Created by André Andrade at ECAL (Media and Interaction Design Unit), 300000 km/s is a data visualisation project to highlight the consequential delay in communication in the probable future (interplanatory) expansion of the territory of Man.

Created by Giulio Barresi at ECAL (Media and Interaction Design Unit), Connected Tools is a series of objects that explore alternative rituals that could lead to a more reasonable consumption of mobile technologies.

The chAIr Project is a series of four chairs created using a generative neural network (GAN) trained on a dataset of iconic 20th-century chairs with the goal to “generate a classic”. The results are semi-abstract visual prompts for a human designer who used them as a starting point for actual chair design concepts. 

Developed by the team at the MIT Media Lab’s Mediated Matter research group, the following research demonstrates multimaterial voxel-printing method that enables physical visualisation of volumetric data.

Created by Manasse Pinsuwan and René Henrich, Augenblick explores and captures what we miss when we close our eyes thousands of times a day to blink. Developed at the Digital Media Bremen with support from Joachim Hofmann and Prof. Dennis P. Paul, Augenblick is a wearable device that records every single frame that is missed by its wearer.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.