2017
CAN 2017 – Highlights and Favourites
As 2017 comes to a close, we take a moment to look back at the outstanding work done this year. From spectacular peformances, large scale installations, devices and tools to the new virtual spaces for artistic exploration – so many great projects are being added to the CAN archive! Here are a just few, 25 in total, that we and you enjoyed the most this year.
22/12/2017Pixi – Nature aware, self-sufficient, digital organism ‘breathes’ in the forest
Created by the artist collective WERC, “Pixi” is a digital organism located in a dutch forrest, inspired by the complex patterns that exist in nature and questions whether a technical natural phenomenon can imitate the complex aesthetics of nature or interact with it.
20/12/2017Tangibles Worlds – Adding a sense of material and touch to VR
Created by Stella Speziali at ECAL, Tangibles Worlds explores the effects of tactile experience as a catalyst for full immersion in VR. It proposes a “black box” interface, an alt-plysical-universe to the VR experience, extending the immersion beyond visual and sound.
19/12/2017InFoam Printing – 3D printing smart foam elements
Ideated during a five days workshop held by Covestro in cooperation with the architecture faculty of the FH Münster MSA, InFoam Printing is a novel production process to alter the properties of flexible foam by giving it a skeleton which is able to distribute forces differently and create new kinetic effects.
18/12/2017Anachronic Landscapes – Automation and coevolution in nature
Created by the SCI-Arc faculty Curime Batliner and Jake Newsum in collaboration with Paralelo Architectos, Anachronic Landscapes is a robotic system that lives inside of an abandoned industrial structure overgrown by nature. The system executes its daily routine, nurturing the plants with water and fertilising it with fluorescent fluids. While the machine keeps the plants alive it simultaneously ignites a process of transformation forcing the plants to adapt to the new condition.
12/12/2017Daha Uzak – Music album website by Yerçekimi
To enhance the hypnotic and ritualistic aspects of their music, Yerçekimi (Gravity), a band from İstanbul, Turkey created a website that uses satellite imagery of alien landscapes from around the world and in doing so matches the atmosphere of their music perfectly.
05/12/2017Twin Objects – Devices for long-distance relationships
Created by Elise Migraine at ECAL, “Twin Objects” is a collection of devices (Tits Me, Pianoze, and Dual Drums) designed to act as a ‘hotline’ in attempt to nurture intimacy and telepresence that long-distance relationships need.
28/11/2017Secret Rhythms – Artificiel’s Three Pieces with Titles
“Three Pieces with Titles” is the latest audiovisual performance by Montreal’s artificiel. In it Alexandre Burton and Julien Roy manipulate an eclectic collection of objects within the field of view of a computer vision system to generate real-time video and abstract sonic collage.
24/11/201720°C – Devices for tangible interaction with data
Created by Hélène Portier at ECAL, 20°C is a collection of devices designed to question our relationship to data through a series of physical challenges that enable/disable access.
23/11/2017Digital Ruins / Myrto Amorgianou
This is an audiovisual project, created mostly in Processing using Tomasz Sulej frequency modulation code. The analogue distorted frames were captured while executing the processing code on parts of the ‘Cosmos – War of the planets’ movie.
19/11/2017Variable – The signification of terms in artists’ statements
Created by Selcuk Artut, Variable is an artwork that explores the signification of terms in artists’ statements. The artwork uses machine learning algorithms to thoughtfully problematise the limitations of algorithms and encourage the visitor to reflect on poststructuralism’s ontological questions.
16/11/2017Trained By Machines
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13/11/2017The Future Fishing Training Program – N O R M A L S
Created by N O R M A L S, “The Future Fishing Training Program” is a film about a speculative device and a programme designed to allow users and companies to discover glimpses of a desirable future through stories and artefacts.
10/11/2017Konrad Zuse and the origins of the modern computer – Zuse Computer Museum
Created by Schnellebuntebilder, four installs now on display at the ZCOM Zuse Computer Museum in Hoyerswerda, Germany, capture and celebrate the pioneering work of Konrad Zuse, famed German engineer and inventor whose biggest achievement, the 1941 Turing-complete programmable computer Z3, is regarded to be the world’s first of its kind.
06/11/2017Bleep Space – iOS Sequencer Toy and Tabletop Arcade
Created by Andy Wallace & Dan Friel, Bleep Space is a free sequencer toy that uses stark geometry to allow users to create noisy beats by assembling 15 sounds accompanied by motion graphics and procedural animations.
