/history (57)












Heavens is a moving-image work and installation created using planetarium projection methods to overlay planetary footage with deep sea imagery, looking at deep space to see deep into the ocean.
10/04/2023‘Arche-Scriptures’ explores ceramics as a possible medium to store digital information. An artifact is found at a speculative archeological dig-site is being scanned by a decrypting machine, through which the visitor is invited to listen as the original audio data engraved onto the ceramics is slowly retrieved and sonified.
01/08/2022Created 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.
06/11/2017Machine 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.
28/03/2017Just discovered: a presentation by Instrument builder and sound artist Derek Holzer, in which he catalogues the history of optical synthesis. It is worth a look as it cites a number of fairly obscure (and fascinating) precedents of interest to anyone working in audiovisual design.
17/02/2017Polyloge #1 is an interactive installation and a hyper-local message feed. Through an open WIFI network, users in reach of the wireless signal can send text messages with their smartphones, tablets or computers. These messages get printed immediately on a paper roll that runs in-between two translucent, black boxes and are transformed into a material stream.
04/11/2016CAN reviews “Digital Design Theory,” a recent Princeton Architectural Press text compiling writing from over five decades of thought on computation and design.
26/08/2016CAN interviews Grant D. Taylor, author of the 2014 book “When the Computer Made Art: The Troubled History of Computer Art,” on the past, present and future of digital art.
31/03/2016Anecdotes and questions about climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction: Atari, ARM, demoscene, education, creative coding, community, seeking lightness, enlightenment & strange languages.
16/12/2015Created by Tim Clark at the Royal College of Art, Design Interactions, High Speed Horizons is a design-driven, critical exploration into technology, innovation, big thinking, and our constantly changing attitudes towards the three, told through projected visions of alternative energies and flight.
25/06/2015“The Crystal Line” is the latest work by critical engineer Julian Oliver. Re-creating an authentic crystal radio design that was used widely during WWI, the device broadcasts a transmission of ‘future of warfare’ chatter culled from various defence blogs that is translated from text to speech.
13/03/2015Created by William Fairbrother, Alberto Ruiz Soler and Oliver Smith, ERIS—2000 is a fictional scientific instrument invented by cybernetician Erica Symms in 1971. The device was used to show and study, through a simplified simulation, the consequences of human decisions on complex systems.
16/02/2015Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
18/12/2014The Petroglyphomat is a a mobile, computer operated milling machine, that can send messages to a distant future by engraving them into ancient monuments.
01/12/2014Created by Kyle McDonald, “Sharing Faces” uses a megapixel surveillance camera and custom software to match the face locations of the persons looking at the screen. As the person moves, new images are pulled from the database matching the new location and create a mirror-like image of yourself using the images of others.
27/08/2014The following is a collection of new generative pieces created by Walter Gorgosilits aka dextro from Austria, one of the pioneers of generative Macromedia Director programming.
22/08/2014Produced by Timo Arnall, Internet Machine is a multi-screen film about the invisible infrastructures of the internet. The film was made to reveal hidden materiality of our data by exploring some of the machines through which ‘the cloud’ is transmitted and transformed.
15/05/2014Created by Marc Faasse, Playground NDSM is an interactive photomontage that includes 7 years of photographs taken by Marc and mapped on the googlemaps.
14/05/2014Metro is Chris Coleman’s every day commute on the Denver Light Rail, recorded using a handheld 3D scanning device and a laptop.
27/09/201319th-century “disruptive” optical drawing tool updated for the 21st century by Pablo Garcia & Golan Levin. Own a piece of media archaeology.
08/05/2013CAN talks to Ash Nehru (Director of software) and Matt Clark (Creative Director) about d3 – visual production suite that brought us the memorable Massive Attack tour in 2002 and more recent projects like the Origin. We talk how it all came about, what is the tool, it’s features, working methodology and the future.
