CreativeApplications.Net

Beyond Smoke and Mirrors – Reflections on the ECAL Research Day 2019

Since ECAL’s R&D department opened in the year 2000, the Swiss art and design school conducted more than thirty research projects into everything from data materiality to augmented photography to artificial intelligence. In November 2019, CAN joined the biannual ECAL Research Day to find out how methodologies borrowed from science and engineering can strengthen creative practice—and drive the conversation. “Art and design schools are perhaps…

CMD: Experiment in bio-algorithmic politics

Created by Michael Sedbon, 'CMD' is an apparatus designed to explore how our technologies and ecosystems interact and what narratives and politics do they serve. The project questions what sort of ecological and social logic should be implemented in the design of automated infrastructures and algorithms, and if it is possible to frame out technologies and system as a single emergent life-form. If so,…

SFPC Fall 2019 Student Showcase

The School for Poetic Computation is an artist run school in New York offering two full-time, ten-week sessions per year as well as classes, workshops, and events in the interim. During the ten-week sessions, a small group of students and faculty work closely to explore the intersections of code, design,…

CAN 2019 – Highlights and Favourites

As per tradition each year, December is when we look back at the amazing work published on CAN. From ingenious machines and installations to mesmerising experiences that leverage new mediums for artistic inquiry – we added scores of projects to CAN's archive in 2019. Here are some highlights. For previous years, see 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013,

Intersections – The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Celebrates its 30th Anniversary

It's a cliche that turning 30 is accompanied by soul searching and pensive questions about the future. That might be true for a young adult, but what about a media lab: what happens when a multidisciplinary lab enters its third decade and begins barrelling towards middle age? The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University just broached this temporal milestone with Intersections,…

Self-Choreographing Network – Cyber-physical design and interactive bending-active systems

Created by Mathias Maierhofer and Valentina Soana at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD / University of Stuttgart), 'Self-Choreographing Network' is a project that aims to challenge the prevalent separation between (digital) design and (physical) operation processes of adaptive and interactive architectural systems. The linearity of digital and physical processes implies both predetermined material and kinetic behaviours, limiting performances to those that are…

TAMI – An intuitive approach to the learning of trigonometry

TAMI (Tangible Mathematics Interface) is an interface that facilitates the learning of the basics of trigonometry. Comprised of a tabletop display and a series of physical controllers, users can manipulate mathematical parameters and see the results on-screen in real-time. This direct, physical manipulation of digital elements enables the internalization of abstract concepts through an embodied and multisensory approach, making better use of pre-existing motor…

Lieux Ordinaires (Ordinary Places) – Surveillance as a storytelling medium

Created by Anouk Zibaut at ECAL, 'Lieux Ordinaires' (Ordinary Places) is a project that explores new narratives of public space framed by surveillance – an alternative perspective and a medium with a power to 'document'. These new "windows", Anouk writes: "are open to the world, accessible from my computer, a new projection on a place, a city, a country from a singular angle." Ordinary…

Neo-Natur – A space for thought, about and for Nature / ART+COM

Designed and constructed by ART+COM Studios in collaboration with Futurium and Schiel Projekt, 'Neo-Natur' ('Neo-Nature') is a permanent installation for Berlin's Futurium exhibition that explores our potential futures from different areas of life––from self-sufficient cities, to the future of work and ideas for more sustainable consumption. The sculpture symbolises a new understanding of the natural world. Taking into account humanity’s interventions in nature and 'technologization'…

Hertzian Landscapes – The interactive space of a radio spectrum

Created by Richard Vijgen, 'Hertzian Landscapes' is a live visualization of the radio spectrum. It includes a digital receiver to scan large swaths of radio spectrum in near real-time and using Three.js visualises thousands of signals into a panoramic electromagnetic landscape. Unlike visible light, waves in the radio spectrum cannot be perceived by us directly yet this space is teeming with human activity. The…