01/11/2017Ethical Autonomous Vehicles – Complexities of moral and ethical reasoning for driveless systems
Created by Matthieu Cherubini, Ethical Autonomous Vehicles project explores the implications of near-future scenario where most vehicles on the road are autonomous.
26/10/2017true/false – The audio/visual choreography of an algorithm
Created by Berlin based onformative, true/false is a kinetic sculpture comprised of arrays of circular black metal segments set in mechanical columns. Interlocking and rotating around fluorescent light tubes, the cylinders cover or expose the light to display an endless number of patterns.
20/10/2017in the rain – represent potential of rain
This installation is represent potential of rain. Rain has several scene like: silent rain, light rain, heavy rain, sun shower, misty rain … and more! I guess rain is beautiful and it scene will makes us happy. But almost people feel the blues in the rains… And I started to make a installation about rains […]
20/10/2017Atlås – Guided, generative and conversational music experience for iOS
Created by Agoston Nagy, Atlås is an ‘anti game environment’ that generates music in a conversational cognitive space. The app includes automatically generated tasks that are solved by machine intelligence without the need of human input. Agoston questions ad infinitum (ability to continue forever), presence, human cognition, imagination, and more broadly corporate driven automatisms and advanced listening practices.
18/10/2017Music of the Spheres – A Conversation with Dan Tapper
Dan Tapper is a British artist based in Toronto that combines his interest in code and celestial form and his recent research project “Turbulent Forms” visualizes and sonifies various cosmic phenomena. To mark the recent exhibition of this work (and related collaborations with several composers) we present this extended conversation with the artist about cosmology and data aesthetics.
13/10/2017The Weather Followers – Bringing serendipity to the digital life
Created by David Colombini, The Weather Followers is a commentary on ‘smart’ applications and predictive, comfortable digital routines. Instead of relying on ‘accurate’ data, intangible algorithms and hidden lines of code-driven lifestyles, this device brings serendipity to your digital life, using constantly evolving weather data recorded by four weather instruments.
12/10/2017Who Wants to be a Self-Driving Car? – Empathising with self-driving vehicle systems
Created by Joey Lee (US), Benedikt Groß (DE), and Raphael Reimann (DE) from the moovel Lab, in collaboration with MESO Digital Interiors (DE), Who Wants to be a Self-Driving Car? is a data driven trust exercise that uses augmented reality to help people empathise with self-driving vehicle systems. The team built an unconventional driving machine that lets people use real-time, three-dimensional mapping and object recognition displayed in a virtual reality headset to navigate through space.
11/10/2017Roger Water – Parametrically generated, animated and populated A/V experience
Created for and in collaboration with an electronic music band Niagra, Roger Water is a web based interactive 360 VR and live A/V experience by Stefano Maccarelli. The project is an a endless immersive exploration of a generative, infinite open world, set in a surreal Earth-like world, of a parallel universe connected to ours, populated by objects from modern terrestrial civilisation and terrestrial creatures that behave in unusual ways.
10/10/2017The Crystallisation Event – Endless digitisation and supersaturation of data
Created by Jayson Haebich, The Crystallisation Event explores a speculative future in which the endless digitisation and quantification of data has caused information to become supersaturated and begin a process of crystallisation. The project is presented as a speculative museum exhibit showing future artefacts from this post crystallised data world.
09/10/2017Anatomy of a Screen – Jeremy Rotsztain’s House of Shadow Silence
House of Shadow Silence is a VR experience by Portland-based software artist Jeremy Rotzstain. In it, the artist recreates Austrian architect Frederick Kiesler’s 1929 movie theatre the Film Guild Cinema and uses it to ‘build a world’ of light, geometry, and motion.
04/10/2017Norman – WebVR tool to create frame-by-frame animations in 3D
Created by James Paterson, Norman is an open-source WebVR tool to create frame-by-frame animations in 3D. Drawing inspiration and building on the work from Rhonda (2004/05), James turned to WebVR to build the tool in Javascript that runs in a web browser and lets him animate naturally in 3D using VR controllers.
03/10/2017Ad Inifitum – A machine parasite that harvests human energy
Hatched at the Human Computer Interaction Lab at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany, “Ad Infinitum” is a “parasitical” machine that, quite literally, lives off of human-generated energy.
