/machine (48)


















Created by Jonghong Park, Vague Boundaries explores ‘boundaries’ between matter and phenomena. The custom made machine draws straight lines continuously on the paper by snapping the thread with the mechanism of the chalk line tool.
12/01/2023Ghostwriter is a project that invites us to mindfully co-create with the AI through a vintage typewriter’s tactile and physical form. Imagined as a calm meditative interface it removes all the digital distractions and takes us on an emotional journey through paper and ink.
16/12/2022Kinetic sculpture composed of hammers and light bulbs invites the viewer to contemplate this delicate balance of complex fragility.
02/12/2021As 2018 comes to a close, we take a moment to look back at the outstanding work done this year. From spectacular machines, intricate tools and mesmerising performances and installations to the new mediums for artistic enquiry – so many great new projects have been added to the CAN archive! With your help we selected some favourites.
31/12/2018Created by Jessica In, Machinic Doodles is a live, interactive drawing installation that facilitates collaboration between a human and a robot named NORAA – a machine that is learning how to draw. The work explores how we communicate ideas through the strokes of a drawing, and how might a machine also be taught to draw through learning, instead of via explicit instruction
11/12/2018Created bu Jonghong Park at the University of the Arts Bremen (Digital Media Program), the installation ‘bit’ represents a natural random process based on the principle of a Markov chain.
27/11/2018Created by Madeline Gannon for the 2018 Annual Meeting of New Champions at the The World Economic Forum, in Tianjin, China, Manus is a set of ten industrial robots that are programmed to behave like a pack of animals.
08/11/2018Created by Random International, Zoological is a flock of autonomous, flying spheres that move collectively. Algorithmically driven, the spheres react to their surroundings and, sometimes, to people within their environment.
11/06/2018Created by Luiz Zanotello, Habitat of Recognition explores the material dimensions of digital technologies by examining the intra-active tensions between the distinction and convergence of matter.
21/03/2018Created by Matthieu Cherubini, Ethical Autonomous Vehicles project explores the implications of near-future scenario where most vehicles on the road are autonomous.
26/10/2017Created 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.
11/10/2017Hatched 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.
02/10/2017Created 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.
28/09/2017“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.
14/06/2017Created by Berlin based Ralf Baecker, Random Access Memory is a fully functional digital memory. Instead of operating on semi-conducting components to represent either the binary states of 0 (zero) or 1 (one), the memory uses grains of sand as storage material.
07/12/2016Created by Hansje van Halem, an independent graphic designer based in Amsterdam (NL). the following video and images are the latest in the series of experiments that explore tension between a systematic approach, legibility, and (ir)regularity in typography.
29/08/2016Created by Juncheng Chen, Siyuan Jing and Lydia Zhou at the Bartlett School of Architecture (Interactive Architecture Lab), this project explores possibilities in mobile structures by investigating various strategies for locomotion.
16/08/2016Created by Ann-Katrin Krenz, Parasitic / Symbiotic project explores the artificiality of nature, and whether a moderate and thoughtful technical interventions in nature can create something aesthetically valuable and permanent.
10/05/2016Created by Jasna Dimitrovska as a part of her Digital Media – HfK Bremen, Master Theses, Three Machines on Transparency is comprised of three machines that by own demonstration allow the artist to synthesise philosophical concepts of different forms+ideas of transparency into the corporeality.
26/04/2016Created by João Costa, Adeus is a sound installation that explores concepts arising from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where the perfectly designed musical system eventually falls out of sync, mirroring the flaws and entropy inherent to human nature.
22/04/2016Created by Danilo Sampaio and William Victor Camilleri at the The Interactive Architecture Lab at UCL/London, Hortum Machina, B is a half garden, half machine, cybernetic lifeform that explores new forms of bio-cooperative interaction between people and nature, within the built environment.
