At its best, creative inquiry offers intellectual nourishment, empowerment and solace. At the end of 2016, we need all of those, which is why remembering – and celebrating – the outstanding work done this year is all the more important. Over the past twelve months we’ve added more than 100 projects to our archive – and with your help we’ve selected the favourite ones!
Created by Zach Lieberman in collaboration with Google’s Data Arts team, ‘Land Lines’ is a web experiment that lets you explore Google Earth satellite imagery through gesture. “Draw” to find satellite images that match your every line; “Drag” to create an infinite line of connected rivers, highways and coastlines.
From the Digital Citizens Lab to making Processing more accessible – Lauren McCarthy, Los Angeles-based artist and Processing Foundation board member, surveys the work of the 2016 Processing fellows and sheds light on the Foundation’s 5-month fellowship program.
The latest iteration of a decade-long investigation into modular construction systems by Canadian Artist Jesse Jackson, Marching Cubes is an algorithm-inspired syntax for building volumes from 3D printed blocks.
Created by Yuichiro Katsumoto, Mojigen and Sujigen is a collection of servo motors, connected together to write a letter by the means of manipulating the axis of the motor.
Created by Studio Puckey & Moniker, Radio Garden is a research project that places radio research within contemporary discussions about migration, cultural identities, encounters and memories by generating new knowledge about the meaning of radio and listening in the age of globalisation and digitisation.
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.
Over the last 9 years it has become a habit on CAN for as the year-end approaches to look back at some of the projects that have made a mark. We have done this in the form of ‘best of’ or more subtly ‘most memorable’ but this year we are doing it slightly differently. We invite you, the community, to be judges!
Created by Berlin based Ralf Baecker, Random Access Memory is a fully functional digital memory. Instead of operating on semi-conducting components to represent either the binary states of 0 (zero) or 1 (one), the memory uses grains of sand as storage material.
InterAccess’ Vector Festival returns with its fifth edition next summer and its curators have issued their annual call for work in and around the edges of videogame culture.
Created by Quadrature and first shown at this years’ Ars Electronica festival in Linz, MASSES installation includes two stones lying on top of a balanced steel plate and a machine with aim to create a perfect equilibrium state by moving the stones to the appropriate positions.
The Good Life is an ‘Enron Email Simulator’ that allows a reader to subscribe to the 500,000 emails that were released in the aftermath of the American Energy company’s 2001 scandal and downfall.
Developed at the MIT Media Lab’s Mediated Matter Group, ‘Data-Driven Material Modeling’ refers specifically to the process of the creation of high-resolution, geometrically complex, and materially heterogeneous 3D printed objects at product scale.
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.
Created by Matthias Grund, Kadir Inan and Wookseob Jeong at the Köln International School of Design, >200 °C is imagined as a closed feedback system that combines computer vision with a poetic perspective of the physical occurrence called the Leidenfrost effect.
From the paradoxical nature of our impending quantum (computing) future to the enduring mystery of the Big Bang – the ideas explored in HOLO 2 could not be any bigger. We think it shows.
Created by Moniker (Roel Wouters & Luna Maurer) and made in conjuction with We Are Data travelling installation, Clickclickclick.click reveals the browser events used to monitor our online behaviour.
Created at the Köln International School of Design and supervised by Prof. Andreas Muxel, Feedback Machines is a short student project that explores the concept of feedback loops, as an attempt to introduce students to physical computing as well as provide a perspective on the complex topic through experimental explorations.
Chicago-based artist, educator, and organizer Nick Briz peels back the veneer of the modern web browser and asks ‘how and why do we make internet art?’ in a new series of video essays.
Femmebit is a curated festival featuring the most current and relevant work in the field of video art and new media— uniting an all-female roster of artists working in Los Angeles.
Created by Simon Russell, animation director based in London, the following is a series of Houdini experiments where geometry is used as a way to visualise sound, and vice versa.
Created by Mylene Dreyer, Incontroller is a game designed where the difficulty level in the game increases in the controller while the software remains the same.
Created by Hugo Arcier, Ghost City is a video installation reinterpreting the set of the very popular game Grand Theft Auto V. The spectator is plunged into an environment without any population using the camera’s front clipping plane as a tool to reveal structure hidden within GTA landscape.
Polyloge #1 is an interactive installation and a hyper-local message feed. Through an open WIFI network, users in reach of the wireless signal can send text messages with their smartphones, tablets or computers. These messages get printed immediately on a paper roll that runs in-between two translucent, black boxes and are transformed into a material stream.
Julian Oliver’s latest hardware provocation is a fake cellular tower masquerading as an HP laserjet printer. The device evokes ubiquitous ‘StingRay’ surveillance technology and the real (fake) cell towers that pepper urban landscape.
Returning to one of the early works that (helped) put them on the map, Tale of Tales recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to ensure their pioneering online game The Endless Forest flourishes in its second decade.
Created and Directed by Anita Fontaine and Geoffrey Lillemon with W+K Amsterdam, Bitmap Banshees is a VR experience set inside a dystopian Amsterdam, where a gang of biker banshees have taken over the city and are out to get you.