02/10/2017Positions of the Unknown – Tracking 52 secret satellites in Earth’s orbit
Created by Juliane Götz and Sebastian Neitsch of Quadrature and currently on view within the Ars Electronica exhibition at the DRIVE Volkswagen Group Forum in Berlin, “Positions of the Unknown” is an installation of 52 custom-made mini machines that, ever so slowly, track unidentified objects (possibly classified satellites) in Earth’s orbit.
28/09/2017A/B – Experimental AR livestream with audience participation
Created by Harald Haraldsson, A/B is a Unity and Google’s ARCore interactive livestream experiment where the online audience is invited to direct Harald which way to navigate Chinatown in NYC.
22/09/2017HARVEST – Mining cryptocurrency with wind to fund climate research
Created by Julian Oliver and commissioned by the Konstmuseet i Skövde, HARVEST is a work of critical engineering and computational climate art. It uses wind-energy to mine cryptocurrency, the earnings of which are used as a source of funding for climate-change research.
18/09/2017Oh my ( ) – Calling for GOD in 48 languages using Twitter API
Created by Noriyuki Suzuki, “Oh my ( )” is an installation that calls GOD in 48 languages using Twitter API. The machine monitors the Twitter timeline in real time and when a tweeted text includes a word, god ( in various languages ), speakers sound “oh my ( god in the tweeted language )” at the same time.
14/09/2017The Classyfier – AI detects situation and appropriates music
Created by Benedict Hubener, Stephanie Lee and Kelvyn Marte at the CIID with the help from Andreas Refsgaard and Gene Kogan, ‘The Classyfier’ is a table that detects the beverages people consume around it and chooses music that fits the situation accordingly.
08/09/2017Prismverse – Spatialising paths of light inside a diamond
Created by XEX for Dr.Jart+, ‘Prismverse’ is an installation inspired by light rays travelling in a diamond with Brilliant cut (wikipedia) – a form that produces highest brilliance with maximized light return through its top. Surrounded by complex geometrical tessellated mirror walls, the visuals on the floor, their reflection and omnidirectional sound encapsulate the visitor.
08/09/2017Gysin&Vanetti – O is not a letter, it’s a circle
Gysin-Vanetti (Andreas Gysin & Sidi Vanetti) are an artist duo exploring images and patterns using the type geometries of multipurpose displays. What characterises the projects shown here is that their intention is to not modify the layout (or visual organisation) of the chosen hardware – they work with what the existing has to offer. Within these hard constraints they search for infinite visual permutation. Using only type and digit, Gysin-Vanetti build images, animations and generate patterns.
05/09/2017The Creatures of Prometheus – Generative visualisation of Beethoven’s ballet with Houdini
Latest in the series of self-initiated studies by Simon Russell exploring the combination of the audio and visual, ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’ is a generative visualisation of the ballet composed in 1801 by Beethoven.
04/09/2017#include red – Sound and frequency of the colour red performed on a 1,200m² screen
Created by the South Korean sound artists GRAYCODE and jiiiiin, #include red is a large-scale audiovisual installation and performance piece that explores ideas of synaesthesia (the relationship between what we hear and what we see) through the inherent frequencies within the visible spectrum and colour as a vocabulary.
31/08/2017Modern Map Art – Deconstructing, filling and restitching maps
Created by David Hoe (Mini Cloud Studios) from London, and currently on Kickstarter, ‘Modern Map Art Prints’ is a collection of detailed maps transformed into colourful abstract art prints of anywhere in the world. The project celebrates the joys of travel and the unique fingerprint of every city from above – it is a crossover of modern maps and playful colour using specially created software.
30/08/2017LAUREN – Smart (human) intelligence for the home
Created by Lauren McCarthy, “LAUREN” is an online experiment where she attempts to become a human version of Amazon Alexa, a smart home intelligence for people in their own homes. The project will take place as an online three day performance that begins with an installation of a series of custom designed networked smart devices in peoples’ homes.
29/08/2017Soft Sound – Textiles as electroacoustic transducers
Created by EJTECH (Esteban de la Torre and Judit Eszter Kárpáti), Soft Sound is practice-led research that combines textiles with sound to explore possibilities for encountering, enhancing and exploring multi-sensory experiences. The project explores the relationship between textile and sound, focusing on the idea of using textile as an audio emitting surface.