18/04/2016Created and performed by Yingjie Bei, Phantom Power is an exoskeleton analog synthesizer. Built as a man/machine interface instrument, the device is performed with hand gestures / screwdrivers by manipulating the circuit.
04/02/2016Created by Quadrature, Kartograph is a drawing machine that updates old maps by drawing new geographic data over the infrastructure of old times using the internet.
03/12/2015Created by Felix Ros, Stewart is a hypothetical tactile interface designed for a fully autonomous car with objective to accommodate a healthy relation between man and machine.
28/10/2015Created by Martin Hertig at ECAL, Sensible Data is a playful installation consisting of three machines that collect user’s personal data, evaluates mood, age, gender and beauty, to create a ‘passport’ that user can take away but which also randomly sent (without user’s knowledge) to another participant.
25/09/2015Mattia Casalegno (multifaceted Italian artist based in Los Angeles, 1981) takes inspiration from disciplines such as anthropology, biology, ecology, and neurosciences, deploying a vast array of technologies and expressive forms, with a natural inclination for new media languages.
17/03/2015Created by Berlin based studio Quadrature, Satelliten is a custom build machine that brings the invisible movement of passing satellites in lower orbit to a tangible medium and scale.
06/03/2015Created by Oslo based computational design studio Void, Irregular Polyhedron Study #1 is a physical representation of the basic components of computer graphics; the vertex and the edge and explores the perceptual gap between the flat and the spacious, the analogue and the digital.
05/03/2015Created by Francesco Tacchini, SPOOK-I is a hypothetical but operative US National Security Agency inspired machine. It mimics two surveillance techniques available to the NSA Tailored Access Operations unit, in order to expose the technology employed by state surveillance for the ‘weaponization of everyday’.
22/12/2014The 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 Jonghong Park, Vague Boundaries explores ‘boundaries’ between matter and phenomena. The custom made machine draws straight lines continuously on the paper by snapping the thread with the mechanism of the chalk line tool.
Tags: bremen / Fusion 360 / machine / matter / motors / pattern / servo motor / stepper / University of the Arts Bremen / wave / waves
Ghostwriter is a project that invites us to mindfully co-create with the AI through a vintage typewriter’s tactile and physical form. Imagined as a calm meditative interface it removes all the digital distractions and takes us on an emotional journey through paper and ink.
Tags: ai / arduino / artificial intelligence / emergence / emotional / GPT-3 / interaction / keyboard / machine / openai / Raspberry Pi
Kinetic sculpture composed of hammers and light bulbs invites the viewer to contemplate this delicate balance of complex fragility.
Tags: 3d printing / arduino / art / fusion360 / installation / kinetic art / laser cutting / light art / machine / openFrameworks / sculpture / waterjet
As 2018 comes to a close, we take a moment to look back at the outstanding work done this year. From spectacular machines, intricate tools and mesmerising performances and installations to the new mediums for artistic enquiry – so many great new projects have been added to the CAN archive! With your help we selected some favourites.
Tags: 2018 / 3d printing / Adrien Kaeser / algorithm / automation / automato / blockchain / cloud / drawing / EEG / film / furniture / fuse / Giulia Tomasello / interactive / iot / Jessica In / Kimchi and Chips / LUST / machine / machine learning / Maria Smigieska / Matteo Zamagni / Matthias Dörfelt / Mediated Matter / near-future / performance / Philipp Schmitt / Pierre Cutellic / projection / Ralf Baecker / Refik Anadol Studio / rndr / Sound / speculative / Steffen Weiss / tool / Waltz Binaire / weather
Created by Jessica In, Machinic Doodles is a live, interactive drawing installation that facilitates collaboration between a human and a robot named NORAA – a machine that is learning how to draw. The work explores how we communicate ideas through the strokes of a drawing, and how might a machine also be taught to draw through learning, instead of via explicit instruction
Tags: bartlet / Dynamixel / Google QuickDraw / Jessica In / machine / nodejs / Processing / python / QuickDraw / SketchRNN
Created bu Jonghong Park at the University of the Arts Bremen (Digital Media Program), the installation ‘bit’ represents a natural random process based on the principle of a Markov chain.