Created by Katharina Hauke and Dominik Hildebrand Marques Lopes, the MikroKontrolleur is the result of their ongoing artistic research into working with vocals and electronics live on stage. It consists of a control station that can be attached to any microphone stand with one part played using hands and optional foot pedal to extend manipulation. It’s a an instrument to play one’s voice.
Created by Jerobeam Fenderson and Hansi Raber, Oscilloscope Music is an audio-visual album that uses old analogue oscilloscopes for displaying hand crafted waveforms as x-y plot.
New in the series of new work by Universal Everything is Closer – A subtle story in a vast landscape. Filmed in the Peak District/UK, the film follows the journey of pixel-high distant lifeforms within the sublime grandeur of the national park.
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Created by Stephan Bogner and Philipp Schmitt, Human Element Inc. investigates how crowdwork, such as Amazon MechanicalTurk, might be woven into everyday life in the future— and explores the topic through three speculative crowdwork services.
Created at the Bartlett School of Architecture / Interactive Architecture, Palimpsest uses 3D scanning and virtual reality to record urban spaces and the communities that live in them. The project aims to question/test the implication if the past, present, and future city could exist in the same place, layering personal stories and local histories of the city at a 1:1 scale.
Created as a collaboration between Hypersonic and Plebian Design, Constructive Interference is a sculpture designed to engage passer-bys using the wonder of moire patterns. Installation is composed of two large patterned sheets of steel, designed to create a rapidly changing visual interference effect as viewers pass by.
Created by Pedro Lopes, Doğa Yüksel, François Guimbretière, and Patrick Baudisch at the Hasso Plattner Institut, Muscle-Plotter is an assistive interface that allows hand-drawn computation using EMS muscles actuation.
Kimchi and Chips have just released a video of their 483 Lines Second Edition exhibited at the Asian Cultural Centre (ACC) last year and presented during the first edition of ACT Festival curated and co-organised by HOLO/CreativeApplications.Net team.
Created by Lara Defayes at ECAL, UV Map, Vanishing Shades and FOMO Survival Kit are a series of project produced during her studies at the art and design school in Lausanne, Switzerland. All three projects, and others that can be viewed on her website, explore the contradictions and opportunities of digital in physical.
Created by Satoshi HORII at Rhizomatiks, (centiscript) is a JavaScript based creative code environment for creating experimental graphics. Imagined as an endless exploration from one script to another, Satoshi sees (centiscript) as a tool for visual thinking.
Created by Diogo Tudela, Athletics of Transcendence explores how traditional craftsmanship can appear to legitimise and provide depth to otherwise flat computational constructs.
New project by Neri Oxman and the team at the Mediated Matter Group / MIT Media Lab explores the possibility of a controlled space in which seasonal honeybees can thrive year-round.
New work by London’s Random International includes almost two hundred identical, small mirrors are arranged in a grid to form a flat, homogenous surface. Hung against the wall, the mirrors are closely spaced and apparently static; but they possess the ability to move in harmony with one another.
Strelka Institute for architecture, media and design launched the enrollment campaign for the postgraduate education program. The theme of the 7th academic year at Strelka is The New Normal.
Created by Alexia Léchot at ECAL, Deltu is a delta robot with a personality that interacts with humans using two iPads. Created using arm technology normally found in 3d printers, Deltu uses three different applications on the iPad Alexia built for it, using symmetry as an interpretation, a mirror and a reflexion of our own image.
Created by Mylène Dreyer at ECAL, Scribb is a computer game in which the physical area scanned by the mouse is an integral part of the interaction. The player must draw black areas, detected by the mouse, to be able to evolve in the game, simultaneously managing the position of the mouse and the surface on which it is placed.
Ugly Dynamics is a personal exploration/documentation by Nikita Diakur exploring the effects and control of simulated dynamics in computer software, specifically in the work produced by his studio Ugly Films.
Created by Reza Ali, F3, [Form From Function], is a playful and powerful 3D design app that enables you to live code 3D form, rapidly iterate on its design, and export for 3D printing, rendering and animation. F3 uses signed distance functions (SDFs) to build forms – designing 3D forms using 2D image cross sections.
Dave Colangelo, a researcher and artist focused on the role media plays in the city. An Assistant Professor at the Portland State University in the School of Theatre + Film, and a member of the Public Visualization Studio, Colangelo chatted with CAN about media façades, public art, and Pokémon Go.
Opening this week at the 3LD Art & Technology Center, NYC is the exhibition of work by Peter Burr titled “Pattern Language”. Pattern Language uses footage from a video game called Aria End that Burr is currently developing with celebrated author of interactive fiction Porpentine.
Material Want is a collaborative project between Matthew Plummer-Fernandez and JODI, presented at iMal, Brussels between Sep – Oct 2016. The project is an assemblage of interrelated elements: mined 3D models, 3D-printed objects, a shop-front installation and an online shop, powered by both software automation and human computation.
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Since 2008, CAN has been at the forefront of innovation – facilitating and driving the conversations about technology, society and critical making. From online/offline publications to live events, CAN’s initiatives have played an instrumental in shaping the innovative creative practices we know today.