In October CAN headed to Pittsburgh to toast the 30th Anniversary of The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. The event was accompanied by “Intersections,” a dynamic group exhibition showcasing many of the anti-disiciplinary works produced within the labs. Here, we review the show and share details about various included works.

Ottawa-based Artengine is looking for Canadian and U.S. artists, designers, and cultural producers to take part in its Digital Economies Lab (DEL), a “year-long exploration of the wonders and anguish of making art and culture in the 21st century.”

HOLO curates a series of critical conversations and hands-on exercises as part of the 20th Edition of MUTEK Monreal, Aug 20-25.

A review, photos, and selection of highlights from the abundant offerings of the 4th edition of the International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN) in Montreal.

Artificial Imagination was a symposium organized by Ottawa’s Artengine this past winter that invited a group of artists to discuss the state of AI in the arts and culture. CAN was on hand to take in the proceedings, and given the emergence of documentation, we share videos and a brief report.

Quartier des spectacles has posted a call for innovative interactive projection mapping projects and their ponying up up to $10,000 (CAD) funding, expert tutelage to support selected projects’ development, and the opportunity to present finished works near the bustling Saint-Laurent metro station.

“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.

“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.

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.’

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.

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.

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.

AUDINT is a European artist collective working across animation, installation, and publishing. Drawing on excerpts from an extended conversation with the group, we unpack their vision of the dystopian future-present and the nether zones that can be conjured through sound and vibration.

‘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.

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.”

A follow-up to the influential 2012 booklet series “Critical Making,” “Disobedient Electronics: Protest” is a new zine by Vancouver-based theorist and educator Garnet Hertz that uses dissent as a lens to survey electronics-based projects and practices.

‘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.

“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.

“Queer Games Studies” is a recent collection of thematic essays published by the University of Minnesota Press that schematizes LGBTQ approachs to thinking about – and making – videogames.

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.

One of the most recognized faces in biohacking, Josiah Zayner is the focus of the most recent edition of the New York Times’ Op-Docs series. “Gut Hack” chronicles his quest to alleviate his lifelong abdominal problems by killing the bacteria in his stomach and replacing it with microorganisms gleaned from an ‘ideal’ donor.

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.

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.

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.

Unhanded was a symposium about ‘making under the influence of digitalism’ that took place in Ottawa last September. CAN was on hand to facilitate one of the discussions, and to mark the publication of the videos online we offer some highlights and thoughts on the proceedings.

In his annual SXSW wrapup, science fiction author and design theorist Bruce Sterling laid a smackdown on Silicon Valley re: AI and automation.

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.

Game developer and 3D technical lead Keith O’Conor of Romero games recently wrote a ‘GPU Performance for Game Artists 101’ that breaks down the GPU pipeline from input assembly through to final render.

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.