Tags: arduino / bremen / CNC / DRV8825 / featured / installation / Jonghong Park / machine / Markov Chain / Processing / randomness / simulation / step motor
Created by Madeline Gannon for the 2018 Annual Meeting of New Champions at the The World Economic Forum, in Tianjin, China, Manus is a set of ten industrial robots that are programmed to behave like a pack of animals.
Tags: abb / animals / behaviour / biomimicry / computer vision / Events / featured / installation / machine / Madeline Gannon / mimicry / ofxCv / ofxEasing / ofxGizmo / ofxOneEuroFilter / openFrameworks / robotics
Created by Random International, Zoological is a flock of autonomous, flying spheres that move collectively. Algorithmically driven, the spheres react to their surroundings and, sometimes, to people within their environment.
Tags: c++ / flock / flying / group / group behaviour / lidar / Linux / machine / object / Random International / Roundhouse / scan / surveillance / tracking
Created by Luiz Zanotello, Habitat of Recognition explores the material dimensions of digital technologies by examining the intra-active tensions between the distinction and convergence of matter.
Tags: arduino / bremen / Digital / drawing / featured / information / installation / instrument / Luiz Zanotello / machine / materiality / Processing / sand / student / system / value
Created by Matthieu Cherubini, Ethical Autonomous Vehicles project explores the implications of near-future scenario where most vehicles on the road are autonomous.
Tags: autonomous vehicles / car / design / driverless / driving / ethics / machine / Matthieu Cherubini / morals / near-future / simulation / speculative / system / unity
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.
Tags: 3d mapping / augmented reality / Benedikt Groß / depth camera / driving / featured / Joey Lee / lidar / machine / MESO / MESO Digital Interiors / moovel Lab / nvidia jetson / oculus rift / osc / Raphael Reimann / self-driving car / unity / Unity3D / vehicle / vr / vvvv / yolo / zed stereo camera
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.
Tags: Alexandra Ion / arduino / ars electronica / CNC / David Lindlbauer / dynamos / EMS / featured / Hasso-Plattner Institute / LiPo / machine / MOSFET / Natural History Museum Bern / openEMSstim / parasite / Patrick Baudisch / Pedro Lopes / Róbert Kovács / Science Gallery Dublin / VIDA
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.
Tags: arduino / astronomy / classified / featured / machine / monitoring / Operation Moonwatch / orbit / Quadrature / satellites / secret / servo / space / us government / vvvv
“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.
Tags: Denise St Marie / installation / language / lasercut / machine / motor / plastic / poetry / St Marie φ Walker / Timothy Walker / University of Waterloo Art Gallery / University of Waterloo Department of Fine Arts / wood
Created by Berlin based Ralf Baecker, Random Access Memory is a fully functional digital memory. Instead of operating on semi-conducting components to represent either the binary states of 0 (zero) or 1 (one), the memory uses grains of sand as storage material.
Tags: computation / machine / memory / memory storage / performance / process / Ralf Baecker / software
Created by Hansje van Halem, an independent graphic designer based in Amsterdam (NL). the following video and images are the latest in the series of experiments that explore tension between a systematic approach, legibility, and (ir)regularity in typography.
Tags: drawing / graphic design / lecture / machine / printing / process / robotics / typography
Created by Juncheng Chen, Siyuan Jing and Lydia Zhou at the Bartlett School of Architecture (Interactive Architecture Lab), this project explores possibilities in mobile structures by investigating various strategies for locomotion.
Tags: architecture / behaviour / genetic algorithm / grasshopper / interactive architecture lab / machine / performance / robotics
Created by Ann-Katrin Krenz, Parasitic / Symbiotic project explores the artificiality of nature, and whether a moderate and thoughtful technical interventions in nature can create something aesthetically valuable and permanent.