08/02/2013“The main change in the design process achieved by using generative design is that traditional craftsmanship recedes into the background, and abstraction and information become the new principal elements.”
19/12/2012A collaboration between Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass, Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas, Mark Sample, Noah Vawter and Casey Reas, 10 PRINT is a book about a one-line Commodore 64 BASIC program.
04/12/2012Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
13/11/2012Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
09/10/2012Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
12/09/2012Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
28/05/2012Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
22/04/2012Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
17/01/2012Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
23/11/2011Heavens is a moving-image work and installation created using planetarium projection methods to overlay planetary footage with deep sea imagery, looking at deep space to see deep into the ocean.
Tags: biology / Cohen Van Balen / cosmic / exhibition / history / installation / James Bridle / perception / projection / Sound / Theory / virus
‘Arche-Scriptures’ explores ceramics as a possible medium to store digital information. An artifact is found at a speculative archeological dig-site is being scanned by a decrypting machine, through which the visitor is invited to listen as the original audio data engraved onto the ceramics is slowly retrieved and sonified.
Tags: archive / browser / exhibition / future / HfK Bremen / history / opencv / Processing / scan / sonification / speculative
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.
Tags: aftereffects / cinema4d / computation / computing / exhibition / featured / history / installation / Klingklangklong / Konrad Zuse / museum / visualization / Zuse Computer Museum
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.
Tags: Andreas Broeckmann / book / David Rokeby / history / Jean Tinguely / MIT Press / MoMA / Stelarc / Tatlin / technology / Theory / Wim Delvoye
Just discovered: a presentation by Instrument builder and sound artist Derek Holzer, in which he catalogues the history of optical synthesis. It is worth a look as it cites a number of fairly obscure (and fascinating) precedents of interest to anyone working in audiovisual design.
Polyloge #1 is an interactive installation and a hyper-local message feed. Through an open WIFI network, users in reach of the wireless signal can send text messages with their smartphones, tablets or computers. These messages get printed immediately on a paper roll that runs in-between two translucent, black boxes and are transformed into a material stream.
Tags: Andreas Unteidig / arduino / Blanca Dominguez / communication / Fabrizio Lamoncha / history / Lutz Reiter / message / network / paper / printer / snapchat
CAN reviews “Digital Design Theory,” a recent Princeton Architectural Press text compiling writing from over five decades of thought on computation and design.
Tags: Ben Fry / book / Casey Reas / Digital / featured / Heather Armstrong / history / Ivan Sutherland / John Maeda / Jonathan Puckey / Keetra Dean Dixon / Khoi Vin / Moniker / Muriel Cooper / Paola Antonelli / Princeton Architectural Press / Theory
CAN interviews Grant D. Taylor, author of the 2014 book “When the Computer Made Art: The Troubled History of Computer Art,” on the past, present and future of digital art.
Tags: Anne Spalter / Bit International / book / Computer Art / Computers and Automation / Daniel Brown / featured / Frieder Nake / Grant Taylor / history / interview / Manfred Mohr / Theory / Vera Molnar
Anecdotes and questions about climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction: Atari, ARM, demoscene, education, creative coding, community, seeking lightness, enlightenment & strange languages.
Created by Tim Clark at the Royal College of Art, Design Interactions, High Speed Horizons is a design-driven, critical exploration into technology, innovation, big thinking, and our constantly changing attitudes towards the three, told through projected visions of alternative energies and flight.
Tags: aircraft / Counterfactual / design / design interaction / fiction / history / Innovation / project / rca di / royal college of art / speculation / technology / tim clark
“The Crystal Line” is the latest work by critical engineer Julian Oliver. Re-creating an authentic crystal radio design that was used widely during WWI, the device broadcasts a transmission of ‘future of warfare’ chatter culled from various defence blogs that is translated from text to speech.
Tags: Cutting Room / featured / history / Julian Oliver / Phoenix / radio / Sound / war
Created by William Fairbrother, Alberto Ruiz Soler and Oliver Smith, ERIS—2000 is a fictional scientific instrument invented by cybernetician Erica Symms in 1971. The device was used to show and study, through a simplified simulation, the consequences of human decisions on complex systems.
