plant bot is a time based interactive art installation where the fates of a living plant and a computer are interdependent. Essentially the plant attempts to train a computer using image recognition. Through this process the computer will learn to recognize when the plant needs water based on images it takes of the plant.

‘Artificial Botany’ by fuse* is an ongoing project which explores the latent expressive capacity of botanical illustrations through the use of machine learning algorithms.

Livegrid is a harmonious blend of technology and art that brings environmental awareness into your living space. Livegrid uses integrated sensors to gauge the temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels of your surroundings with a unique representation — an immersive aquatic ecosystem.

Web is a fully on-chain generative cross-linked network of 1000 webpages on Ethereum mainnet. All pages and the links between them are generated and form a deterministic universe.

Elisava has partnered with the creative research lab IAM to launch a new Master in Design for Responsible Artificial Intelligence, a part-time and low residency programme that brings together designers, strategists, trend researchers, futurists, new media artists, cultural producers, journalists and creative technologists to tackle precisely these kinds of questions.

In their continued effort to seek out an equilibrium between man-made and nature, MAN-NAHĀTA is the latest project by OXMAN (previously Mediated Matter Group at the MIT Media Lab). The project is a top-down master planning braved by bottom-up-design in the place where the grid was once a garden.

Between October 6th and 9th 2022, the 11th edition of the Patchlab Digital Art Festival will be held in Krakow.

Created by Lingdong Huang at the Future Sketches Group (MIT Media Lab), “Semi-Realistic Rotary Experiences” is a set of experiments exploring augmentation of real life physical gestures of rotating things.

Created by Michael Sedbon, ‘Cryptographic Beings’ is a technological proposal that leverages our ability to control and abstract biology to perform digital information storage.

‘PERACH’ is a biofeedback art installation that allows visitors to ‘feel’ the interior electrical happenings of their plants. Perach consists of a multi-sensor IoT device along with a web platform that provides visitors with the ability to hear, and visually perceive the changes taking place inside plants.

During the lockdown, I invited outdoor weather data to an indoor isolated space, trying to create a mimic creature that could visualise the wind and keep me accompanied. Scale: 30 x 30 x 100 cmMaterial: plant. Devil’s ivy, wind data during the lockdown, robotic armYear: 2020 Project Page | Hua Zhang

As per tradition each year, December is when we look back at the amazing work published on CAN. From ingenious machines and installations to mesmerising experiences that leverage new mediums for artistic inquiry – we added scores of projects to CAN’s archive in 2019. Here are some highlights.

Designed and constructed by ART+COM Studios in collaboration with Futurium and Schiel Projekt, ‘Neo-Natur’ is a permanent installation for Berlin’s Futurium exhibition that explores our potential futures from different areas of life––from self-sufficient cities, to the future of work and ideas for more sustainable consumption.

Ottawa-based Artengine is looking for Canadian and U.S. artists, designers, and cultural producers to take part in its Digital Economies Lab (DEL), a “year-long exploration of the wonders and anguish of making art and culture in the 21st century.”

Report from the inaugural CAN-curated event series ‘Document #.’ examining new forms of cross-disciplinary art and design practice.

In Elektra’s 20th year common themes from throughout the history of the festival of machinic bodies and digital transcendence are explored in depth and pushed to their extremes.

Learn how to prototype post-screen interfaces, examine network infrastructures, hack museums, and transplant scents with leading artists, designers, and researchers at this year’s Mapping Festival.

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.

AUDINT is a European artist collective working across animation, installation, and publishing. Drawing on excerpts from an extended conversation with the group, we unpack their vision of the dystopian future-present and the nether zones that can be conjured through sound and vibration.

Created by Marion Pinaffo & Raphaël Pluviange, ‘Papier Machine’ is a booklet gathering a family of 13 paper-made electronic toys ready to be cut, coloured, folded, assembled or torn.

Unhanded was a symposium about ‘making under the influence of digitalism’ that took place in Ottawa last September. CAN was on hand to facilitate one of the discussions, and to mark the publication of the videos online we offer some highlights and thoughts on the proceedings.

A project by Design I/O for TIFF Kids International Film Festival’s interactive playground digiPlaySpace, Mimic brings a UR5 robotic arm to life and imbues it with personality. Playfully craning its neck to get a better look, arcing back when it is startled – it responds to each child that enters its field of view.

Interactive Architecture Lab founder Ruairi Glynn chats with CAN about the freshly-launched Design for Performance & Interaction (DfPI) programme at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

In the final week of the last year’s fall 10-week program at the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC), students presented their work in progress and its underly ideas in a public showcase. Here is a selection of projects that were presented.

Taking place at Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Lima between 17 March – 19 June, New Realities is a touring exhibition curated and produced by Alpha-ville which explores how the phenomenal pace of technological advancement is changing the way we perceive ourselves and our world.

Sónar+D 2016, the 4th International Congress for Digital Culture and Creative Technologies will be held in Barcelona on 16, 17 and 18 June and takes place within Sónar by Day.

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.

“There Should be Gardens” is the title of the 14th edition of InterAccess’s Emerging Artists Exhibition. Drawing on her research in feminist/queer curatorial and media arts practices, the exhibition is curated by Toronto’s Amber Christensen and showcases five Canadian early career artists whose practices address “the interconnectedness of technologies, ecologies, botanies, gender and the cosmos.” In aggregate the show’s selected works invoke elemental qualities, amplify and abstract natural materialities, and offer different modes of seeing and engaging the world. With the show winding down this week, CAN engaged Christensen in a Q&A to unpack the show’s framing and provocative works.