Tags: Ann-Katrin Krenz / arduino / drawing machine / intervention / machine / nature / parasite / poetry / symbiosis / technology
Created by Jasna Dimitrovska as a part of her Digital Media – HfK Bremen, Master Theses, Three Machines on Transparency is comprised of three machines that by own demonstration allow the artist to synthesise philosophical concepts of different forms+ideas of transparency into the corporeality.
Tags: Air / arduino / conversation / device / Digital Media Bremen / HfK Bremen / Jasna Dimitrovska / machine / make / object / philosophy
Created by João Costa, Adeus is a sound installation that explores concepts arising from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where the perfectly designed musical system eventually falls out of sync, mirroring the flaws and entropy inherent to human nature.
Tags: arduino / glitch / installation / João Costa / machine / midi / performance / random / reverse / signal / Sound
Created by Danilo Sampaio and William Victor Camilleri at the The Interactive Architecture Lab at UCL/London, Hortum Machina, B is a half garden, half machine, cybernetic lifeform that explores new forms of bio-cooperative interaction between people and nature, within the built environment.
Tags: ai / arduino / bartlett / Danilo Sampaio / intelligence / interactive architecture lab / machine / plant / process / Ruairi Glynn / ucl / William Victor Camilleri
Created and performed by Yingjie Bei, Phantom Power is an exoskeleton analog synthesizer. Built as a man/machine interface instrument, the device is performed with hand gestures / screwdrivers by manipulating the circuit.
Tags: curcuit / itp / itpnime / machine / music / performance / Sound / Yongjie Bei
Created by Quadrature, Kartograph is a drawing machine that updates old maps by drawing new geographic data over the infrastructure of old times using the internet.
Created by Felix Ros, Stewart is a hypothetical tactile interface designed for a fully autonomous car with objective to accommodate a healthy relation between man and machine.
Tags: ai / arduino / Felix Ros / hypothetical / machine / process / Processing / robotics / servo / speculative / student
Created by Martin Hertig at ECAL, Sensible Data is a playful installation consisting of three machines that collect user’s personal data, evaluates mood, age, gender and beauty, to create a ‘passport’ that user can take away but which also randomly sent (without user’s knowledge) to another participant.
Tags: data / data collection / drawing machine / ecal / fingerprint / iPad / machine / Martin Hertig / privacy / raspberrypi / security / sensor
Mattia Casalegno (multifaceted Italian artist based in Los Angeles, 1981) takes inspiration from disciplines such as anthropology, biology, ecology, and neurosciences, deploying a vast array of technologies and expressive forms, with a natural inclination for new media languages.
Tags: bioengineering / exhibition / eyebeam / installation / machine / Mattia Casalegno / new media / sense / sensorial / smell
Created by Berlin based studio Quadrature, Satelliten is a custom build machine that brings the invisible movement of passing satellites in lower orbit to a tangible medium and scale.
Tags: Arduino microcontroller / data / drawing / drawing machine / machine / mapping / Quadrature / Raspberry Pi / satellite / scale / space / tangible / topology / tracking
Created by Oslo based computational design studio Void, Irregular Polyhedron Study #1 is a physical representation of the basic components of computer graphics; the vertex and the edge and explores the perceptual gap between the flat and the spacious, the analogue and the digital.
Tags: arduino / Bjørn Gunnar Staal / drawing / installation / Joakim Hoen / lines / machine / openFrameworks / perception / vertex / Void / volume
Created by Francesco Tacchini, SPOOK-I is a hypothetical but operative US National Security Agency inspired machine. It mimics two surveillance techniques available to the NSA Tailored Access Operations unit, in order to expose the technology employed by state surveillance for the ‘weaponization of everyday’.
Tags: arduino / device / Francesco Tacchini / hypothetical / Information Experience Design / machine / minim / nsa / Processing / rca / surveillance
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