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.

Fantastic Smartphones, alternative accessories, interactive installations and machine performances highlight the excesses relating to our use of these devices. By imagining innovative ways of interacting with our smartphones or by delegating our repetitive actions to machines, this exhibition takes a critical look at a society that has become addicted to an object that seems to have become indispensable : the “smart” phone.

In perceiving established cultural and historical rituals through the lens of contemporary technology, Choy Ka Fai opens up a liminal space in which dance transcends colonial resistance, power and fantasy.

In today’s mercurial, complex, and ambiguous world, our bodies oscillate between the virtual and the real more than ever. The world-famous collective Rhizomatiks is testing the web, presenting performances and experimental online-based systems, and approaching these situations from a variety of angles.

Reckoning with quantum physics, Japanese avant-garde art scene “maestro” Hiroaki Umeda hypostatizes that these batches of abstract information are merely human belief system: “When one has confidence in an object’s factuality they name it as real, and when this confidence is slightly undermined they rename it as virtual” he stated.

Spanning physical and virtual space, Peter Burr’s exhibition, Responsive Eye, examines contemporary life in the grid. Taking cues from minimalism and op art, the work pushes the limits of a viewer’s perception and awareness, thrusting them into that gap between what is seen and what is felt. In this interview by Daniel Glendening, Burr digs into history, things that are not there, and what it means to be fleshy bodies gathering in digital space.

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.

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.

CAN will join (and report from) the ECAL Research Day, an eclectic symposium where artists, designers, and scholars will discuss the entanglement of technology and research.

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.”

In Elektra’s 20th year common themes from throughout the history of the festival of machinic bodies and digital transcendence are explored in depth and pushed to their extremes.

From the inventions of computing pioneer Douglas Engelbart to the philosophies of Andy Clark and David Chalmers: curator Philo van Kemenade reveals what inspired the 2019 edition of Bratislava’s Sensorium Festival (June 7-9)

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

From 24 May to 25 November 2018, in the framework the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les-murs” program, American artist Ian Cheng’s “Emissary Forks At Perfection” (2015-2016) is on display at the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia.

Earlier this year SFPC in NYC was the host to alt-AI, a conference organised by Lauren Gardner and Gene Kogan to highlight and question artificial intelligence through the lens of artistic practice.

In a little over a week, the 6th edition of TADAEX festival (Tehran Annual Digital Art Exhibition) takes place at Mohsen Gallery in Tehran, Iran. It’s a strong manifestation of the digital scene in Tehran and the people who make it possible, it features Iranian digital artists as well as far reaching international network of collaborators thanks to an ongoing residency program with NODE Forum for Digital Arts.

In December 2015, SFPC were invited to participate at Day for Night festival in Houston, TX. SFPC co-founder Zach Lieberman, students from the fall 2015 session, and the larger SFPC community worked together to create ‘SFPC re-coded’, a project that presented over 50 animations from more than 30 different contributors.

Sónar+D 2016, the 4th International Congress for Digital Culture and Creative Technologies will be held in Barcelona on 16, 17 and 18 June and takes place within Sónar by Day.

The Gray Area Foundation for the Arts has been active in San Francisco for a decade. On the eve of the second edition of their eponymous festival, CAN chats with the Gray Area team about their ongoing educational and programming initiatives.

Technarte is a two-day conference programme with international artists, scientists, researchers, technologists and academics gathering to show the most innovative and amazing projects linking their respective fields. 19/20 May 2016, Bilbao

Resonate is back to celebrate its fifth anniversary in Belgrade from 12th to 16th of April, 2016, providing an insight into the current developments in the fields of digital culture, visual arts and music.

A consideration of systems and scale in Marina Zurkow’s “MORE&MORE (the invisible oceans)” and Rachel Rose’s “Everything & More,” exhibitions recently mounted at (respectively) bitforms and the Whitney Museum for American Art in NYC.

“There Should be Gardens” is the title of the 14th edition of InterAccess’s Emerging Artists Exhibition. Drawing on her research in feminist/queer curatorial and media arts practices, the exhibition is curated by Toronto’s Amber Christensen and showcases five Canadian early career artists whose practices address “the interconnectedness of technologies, ecologies, botanies, gender and the cosmos.” In aggregate the show’s selected works invoke elemental qualities, amplify and abstract natural materialities, and offer different modes of seeing and engaging the world. With the show winding down this week, CAN engaged Christensen in a Q&A to unpack the show’s framing and provocative works.

CentrePasquArt’s super-group show Short Cuts invites viewers to trace ideas, influences, and positions across five decades of work by merely taking a few steps.

The sixteenth edition of Montréal’s ELEKTRA festival took place from May 13th-17th and delivered a range of audiovisual performances and installations addressing the notion of ‘post-audio’ or perception beyond sound—CAN was on hand to have our retinas singed and eardrums buzzed by the ‘POST-AUDIO’-themed programming.

Sónar+D is the international conference for creativity and technology, designed to promote talent and business opportunities in the digital culture environment.

Toronto-based curator Marla Wasser is the mind behind “RAM: Rethinking Art & Machine”, a media art exhibition currently on display at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia that contains work by media art heroes like Angela Bulloch, Jim Campbell, Manfred Mohr, Alan Rath, and Daniel Rozin. Wasser recently engaged in an extensive interview with CAN, in which she shares some behind-the-scenes details about her show.

From November to January 2014, Muriel Guépin Gallery in NY was the home to ‘Bright Matter’, an exhibition of enigmatic works by five international artists widely recognized for their spatial-aesthetic research, creative engineering, and stunning perceptual hacks. We check in with the event’s instigator, curator, and participating artist Joanie Lemercier for a report, the back story, and a 2015 teaser.

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.