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.

The 2017 edition of Eastern Bloc’s Sight + Sound festival put ‘capital I’ innovation in its cross-hairs and pulled the trigger. We journeyed to Montreal to its flagship exhibition and assess its spectrum of ‘non-compliant futures.’

Created by NY based art and architecture collective Softlab, ‘Volume’ is an interactive cube of responsive mirrors that redirect light and sound to spatialize and reflect the excitement of surrounding festival goers.

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.

Developed at Strelka during the ‘The New Normal Program’ in 2017, ‘SHIFT’ (Arthur Röing Baer, Christian Lavista, Dmitry Alferov, Liza Dorrer) is a project that engages with stages of automation of the trucking industry in Russia, working with the socio-political, physical, and spatial particulars of logistics in the country’s vast territory.

Created by the Mediated Matter Group and the MIT Media Lab, GLASS II is the group’s most recent work in the area of 3D printing optically transparent glass now at architectural scale.

PSAD Synthetic Desert III is a (semi) anechoic chamber that endeavors to emulate the silence and emptiness of the Northern Arizona desert. Initially conceived by the American artist Doug Wheeler in 1968, the project was finally realized at NYC’s Guggenheim last week as part of the Panza Collection Initiative.

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!

From the Digital Citizens Lab to making Processing more accessible – Lauren McCarthy, Los Angeles-based artist and Processing Foundation board member, surveys the work of the 2016 Processing fellows and sheds light on the Foundation’s 5-month fellowship program.

Created by Studio Puckey & Moniker, Radio Garden is a research project that places radio research within contemporary discussions about migration, cultural identities, encounters and memories by generating new knowledge about the meaning of radio and listening in the age of globalisation and digitisation.

Developed at the MIT Media Lab’s Mediated Matter Group, ‘Data-Driven Material Modeling’ refers specifically to the process of the creation of high-resolution, geometrically complex, and materially heterogeneous 3D printed objects at product scale.

A fascinating survey of pioneering work in experimental cinema and art from 1905 to the present day, revealing the high stakes and transformative potential of these forms.

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.

Created by Diogo Tudela, Athletics of Transcendence explores how traditional craftsmanship can appear to legitimise and provide depth to otherwise flat computational constructs.

Video of the much-anticipated collaboration between two Berlin-based greats – Christopher Bauder and Robert Henke at Berlin’s CTM 2016 festival.

Exploring behavior based design systems that are self-aware, mobile, and self-structure / assemble. The following is the work AADRL Spyropoulos Design Lab at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, in London.

CAN’s report on the audiovisual highlights (and our participation) in the 17th edition of Montréal’s venerable MUTEK festival.

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.

Create by FIELD, Unique Flow is a project celebrating the release of new car by Toyota C-HR. It’s imagined as a visual abstraction of the car, highlighting its design and intention, a combination of style, movement and flow. CAN goes behind the scenes!

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 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.

Founded in Berlin, Germany, in 2014, School of MA provides unique, hands-on learning experiences at the intersection of art and technology in Europe. School’s founder Rachel Uwa speaks to the instructors Andrew Friend and Sitraka Rakotoniaina about the recent and future programmes.

vitreous is a new experimental film by Robert Seidel. Originally conceived as a media façade artwork of 80 × 24 × 14 Meters, it later developed in a large-scale projection of 4 × 14 Meters. The short film released this week and features a music score composed by Nikolai von Sallwitz.

Developed at the MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group, Reality Editor allows users to merge digital and physical realities into a unified experience.

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.

An audiovisual installation by Matthew Biederman and Pierce Warnecke, Perspection is an anamorphic projection with directional sound that adjusts to a viewer’s position.

Created by Copenhagen-based artist and researcher Tobias Ebsen, Poème Mécanique is an electromechanical sound sculpture produced for Espace culturel Georges-Émile-Lapalme, a public walkway connecting the Place-des-Arts metro and Complexe Desjardins in Montréal.

In the Eyes of the Animal is the latest installation by Marshmallow Laser Feast, commissioned by the AND Festival and set in Grizedale Forest, that takes visitors on a fascinating journey allowing them to fly above the forest canopy, come face-to-face with hi-definition critters and embody various animals as they traverse the landscape.