23/08/2017Volume – Interactive cube of responsive mirrors that redirects light and sound
Created by NY based art and architecture collective Softlab, ‘Volume’ is an interactive cube of responsive mirrors that redirect light and sound to spatialize and reflect the excitement of surrounding festival goers.
21/08/2017Fearful Symmetry: Ruairi Glynn’s mesmerising installation comes back to life
This summer, visitors to Sao Paulo’s Itau Cultural Gallery find themselves face-to-face with a host of artificial life forms. Amongst them is a new version of artist Ruairi Glynn’s interactive installation ‘Fearful Symmetry’, which was first shown at the Tate Modern, London, in 2012.
28/07/2017Inside the Artist’s Headset – Sterling Crispin’s Cyber Paint
Created by California-based artist Sterling Crispin, Cyber Paint is a freshly-released VR painting app for Google’s Daydream platform. Not so much a painting simulator, its creator describes it as a “laboratory for algorithmic mark-making.”
24/07/2017Floral Automaton – Digital growth with physical adaptation
Created by Thomas Grogan, Floral Automaton is a sculptural device that grows flowers digitally. Using various sensors taken from Smart Cities technologies, it reacts and adapts itself to its environment in real time.
21/07/2017SHIFT – A roadmap to economically distributed automation
Developed at Strelka during the ‘The New Normal Program’ in 2017, ‘SHIFT’ (Arthur Röing Baer, Christian Lavista, Dmitry Alferov, Liza Dorrer) is a project that engages with stages of automation of the trucking industry in Russia, working with the socio-political, physical, and spatial particulars of logistics in the country’s vast territory.
20/07/2017VoxelChair – Designing for behaviour and properties of the material
Created by Manuel Jiménez Garcia and Gilles Retsin, ‘Voxel Chair’ is a first prototype designed using a new design software specifically developed for robotic 3D-Printing which rather than using pre-defined forms and then “slicing” these it into toolpaths or triangular patterns, allows to design and control thousands of line-fragments.
14/07/2017Computed Curation – Curating photography with neural networks
Created by Philipp Schmitt (with Margot Fabre), ‘Computed Curation’ is a photobook created by a computer. Taking the human editor out of the loop, it uses machine learning and computer vision tools to curate a series of photos from an archive of pictures.
13/07/2017Papier Machine – Expedition into the invisible aesthetics and materiality of electronics
Created by Marion Pinaffo & Raphaël Pluviange, ‘Papier Machine’ is a booklet gathering a family of 13 paper-made electronic toys ready to be cut, coloured, folded, assembled or torn.
11/07/2017komorebi – Platform for generative sunlight and shadow
Created by Leslie Nooteboom, komorebi is a platform that uses a robotic projector and generative projections to replicate the natural reflections and shadows of sunlight. komorebi can create sunlight filtering through leaves or a dance of light and shadow.
05/07/2017Kinedioscope: Muir Woods – Advancing photogrammetry for depth and masking
Created by London based convivial studio, Kinedioscope is a technique used to create animated depth effects on static photographs. The process is comprised of reverse-engineering the technology of photogrammetry in order to perfectly align the photography with the perspective of the 3D model and create depth and masking effects.
04/07/2017(Un)natural Phenomena – Daria Jelonek’s Technological Nature
‘Technological Nature’ is a recent short film by media artist and designer Daria Jelonek exploring the emulation of natural phenomena with technology. Auroras, rainbows, and glaring sunlight, are all recreated with everyday materials in an eerily empty domestic environment.
03/07/2017microscale – Hackable music album generated from random Wikipedia articles
Created by Belarusian composer Ales Tsurko, ‘microscale’ is a music album generated from random Wikipedia articles where letters are the sequencer steps and the track titles are regular expressions that switch the steps on and off.
22/06/2017Selected Network Studies – Network data and infrastructure as an A/V medium
Created by London-based musical duo the Network Ensemble, Selected Network Studies is a series of audiovisual pieces created using network data collected from a number of locations across London, Berlin and Rome. It is released as limited edition UV-printed, vacuum-sealed mylar package containing a 2GB SD Card with one hour of video material and 45 minutes of sound material.
