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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
About a year ago HOLO 2 came rolling off the press and we’ve spent the last twelve months shipping it and presenting it all over the world. We compiled a pretty massive report that collates all the crucial facts, figures, and feedback we’ve received. Thanks to our readers, partners, and contributors alike for your support—HOLO is a tribute to the amazing communities it chronicles.
“Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design” is an exhibition that excavates the foundation of computer-aided design and manufacturing and weaves together several ‘origin stories’ for contemporary consideration. The show recently closed after a seven-week run at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and CAN was fortunate enough to get a guided tour with curator Daniel Cardoso Llach as it was winding down.
‘Déguster l’augmenté’ is a collaborative project by Erika Marthins with ECAL (Bachelor Media & Interaction Design) that questions if food could be augmented and technology provide a new dimension to how we experience a meal.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
The 2017 edition of Eastern Bloc’s Sight + Sound festival put ‘capital I’ innovation in its cross-hairs and pulled the trigger. We journeyed to Montreal to its flagship exhibition and assess its spectrum of ‘non-compliant futures.’
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.
Created by Matthieu Cherubini, Ethical Autonomous Vehicles project explores the implications of near-future scenario where most vehicles on the road are autonomous.
Written and animated by Alan Warburton with the support of Tom Pounder and Wieden + Kennedy, Goodbye Uncanny Valley explores the current state of photoreal CGI, where it came from and where it may be going to.
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.
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…
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.
Radiance is a recently-launched online research platform for artistic VR experiences. Essentially a database, it contains info, screencaps, and video on artist-created VR projects and looks poised to become a useful resource for curators.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Processing Community Day is a day to come together, celebrate, reflect, and look forward. This event will bring together members of the community to discuss work, share ideas and experiences, and promote outreach to new members, particularly those who are underrepresented in creative and technological fields.
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.
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.
In August 2017, a group of MIT Media Lab students went to Shenzhen, where they spend a month there in two factories. This is a documentary about what they experienced, made and learned.
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.
Poetic Computation: Reader is an online-book about code as a form of poetry and aesthetic by Taeyoon Choi. Based on his lectures at the School for Poetic Computation, the book introduces the poetic aspects of computation and considers how engaging technology with this lens can lead to new political possibilities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mitchell F Chan’s “Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility” updates the contract at the heart of an influential 1958 work by Yves Klein for the age of cyrptocurrency, the blockchain, and smart contracts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
