As 2017 comes to a close, we take a moment to look back at the outstanding work done this year. From spectacular peformances, large scale installations, devices and tools to the new virtual spaces for artistic exploration – so many great projects are being added to the CAN archive! Here are a just few, 25 in total, that we and you enjoyed the most this year.

Created by the SCI-Arc faculty Curime Batliner and Jake Newsum in collaboration with Paralelo Architectos, Anachronic Landscapes is a robotic system that lives inside of an abandoned industrial structure overgrown by nature. The system executes its daily routine, nurturing the plants with water and fertilising it with fluorescent fluids. While the machine keeps the plants alive it simultaneously ignites a process of transformation forcing the plants to adapt to the new condition.

“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.

Created for and in collaboration with an electronic music band Niagra, Roger Water is a web based interactive 360 VR and live A/V experience by Stefano Maccarelli. The project is an a endless immersive exploration of a generative, infinite open world, set in a surreal Earth-like world, of a parallel universe connected to ours, populated by objects from modern terrestrial civilisation and terrestrial creatures that behave in unusual ways.

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.

Created by the South Korean sound artists GRAYCODE and jiiiiin, #include red is a large-scale audiovisual installation and performance piece that explores ideas of synaesthesia (the relationship between what we hear and what we see) through the inherent frequencies within the visible spectrum and colour as a vocabulary.

Created by Lauren McCarthy, “LAUREN” is an online experiment where she attempts to become a human version of Amazon Alexa, a smart home intelligence for people in their own homes. The project will take place as an online three day performance that begins with an installation of a series of custom designed networked smart devices in peoples’ homes.

In just a short few weeks, NODE is back for another edition and invites you to take part in a week long exploration of creative technologies.

Created by Seoul based duo Kimchi and Chips, “The Light Barrier Third Edition” is the latest and largest in the series of works by the studio to create volumetric drawings in the air using hundreds of calibrated video projections.

Created by Basel (CH) based visual designer Cyrill Studer for “Baby Behold” by the band Carvel’, is a collection of computer generated graphics that accompany the music in a subtle but clever and engaging way.

Created by Mária Júdová and Andrej Boleslavský, ‘DUST’ explores new ways of interaction and experience of contemporary dance through the use of immersive virtual reality experience and online media.

Created by the SCI-Arc Faculty members Curime Batliner and Jake Newsum for the for the third annual Mextropoli Festival, Spheres of Influence is a temporary installation installed in the patio of Laboratorio Arte Alameda. Part installation and part live performance,  it uses a robotic system from Staubli to paint layers of graphics (abstracted from the city) onto a series of human-scale spheres.

Ryoichi Kurokawa sets out a new phase of his use of space with light and sound, and how different mediums can be merged in space and time as single unit. node 5:5 fills the ACC in Gwangju, South Korea with mesmerising abstract information and imagery, intoxicating the viewer in an unforgettable visual, auditory and spatial experience.

Created by Studio Antimateria in collaboration with participating students at the workshop hosted by Presidio Temporaneo di Architettura, Shape in Scapes is an audiovisual installation that provides an abstract representation of students’ architectural projects.

The Mylar Topology is a new audiovisual performance by the London-based artist Paul Prudence. In it liquid forms ripple along with binaural beats, forming vertebral columns and congealing oil slicks – which dissipate as quickly as they form.

At its best, creative inquiry offers intellectual nourishment, empowerment and solace. At the end of 2016, we need all of those, which is why remembering – and celebrating – the outstanding work done this year is all the more important. Over the past twelve months we’ve added more than 100 projects to our archive – and with your help we’ve selected the favourite ones!

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.

InterAccess’ Vector Festival returns with its fifth edition next summer and its curators have issued their annual call for work in and around the edges of videogame culture.

Created by Katharina Hauke and Dominik Hildebrand Marques Lopes, the MikroKontrolleur is the result of their ongoing artistic research into working with vocals and electronics live on stage. It consists of a control station that can be attached to any microphone stand with one part played using hands and optional foot pedal to extend manipulation. It’s a an instrument to play one’s voice.

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.

Created by the NY based artist Victor Morales, Figures is a series of dramatic animation created using Unity game engine where characters melt, bend and defy the natural in a simulation

Created as a collaboration between Prokop Bartoníček and Benjamin Maus, Jller is part of an their ongoing research in the field of industrial automation and historical geology. Installation includes an apparatus, that sorts pebbles from a specific river by their geologic age.

Latest in the series of productions by Japan’s BRDG label and Hip Land Music is the performance by Akihiko Taniguchi titled ‘Something Like Me / About Seeing Things’. The performance is a culmination of Akihiko research into VR and 3D scanning, rendering in real time, synchronized with real world time and presented using Pepper’s Ghost technique in Tokyo’s DMM VR theatre.

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.

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.

CAN interviews Florence To, a Rotterdam-based art director and installation artist focused on audiovisual performance and the creation of immersive environments.

Huge stroboscopic datastreams, hypnotic human-machine choreographies, a cacophony of Korean, Japanese, English, German, and French – ten weeks ago, from November 25th to 28th 2015, an unlikely cross-cultural exchange took over the all new ACT Center in Gwangju, South Korea. More than a hundred artists, designers, curators, and educators answered our invitation to add their work and voice to the inaugural edition of ACT Festival, an opening celebration for the center’s monumental facilities.

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.

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Created by digital design studio FIELD, Spectra-3 is a physical-digital sculpture that tells three stories of communication through a choreography of movement, animated lights and spatialised sound, premiering at London’s Lumiere light festival on 14th January 2016.