dnose is an interactive sculpture in the shape of a nose created at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) which combines image recognition and machine learning using a Raspberry Pi to predict the smell of any object placed underneath it.

‘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.

Best Practices in Contemporary Dance is a queer form of conversation between technology and bodies. Since April 2020, the beginning of 1st COVID-Lockdown, Jorge Guevara and Naoto Hieda meet weekly online to #practice for an hour: to distort and alter videos of themselves and each other, namely, in the pixel space. They do not define…

‘Artificial Arboretum‘ by Jacqueline Wu is a project exploring the preservation, study, and public display of “photogrammetrees” found in Google Earth. The collection includes a range of diverse species harvested from their rendered world using the same tools and techniques that created them.

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.

Created by Matthieu Cherubini, Ethical Autonomous Vehicles project explores the implications of near-future scenario where most vehicles on the road are autonomous.

At the Di­gi­tal Me­dia stu­dy pro­gram in University of/the Arts Bremen, com­pu­ter sci­ence meets de­sign, whi­le en­gi­nee­ring and na­tu­ral sci­en­ces in­ter­con­nect with the arts. We present you four recent “semester” projects exploring topics ranging from VR, popular media to digital nature.

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.

Riding high on the wave of massive interest in his most recent work “Hyper-Reality,” which depicts a super-mediated Medellín, Colombia of the near future, director/designer Keiichi Matsuda chats with CAN about augmented reality, Silicon Valley, and CGI shopping companions.

Created by Luiz Zanotello at the University of the Arts, Bremen, The New Velocity is a machine designed to plot the phantom Sandy Island using digital as a new analogy for its existence. The project investigates a charting error that persisted in cartographic maps even after the advent of digital media. It speculates how data and physical phenomena are entangled, and how in contemporaneity, the two have the same weight under digital media.

Created by Miguel Nóbrega, Possible, Plausible, Potential is a set of three series of isometric drawings generated by code and printed with colored markers on a plotter machine. In these drawings, Miguel explores a bridge between the iterative aspect of algorithms and the utopian aspect of modern architecture.

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.

The OpenSurgery project investigates whether building DIY surgical robots, outside the scope of medical regulations, could plausibly provide an accessible alternative to costly professional healthcare services worldwide.

‘Beyond Blood’ is a project that imagines a legal system where algorithms take over the inheritance process where the deceased has not left a will and the state has to distribute the estates.

CAN goes in-depth with the Paris-based ‘anticipatory’ design studio N O R M A L S to learn about their forthcoming dark, dense, and dizzying graphic novel series. Working process, representational techniques (that bridge illustration and code), and a critical reading of contemporary design fiction.

Aireal is a low cost, scalable haptic technology that delivers tactile sensations in mid air and enables users to feel virtual objects and experience dynamically varying textures.

RCA DI project that looks at possible implication if the act of genetically combining human with animal DNA was not illegal, nor did it violate moral or ethical codes of conduct.

Animalia and Caelum are two projects that take position that our idealisation, romanticism and paradoxical thinking in ecology is holding us back from finding new ways to interact with nature.

In the increasing world of things where objects are no longer critically assessed based on just their aesthetic appearance and function, Cohen Van Balen address the politics of technology through the means of manufacture in their new project 75 WATT.