Tags: Alberto Ruiz Soler / design / fiction / history / ios / MaxMSP / Oliver Smith / rca IED / Reference / speculation / William Fairbrother
Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
Tags: Boukje Cnossen / Erwin Driessens & Maria Verstappen / Giles Lane / history / Karolina Sobecka / Michelle Kasprzak / Theory / V2_ Institute for Unstable Media
The Petroglyphomat is a a mobile, computer operated milling machine, that can send messages to a distant future by engraving them into ancient monuments.
Tags: arduino / bremen / CNC / communication / device / history / Lorenz Potthast / machine / message / mobile / Processing
Created by Kyle McDonald, “Sharing Faces” uses a megapixel surveillance camera and custom software to match the face locations of the persons looking at the screen. As the person moves, new images are pulled from the database matching the new location and create a mirror-like image of yourself using the images of others.
Tags: APAP / camera / computer vision / data / debug / debug screen / face tracker / history / Inspiration / Kyle McDonald / location / mirror / network / node / place / process / Reference / ycam
The following is a collection of new generative pieces created by Walter Gorgosilits aka dextro from Austria, one of the pioneers of generative Macromedia Director programming.
Tags: code / dextro / Director / generative / history / iteration / macromedia / multimedia / Processing / Reference
Produced by Timo Arnall, Internet Machine is a multi-screen film about the invisible infrastructures of the internet. The film was made to reveal hidden materiality of our data by exploring some of the machines through which ‘the cloud’ is transmitted and transformed.
Tags: 3d / archive / BIG BANG DATA / CCCB / cloud / exhibition / film / history / internet / projection / Timo Arnall / trailer
Created by Marc Faasse, Playground NDSM is an interactive photomontage that includes 7 years of photographs taken by Marc and mapped on the googlemaps.
Tags: aerial / archive / google maps / googlemaps / history / landscape / mapping / record / topography / view / WebApp
Metro is Chris Coleman’s every day commute on the Denver Light Rail, recorded using a handheld 3D scanning device and a laptop.
19th-century “disruptive” optical drawing tool updated for the 21st century by Pablo Garcia & Golan Levin. Own a piece of media archaeology.
Tags: device / disruptive / Golan Levin / history / kickstarter / Objects / Pablo Garcia
CAN talks to Ash Nehru (Director of software) and Matt Clark (Creative Director) about d3 – visual production suite that brought us the memorable Massive Attack tour in 2002 and more recent projects like the Origin. We talk how it all came about, what is the tool, it’s features, working methodology and the future.
Tags: c++ / d3 / development / feature / history / interview / members / performance / spectacle / tools / united visual artists / uva
“The main change in the design process achieved by using generative design is that traditional craftsmanship recedes into the background, and abstraction and information become the new principal elements.”
Tags: archive / Benedikt Groß / book / Claudius Lazzeroni / design / generative / Hartmut Bohnacker / history / Julia Laub / Reference / review
A collaboration between Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass, Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas, Mark Sample, Noah Vawter and Casey Reas, 10 PRINT is a book about a one-line Commodore 64 BASIC program.
Tags: book / code / creative code / download / history / pdf / Reference / writing
Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
Tags: archive / books / Games / history / kickstarter / Read-Only Memory / retro / Sensible Software
Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
Tags: arduino / data / generative / history / installation / News / Processing / representation / typewriter / visualization
Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…
Tags: animation / education / Generator.x / history / Mac / Marius Watz / screensaver / Theory / Windows
Sorry, this is Members Only content. Please Log-in. Join us today by becoming a Member. Archive: More than 3,500 project profiles, scores of essays, interviews and reviews.Publish: Post your projects, events, announcements.No Ads: No advertisements, miners, banners.Education: Tutorials (beginners and advanced) with code examples, downloads.Jobs Archive: Find employers who have recruited here in the past…