Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices.

Applications are now open for Antikythera’s Studio, which will host 15-18 international, interdisciplinary Studio Researchers from February to June 2023. The program is free and includes a housing provision and a monthly stipend of 4000 USD (or equivalent when not in Los Angeles). All travel and other associated program costs will also be covered by the program.

‘36,000 Feet’ is a game where you are playing as a flight passenger coming back from its holidays. You are currently flying over Afghanistan…

Kykeon is an immersive experience that intersects contemporary dance, art and VR technology to offer glimpses of a hidden world––through the eyes of a shaman.

Four projects by students at ECAL (Media Interaction Design) explore the possibilities of VR. From alternative interfaces and public space to architectural interface and what its like to experience the environment of yellow ants.

Created by Mattia Casalegno and presented in collaboration with the chef Flavio Ghignoni Carestia, the Aerobanquets RMX is an immersive, sensorial experience focussed on the perception of taste.

It was just three weeks ago we were in Montréal for the 4th edition of MUTEK_IMG, MUTEK’s forum on digital creation. Invited to contribute to its symposium, we curated five panels. In this post-festival report, we share some highlights.

Created by Shunichi Kasahara in collaboration with Satoru Higa, Takuto Usami, Shotaro Hirata and Tetsuya Konishi, “Superception” (Super + perception) is a research framework that uses computer technologies to intervene and transform human perception.

Created by Automato, ‘Objective Realities’ is an installation and performance that explores the idea of how does it feel to be an object in a smart home. It includes a series of VR experiences that change the perspective from a human point of view to the one of an object, inviting users to see and act in a virtual smart home with the capabilities and limitations of a specific object and listen to the invisible chatter that happens between networked things and the home.

Created by Arvind Sanjeev, Lumen is a mixed reality storytelling device that lets users explore AR/VR content without being confined to headsets or mobile devices.

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 Stella Speziali at ECAL, Tangibles Worlds explores the effects of tactile experience as a catalyst for full immersion in VR. It proposes a “black box” interface, an alt-plysical-universe to the VR experience, extending the immersion beyond visual and sound.

About a year ago HOLO 2 came rolling off the press and we’ve spent the last twelve months shipping it and presenting it all over the world. We compiled a pretty massive report that collates all the crucial facts, figures, and feedback we’ve received. Thanks to our readers, partners, and contributors alike for your support—HOLO is a tribute to the amazing communities it chronicles.

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.

Radiance is a recently-launched online research platform for artistic VR experiences. Essentially a database, it contains info, screencaps, and video on artist-created VR projects and looks poised to become a useful resource for curators.

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.

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.

House of Shadow Silence is a VR experience by Portland-based software artist Jeremy Rotzstain. In it, the artist recreates Austrian architect Frederick Kiesler’s 1929 movie theatre the Film Guild Cinema and uses it to ‘build a world’ of light, geometry, and motion.

Created by California-based artist Sterling Crispin, Cyber Paint is a freshly-released VR painting app for Google’s Daydream platform. Not so much a painting simulator, its creator describes it as a “laboratory for algorithmic mark-making.”

DiMoDa is a VR-based ‘digital museum for digital art’ initiated in 2015. After a busy 2016 the museum’s second iteration is currently showing at RISD Museum in Rhode Island. The museum’s co-founder Alfredo Salazar-Caro sheds a little light on where there platform has been, and where it is going.

Untethered is a new VR serial drama created by Numinous Games that has players step into the shoes of a radio DJ and talk your way through a broadcast and an unfolding mystery.

From the paradoxical nature of our impending quantum (computing) future to the enduring mystery of the Big Bang – the ideas explored in HOLO 2 could not be any bigger. We think it shows.

Created and Directed by Anita Fontaine and Geoffrey Lillemon with W+K Amsterdam, Bitmap Banshees is a VR experience set inside a dystopian Amsterdam, where a gang of biker banshees have taken over the city and are out to get you.

Created at the Bartlett School of Architecture / Interactive Architecture, Palimpsest uses 3D scanning and virtual reality to record urban spaces and the communities that live in them. The project aims to question/test the implication if the past, present, and future city could exist in the same place, layering personal stories and local histories of the city at a 1:1 scale.

Pittsburgh’s Art && Code returns with a much-needed consideration of “new and independent visions for VR, MR, and AR.” Taking place from Oct 6-9th, and deliriously titled WEIRD REALITY, the four-day symposium gathers many of the best and brightest working in and at the fringes of immersive media.

Created by TEM in collaboration with Vincent de Belleval, The Beacons is a virtual environment built around a catwalk that uses a dynamic content system piped through a room sized inverted zoetrope, created from 2.5m tall, 0.5 tonne, 60rpm motorised beacons x 3.

The CAN/HOLO team is headed to Montréal for the 16th edition of MUTEK. A celebration of the best and brightest in audiovisual performance, we’ll be having ‘HOLO Encounters’ with several of the festival’s featured artists.

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.

As 2015 winds down we look back at almost 200 extraordinary projects we’ve covered this year on CAN. And as is the case every year, picking the ten ‘best’ is hard if not impossible, as each of them has driven the conversation around the state of art and design in their own unique way. And yet, the following ten works stuck with us and, if anything, make great starting points for reflection and inspiration as we head into the new year. Until we continue our coverage in early January: happy holidays and thank you all for a great 2015!

Blackout is a forthcoming “part video game, part live action documentary” VR film that allows you to hear the thoughts of your fellow NYC subway passengers during a power outage. The project is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.