16/06/2017Poetry in Motion – St Marie φ Walker’s Reflective Sculptures
“Reflective Sculptures: A Critique of Binary Beliefs” is a pair of kinetic sculptures by the Ontario-based artists St Marie φ Walker. Produced as part of their MFA show, the motorized devices sit halfway between poems and machines.
14/06/2017interference [dac] – Cross medium light wave distortions
Created by Technical Earth (Mo H. Zareei + Jim Murphy), interference [dac] is an audiovisual installation that explores the combination and interaction of waveforms in one medium with those of another. In the installation, which includes a linear array of four miniature projectors affixed to loudspeaker cones, sound waves affect light waves while analogue elements alter digital ones.
14/06/2017FabricKeyboard – Stretchable fabric (sensate media) as a musical instrument
Created by the Responsive Environments team at the MIT Media Lab, the ‘FabricKeyboard’ explores the concept of stretchable fabric “sensate media” as a musical instrument. The work is a response to the current developments of textile sensors, stretchable nature of knitted fabrics, and vast growth of new digital music instruments.
13/06/2017I am sitting in a machine – Hearing the science of digitisation
Created by Martin Backes, ‘I am sitting in a machine’ is a two part work algorithmic work consisting of a dubplate vinyl and a webpage containing 32 tracks selected from 3000 successive iterations of MP3 encoding.
07/06/2017Block Bills – 64 banknotes generated from the Bitcoin Blockchain
Created by Matthias Dörfelt, ‘Block Bills’ is a series of 64 banknotes generated from the Bitcoin Blockchain. Each banknote represents one block in the chain and the whole series consist of 64 consecutive blocks starting at block #456476.
01/06/2017All work and no play – Machine daydreaming
Guillaume Massol’s openFrameworks app titled “All work and no play” watches videos coming from different training datasets and generates sentences loosely based on what is happening on the screen, sometimes creating pearls of wisdom by coincidence.
31/05/2017Microbial Design Studio – Machine to design, culture, and test genetically modified organisms
Created by Mike Hogan, Karen Hogan and Orkan Telhan, ‘Microbial Design Studio’ is a countertop biofabrication machine that brings together the capabilities of a biology wetlab into a single inexpensive piece of hardware to design, culture, and test genetically modified organisms.
26/05/2017Anti AI AI – NN wearable for recognising synthetic voice
Created by the R&D team at the creative technology agency DT, Anti AI AI is a wearable neural network prototype designed to notify the wearer when a synthetic voice is detected in the environment.
26/05/2017Touch Board Starter Kit by Bare Conductive
Make, hack, design, and code with the easiest-to-use Arduino device on the market, the Touch Board by UK based Bare Conductive is now available in the CAN shop.
25/05/2017Archive Dreaming – Building relations and drawing alt-history with machine learning
Created by Refik Anadol in collaboration with Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence program, ‘Archive Dreaming’ is a 6 meters wide circular installation that employs machine learning algorithms to search and sort relations among 1,700,000 documents.
25/05/2017The Light Barrier, Third Edition – Drawing volumes in the air with light
Created by Seoul based duo Kimchi and Chips, “The Light Barrier Third Edition” is the latest and largest in the series of works by the studio to create volumetric drawings in the air using hundreds of calibrated video projections.
23/05/2017THERO – Device to (physically) manage online privacy
Created by Román Torre and Ángeles Angulo (Rotor Studio), THERO is an object designed to allow users to manage and be aware of their data traffic in a (literally) physical way.
17/05/2017SUN – Sun’s cycle as an interactive (playful) experience
Created by artist Philip Schütte in collaboration with Random Studio, SUN is an interactive installation that turns one of nature’s most mediated phenomenas – the rising and setting of the sun – into a playful sensory experience.
15/05/2017CARVEL’ / Baby Behold – Music video by Cyrill Studer
Created by Basel (CH) based visual designer Cyrill Studer for “Baby Behold” by the band Carvel’, is a collection of computer generated graphics that accompany the music in a subtle but clever and engaging way.
10/05/2017Bouquet – Synaesthetic olfactory device to perceive colour through fragrance
Created by the ECAL’s Bachelor Media & Interaction Design students at ÉCAL, and led by Niklas Roy, Bouquet is a synaesthetic olfactory device which allows the user to perceive color through fragrances.
