Created by Peter Burr, Mark Fingerhut, and Forma, DESCENT is a “spiraling interdimensional narrative”, a meditation on one of humanity’s blackest hours. The downloadable exe gives the user a brief glimpse of a world descending into darkness – an unrelenting plague indifferent to the struggles of the user.

Montreal, the beginning of May, a dark performance space illuminated by an otherworldly glow; this combination of factors could only mean one thing – Elektra! CAN was on hand at the 14th edition of the venerable Canadian digital arts festival to soak up the proceedings and we’ve prepared the following overview of some of the (well, our) highlights.

Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. • Archive: Access thousands of projects, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.• Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.• Discuss: Join our Discord for events, open calls and even more projects.• Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples and downloads.•…

Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. • Archive: Access thousands of projects, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.• Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.• Discuss: Join our Discord for events, open calls and even more projects.• Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples and downloads.•…

InterAccess is pleased to present the 22nd Annual IA Current Exhibition, All watched over by machines of loving grace, running November 8 – December 9, 2023.

The first post of a series on the state-of-the-art of live media performance curated by Federica Patti, focus on live stream. With three live shows to see and follow here.

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.

SFPC tutors Celine Wong Katzman and Taeyoon Choi reflect on yet another successful session at the artist run school in New York. SFPC Fall 2019 Open Call is live now!

As 2018 comes to a close, we take a moment to look back at the outstanding work done this year. From spectacular machines, intricate tools and mesmerising performances and installations to the new mediums for artistic enquiry – so many great new projects have been added to the CAN archive! With your help we selected some favourites.

Created by Ralf Baecker, Putting The Pieces Back Together Again is an artistic investigation and meditation about complex systems and scientific methodology. Consisting of 1250 stepper motors arranged in a two dimensional grid, each motor in the installation moves in a random direction, sometimes intersecting and reversing direction, producing emergent constellations and behaviours.

The symbiosis between users and devices allows and encourages personal performance pervasively, and breaks the boundaries between human and non-human action: today’s performance is post-human, quoting Karen Barad. The concept behind the term “live” (de visu) has vastly changed, following the technological evolution and letting a high-performance gradient emerge in everyday habits. With the aim…

‘How much should we let algorithms shape our lives?’ is the question at the heart of Ed Finn’s recent book “What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing”. Scanning Silicon Valley, computer science, and the cultural sphere alike it offers a smart and accessible reading of our current moment.

Machine Art in the Twentieth Century is a recent MIT Press-published book by Andreas Broeckmann exploring ‘machinic’ art-making. CAN weighs in with a review of this survey of moments, movements, and key figures spanning futurism to the present day.

A meditation on several recent Troika projects that render cellular automata with dice and anodised aluminium rather than pixels on a screen. Realized over the last four years, these works demonstrate how a prolonged investigation into a rudimentary approach can yield rich dividends.

Artefact#0, Digital Necrophony is a recent installation by Lille-based artist Mathilde Lavenne that forgoes (burial and cremation) funerary convention in favour of sonification.

An output of the Office for Creative Research, OCR Journal #002 documents the process and philosophy of the Brooklyn-based studio specializing in complex data-informed projects.

Created by Vlad Semkin, ZERO to Z is an abstract minimalist meditation game where you grow connections to make progress. Designed as peaceful & constructive, game mechanics are novel & inspired by algorithms found in nature (namely DLA), putting a spin on the casual puzzle/arcade genre.

CAN interviews Florence To, a Rotterdam-based art director and installation artist focused on audiovisual performance and the creation of immersive environments.

Gary James Joynes’ “Broken Sound” is an immersive video installation that ‘builds a world’ out of the frazzled remnants of speaker coils he destroyed through his ongoing cymatics research.

Convergence Summit, a four day conference “on art + technology” that took place at the Banff Centre Nov 27-29th. Located in the idyllic mountain-surrounded town of Banff, Alberta, the massive arts incubator played a important role in shaping discourse in and around ‘new media’ in the 90s and early aughties. With Convergence, the centre is planting a flag down and reasserting their importance as a key international digital arts venue—here is CAN’s report on the proceedings.

Last week the prolific Toronto-based tech event organizer FITC hosted a daylong summit on wearable technology. With a lineup bookended by ‘the father of wearable computing’ Steve Mann and Social Body Lab founder Kate Hartman, the invited speakers offered a range of opinions on ‘what’s next for wearables?’ for an audience of curious developers.

Created by Cybero, the following are Quarz Composer video renders of a Perlin Sphere GLSL shader. Originally developed by Inigo Quilez and ported to QC with added audio interactivity , two texture channels, [noise and waveform image] and audio specific calculations and rotations.

This past Saturday Ryoji Ikeda presented the North American premiere of superposition to a crowd of several hundred at the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal (MAC). As would be expected, the sixty-five minute multiscreen performance played out as kind of a data aesthetics megamix that flashed through a series of precisely choreographed abstract visual vignettes that grappled with the digital sublime and pondered the agnosticism of network culture.

“Balance from Within” is a robotic installation that includes a 170-year-old Victorian sofa which balances precariously on one leg, continuously teetering, responding internally to external forces .

Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. • Archive: Access thousands of projects, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.• Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.• Discuss: Join our Discord for events, open calls and even more projects.• Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples and downloads.•…

Vector festival, a self-described “game+art convergence” touches down in Toronto for four days later this week with a program of screenings, performances, panel discussions and exhibitions. CAN tracked down Skot Deeming of Vector’s curatorial team (pictured above, to the right of Clint Enns, Katie Micak and Christine Kim) to get the lowdown on the first edition of the festival.

Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. • Archive: Access thousands of projects, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.• Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.• Discuss: Join our Discord for events, open calls and even more projects.• Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples and downloads.•…

Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. • Archive: Access thousands of projects, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.• Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.• Discuss: Join our Discord for events, open calls and even more projects.• Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples and downloads.•…

Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. • Archive: Access thousands of projects, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.• Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.• Discuss: Join our Discord for events, open calls and even more projects.• Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples and downloads.•…