power of Making Exhibition. Inspired by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Fab Labs and drawing on ideas about open source design, the Residents will facilitate access to making for the public inside the Museum.

The V&A is particularly looking for designers/makers with a background in 3-D art or design – from traditional to high tech making skills, experience in collaborative working and for whom engagement with the public is an integral part of their practice.

Selection Criteria:
Applicants should be dynamic, ambitious and inspiring – pushing forward the boundaries of perception about creative practice, and contribute their skills/techniques to the residency. We are looking for applicants who can adopt a range of different roles and who are keen to draw upon the resources of the V&A and to enter into a dialogue with the public

Bursary offered (£16,800) and studio space provided.

For more information and to apply go to www.vam.ac.uk/jobs

Closing date for applications: 20 March 2011

Interviews: 5 May

Ben Laposky, ’Oscillon 40′, 1952, Photograph of a computer-generated image
20.3 x 25.1 cm, Museum no. E.958-2008
Given by the American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of Patric Prince

Roman Verostko, ‘Manchester Illuminated Universal Turing Machine, #1′, 1998. Museum no. E.944-2008

Mark Wilson, ‘e4708′, 2008. Museum no. E.535-2008. Given by the artist

NewSpeak is a project created by Immo Blaese for anticensor, the 10th Web Biennial at the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum. As new words are picked up every minute, NewSpeak will display the opposite meaning (antonym) based on an Orwellian scenario of doublespeak.

The creation of a new over simplified language to limit the expressions and thoughts possible in a dystopian totalitarian regime.

All images and tweets are loaded via public feeds provided by Flickr and Twitter. The full project including screensavers for Mac and Windows can be downloaded here.

Play > newspeak.zonkzone.net

Just a quick note on ways you can support CAN this Christmas. We’ve been growing ever since launch and with this have our bills, time spent on the site, research, content, apps and much more. This means that we have much less time to do work that pays and as much as we love spending time on CAN, the last two years have been difficult. We try to find ways to cover these costs, advertising being one of them but there are also few other ways you can help:

PayPal Donations

Spare as little as $10 or as much as you can, everything counts.

Donate Now!

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CAN T-Shirt

We have just launched pre-order for our t-shirt designed by the wonderful folks at Just Be Nice. Think of this as a fund raiser, every shirt you buy, moneys go to CAN. T-Shirts are pre-order only at the moment and we plan to close pre-orders end of January and print in early Feb.

Please order now!

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CAN Apps

Every time you buy a CAN app, portion of the sale goes to CAN and also to the artist that has created it. With apps.can we try to bring artists under one roof and at the same time give a little to everyone. Our apps:

Visit CAN on the AppStore

Thank you for your time and all your contributions!

From September 2010, myself with CreativeApplications.Net will be the curator of the online exhibition of projects on Processing.org. It’s a great privilege and pleasure to contribute to the almost 10 year old open source project initiated by Ben Fry and Casey Reas. Processing has won hearts and minds of many artists, researchers, designers and architects over the years and still remains one of the most used creative code programming environments. Students at hundreds of schools around the world use Processing for classes ranging from middle school math education to undergraduate programming courses to graduate fine arts studios. Tens of thousands of companies, artists, designers, architects, and researchers use Processing to create an incredibly diverse range of projects. CAN has posted some of these but processing.org/exhibition/ still remains an archive of some of the most amazing Processing projects out there. It’s also easy to get the quick sense of how Processing has changed over the years by looking at the exhibition, from Applets to large installations. The original idea was simple; to show what Processing can do. A priority in recent years has been to show the range of what is possible (fabrication, installation, rendered video) in addition to realtime graphics – Casey writes. From this month very few carefully selected projects shown on CAN will make their way to the exhibition.

We kick things off with the wonderful Understanding Shakespeare by Stephan Thiel. In case you missed it, see this post on CAN.
Understanding Shakespeare is an attempt to create a new visual understanding of the work by analysing most frequently used words for each character. Using Processing, a scene is represented by a block of text and scaled relatively according to its number of words. Characters are ordered by appearance from left to right throughout the play. The major character’s speeches are highlighted to illustrate their amounts of spoken words as compared to the rest of the play…more

Additionally to the above, Stephan and two fellow designers are trying to give something back to the Processing community. They are providing teaching materials available at www.creativecoding.org which they use at various german universities. So far, these have developed into a well known resource among german designers and media artists and the team hopes to translate them to english soon.

We leave you with 10 of the 144 projects that have made their way to the Processing exhibition, starting with Valence by Ben Fry (2002) and ending One Perfect Cube by Florian Jenett (2010). See all at processing.org/exhibition/