10/05/2017Powerline – Audio reactive ‘short circuit’ installation by VOLNA
Created by St. Petersburg artist collective VOLNA, Powerline is an audio reactive installation comprised of 220 meters of electroluminescent wire driven by 15 meter “voltaic arc” filling the space with electric buzz and sparks.
08/05/2017Animal Classifier – Arbitrary classifications for machine learning
Created by Seoul based artistic duo Shinseungback Kimyonghun, ‘Animal Classifier’ is an AI trained to divide animals into arbitrary classifications to foreground the imperfections and edge cases in classification systems.
05/05/2017BloodBank and DarkLight – Physically distributed ambient storytelling
Created by the students of Media Design Master at HEAD Genève, BloodBank and DarkLight are two games that explore the notion of physically distributed ambient storytelling and coerce users into playful and shared forms of interaction.
02/05/2017Linger – Device to create and broadcast a virtual crowd
Created by Jasper van Loenen, Linger is a small, portable device that allows you to create and blend into a virtual crowd by storing the specific WiFi signals from everyone that comes near you, and rebroadcasting their signals infinitely when they leave, making it seem as if they are still there.
27/04/2017Figure and Ground – exonemo’s HEAVY BODY PAINT
HEAVY BODY PAINT is a new installment in an ongoing series of works by the NYC-based artist duo exonomeo that fuses paint and pixel in dry self-referentiality.
26/04/2017Sonic Pendulum – AI soundspace of tranquility
Created by Yuri Suzuki Design Studio and presented at the recent Milan Design Week, Sonic Pendulum is a sound installation in which articial intelligence imagines and materialises an endless soundscape.
24/04/2017GLASS II – 3D printing glass structures at architectural scale
Created by the Mediated Matter Group and the MIT Media Lab, GLASS II is the group’s most recent work in the area of 3D printing optically transparent glass now at architectural scale.
21/04/2017Studio Drift – Free floating concrete monolith & HoloLens Artwork
On display at the recent Armory Show in New York was the work of Amsterdam based Studio Drift featuring ‘Drifter’, a free floating concrete monolith together with ‘Concrete Storm’, a Holo Lens experience comprised of mixed reality art object.
20/04/2017Trophy Camera – Camera that can only make award winning pictures
Created by Dries Depoorter in collaboration with Max Pinckers, Trophy Camera is a photo camera that can only make award winning pictures. Just take your photo and check if the camera sees your picture as award winning.
19/04/2017DUST – Exploring VR as a medium for contemporary dance
Created by Mária Júdová and Andrej Boleslavský, ‘DUST’ explores new ways of interaction and experience of contemporary dance through the use of immersive virtual reality experience and online media.
18/04/2017Delineation & Decay – Laleh Mehran’s Entropic System
Entropic System is a drawing machine that inscribes ornate geometric patterns into a bed of ‘black beauty’ sand. Made by the Denver-based media artist Laleh Mehran the device has instability built-in to it, and creates a feedback loop where approaching it affects its output.
11/04/2017Enjoy the Silence – Doug Wheeler’s PSAD Synthetic Desert III
PSAD Synthetic Desert III is a (semi) anechoic chamber that endeavors to emulate the silence and emptiness of the Northern Arizona desert. Initially conceived by the American artist Doug Wheeler in 1968, the project was finally realized at NYC’s Guggenheim last week as part of the Panza Collection Initiative.
30/03/2017The Punishment – Speculating on robot’s punishment for disobedience
Created by Filipe Vilas-Boas and Paul Coudamy, The Punishment is an installation in which a robot executes a preventive punishment for its possible future disobedience in reference of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.
29/03/2017Spheres of Influence – Drawing lifelines of the city
Created by the SCI-Arc Faculty members Curime Batliner and Jake Newsum for the for the third annual Mextropoli Festival, Spheres of Influence is a temporary installation installed in the patio of Laboratorio Arte Alameda. Part installation and part live performance, it uses a robotic system from Staubli to paint layers of graphics (abstracted from the city) onto a series of human-scale spheres.
24/03/2017Markov Decisions – Sound as a physical property of matter
Created by Matteo Crivella, Markov Decisions is a generative audio system that combines random processes and sonic behaviours of matter. Data is created in Pure Data that drives the instrument through voice coil actuators putting the sheet of brass under stress and generating a tensional field in which the metal changes from one vibrating state to another, in relations to the input and its physical properties (mass, elasticity, morphology).
22/03/2017_border_ctrl
he need for visas for certain country, for some citizens, is for safety of the foreign land from the traveller. Meaning, a visa is needed to keep tabs on a persons activities in the intended country, if he/she creates any damage. But today he or she doesn’t need to be physically present in a country […]
20/03/2017border_ctrl – Internet Border Control (IBC)
Created by Saurabh Datta, border_ctrl explores future government agency, created to keep tabs of internet browsing of individuals. To keep a healthy control of one’s online activities, Internet Border Control[IBC] runs a daemon on individual’s computers.
15/03/2017Seaquence – Growin’ groove in a Petri dish
What if tweaking rhythm and melodic loops was like editing DNA? This is the question at the heart of Seaquence, a new iOS app by Okaynokay where you populate a Petri dish with ‘creatures’ that visually represent their sonic properties. A bold step away from conventional interface paradigms, it blends notions of tool, instrument, and game into something new and distinct.
14/03/2017Weave/Wave – Visualising macro-structures of the collective
Created by Flower/Fu Dongting, weave/wave is an interactive artwork that converts portraits of visitors into a particle field that is used to construct a mirror image, one of data and sound.
10/03/2017Design I/O’s Mimic – Putting emotional machines within arm’s reach
A project by Design I/O for TIFF Kids International Film Festival’s interactive playground digiPlaySpace, Mimic brings a UR5 robotic arm to life and imbues it with personality. Playfully craning its neck to get a better look, arcing back when it is startled – it responds to each child that enters its field of view.
07/03/2017The Changing Room – Displays of emotion by Lauren McCarthy
Created by Lauren McCarthy, “The Changing Room” installation invites participants to browse and select one of hundreds of emotions, then evoking that emotion in them and everyone in the space through a layered environment of light, visuals, sound, text, and interaction exhibited over a multi-level, many-sided display.
07/03/2017node 5:5 – New spatial dynamics, at scale and magnificence
Ryoichi Kurokawa sets out a new phase of his use of space with light and sound, and how different mediums can be merged in space and time as single unit. node 5:5 fills the ACC in Gwangju, South Korea with mesmerising abstract information and imagery, intoxicating the viewer in an unforgettable visual, auditory and spatial experience.
03/03/2017Onryō – Tech-noir chaos by Denial of Service
Created by the visual artist Palmer Eldritch aka Denial of Service, “Onryō” is the latest in the series of audio/video releases that combines tech-noir chaos with reaction-diffusion sequences created in Max/Jitter, courtesy of Paul Fennell.
01/03/2017Trickle Down Aesthetics – Cellular Automata in recent works by Troika
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.
28/02/2017Everything old is new again – DiMoDA, a ‘digital native’ platform for digital art
DiMoDa is a VR-based ‘digital museum for digital art’ initiated in 2015. After a busy 2016 the museum’s second iteration is currently showing at RISD Museum in Rhode Island. The museum’s co-founder Alfredo Salazar-Caro sheds a little light on where there platform has been, and where it is going.
24/02/2017DOBOTONE – VIDEOGAMO’s parametric party machine
Powered by a dizzying array of parametric meta-controls, VIDEOGAMO’s ‘party console’ DOBOTONE invites (up to) four players to cycle through a strange and fiercely competitive selection of lo-fi videogames.
22/02/2017Lost in Computation – Distorted communication in the digital landscape
Created by Jonas Eltes at FABRICA, “Lost in Computation” is a a multilingual conversation between two Chatbot AIs trained in Swedish and Italian, translated through Google Translate, exploring how the multiple layers of computation in today’s digital landscape distorts our communication.
21/02/2017SPACEJUNK
The 50 twigs in this installation point in unison in the direction of the oldest piece of human made space debris currently above the horizon. The debris being tracked are spent rocket bodies, parts from defunct satellites and wayward tools launched in missions as far back as 1958. When the piece of debris being tracked […]
21/02/2017DESCENT – A meditation on one of humanity’s blackest hours
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.
17/02/2017Dead Media – Mathilde Lavenne’s Artefact#0, Digital Necrophony
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.
14/02/2017Particle Flow – Kinetic particle study by NEOANALOG
Created by digital design studio NEOANALOG , “Particle Flow” is a physical installation comprised of granules driven by gravity and topography forming an analogue particle system. A moving slanted plane and a grid of motorized stamps control the elements to form infinite variations of behaviours and patterns.
14/02/2017Shape in Scapes – Transporting architecture into audio-video performance
Created by Studio Antimateria in collaboration with participating students at the workshop hosted by Presidio Temporaneo di Architettura, Shape in Scapes is an audiovisual installation that provides an abstract representation of students’ architectural projects.
09/02/2017A Personalised Spin Cycle – Project EVA’s Object of the Internet
The Object of the Internet is a kinetic installation by Montréal-based artist duo Project EVA. Prepared for “The Dead Web” exhibition at Eastern Bloc, the apparatus invites viewers to put their heads inside an elaborate spinning apparatus that reflects and blurs their likeness and identity.
07/02/2017Sinuous Flow, Gelatinous Form – Paul Prudence’s Mylar Topology
The Mylar Topology is a new audiovisual performance by the London-based artist Paul Prudence. In it liquid forms ripple along with binaural beats, forming vertebral columns and congealing oil slicks – which dissipate as quickly as they form.
03/02/2017TraiNNing Cards – Flash cards to train your machines
Latest in the series of critical design projects by Shanghai design and research studio Automato, TraiNNing Cards is a set of 5000 training images, physically printed and handpicked by humans to train any of your machines to recognise first and favorite item in a house: a dog.
01/02/2017Decision Space – Conceptual dataset for machine learning
Created by Sebastian Schmieg, ‘Decision Space’ explores how new datasets can enable new experiments in teaching computers how to understand images within a set of meaningful and complex categories.
27/01/2017Z1FFER – A True Random Number Generator for Arduino (and the post-Snowden era)
Low cost and open source, Rob Seward’s Z1FFER is Hardware Random Number Generator that harnesses thermal noise to provide a high quality random bitstream for research and experimentation. Available at the CAN shop now!
24/01/2017Objectifier – Device to train domestic objects
Created by Bjørn Karmann at CIID, Objectifier empowers people to train objects in their daily environment to respond to their unique behaviours. Interacting with Objectifier is much like training a dog – you teach it only what you want it to care about. Just like a dog, it sees and understands its environment.
23/01/2017Solace: How We Made the Interactive Speculative Fiction
Part of a new series of posts inviting artists and curators to share latest projects on CAN, we’d like to introduce you to Evan Boehm, and his latest collaboration with Nexus Studios. Solace is an interactive animated film based on celebrated science fiction writer Jeff Noon’s short story about a near future in which marketing and addiction are disturbingly intertwined.
19/01/2017Lift – A luminous petal filament that ebbs and flows
Created by Patten Studio and currently on display at SHoP Architects, Lift is comprised of 24 geometric petals attached to a single spine. Each petal, actuated using a shape memory alloy known as nitinol, can move up and down silently in response to motion it detects.
17/01/2017Untethered – Voice-Driven VR Serial Drama
Untethered is a new VR serial drama created by Numinous Games that has players step into the shoes of a radio DJ and talk your way through a broadcast and an unfolding mystery.
17/01/2017Gutfather – Capsule to transfer “Abdominal Feeling”
Created by Stefan Schwabe in collaboration with Fraunhofer CeRRI and Sebastian Kletzander, Gutfather is a speculative design project comprising a capsule that traverses the human organism and changes its shape through the influence of microbes until it is secreted as an object-bearing imprint of the microbiome.
16/01/2017Crossvision – An alternative vision of motion
Created by Henning Marxen, Crossvision is a series of video art sequences of recognisable yet disorienting sceneries that combine the popular slit-scan capturing technique with a specially designed camera slider.
11/01/2017Attachment – Balloon-Powered (In)direct Messaging Revisited
A complete redesign of his 2014 Jean Tinguely-inspired project, David Colombini’s Attachment is a “poetic machine” that renders physical manifestations of user-generated digital messages (text, images, or videos) and sends them off via biodegradable balloons.
04/01/2017Wind of Boston: Data Paintings by Refik Anadol Studios
Wind of Boston: Data Paintings by Refik Anadol Studios is a site-specific installation that turns the invisible patterns of wind in and around Boston into a series of data paintings on a 1.8m x 4m digital canvas.
04/01/2017Compass – A wearable that senses the magnetic north
Created by Jelle Reith, Compass is a wearable suit designed out of three pieces with each including movable flaps that work together and ‘point’ north.
03/01/2017