“Evolution” is an immersive audio-visual installation and performance that celebrates the vitality of inorganic materials. The project takes its inspiration from the physics phenomenon of Cymatics, which has demonstrated that certain substances can autonomously form complex patterns in response to vibrations.

‘Material Sequencer’ is an 8-step electromechanical sequencer, designed to emphasise the physical materiality of sound and sound production. The simple usb-powered sound-sculpture takes the sequencing process outside the black box and into the acoustic realm, flaunting its materiality and physicality.

‘A Natural History of Networks / SoftMachine’ is an electrochemical algorithmic performance that probes an alternative computational and technological material regime.

Created by EJTECH (Esteban de la Torre and Judit Eszter Kárpáti), Soft Sound is practice-led research that combines textiles with sound to explore possibilities for encountering, enhancing and exploring multi-sensory experiences. The project explores the relationship between textile and sound, focusing on the idea of using textile as an audio emitting surface.

Created by Manuel Jiménez Garcia and Gilles Retsin, ‘Voxel Chair’ is a first prototype designed using a new design software specifically developed for robotic 3D-Printing which rather than using pre-defined forms and then “slicing” these it into toolpaths or triangular patterns, allows to design and control thousands of line-fragments.

Created by Matteo Crivella, Markov Decisions is a generative audio system that combines random processes and sonic behaviours of matter. Data is created in Pure Data that drives the instrument through voice coil actuators putting the sheet of brass under stress and generating a tensional field in which the metal changes from one vibrating state to another, in relations to the input and its physical properties (mass, elasticity, morphology).

Metamaterials are engineered 3D cell grids that have properties that are not found in nature. Recently, a group of Hasso-Plattner Institute researchers (supported by a Shapeways educational grant) enhanced metamaterial design to include mechanical functionality.

Designed by the Mediated Matter Group in collaboration with Stratasys and inspired by her most recent album—Vulnicura, The Rottlace is a series of masks for Björk, exploring the themes associated with self-healing and expressing ‘the face without a skin’.

Precious Plastics is a new initiative that disseminates instructions for DIY plastic recycling and manufacturing.

After the experiments in physical programming in the “Traces” project we reported on last year, Dana Zelig decided to examine the possibility of adjusting the plastic to fabrics, by means of pressing them together, allowing the heat to manipulate the plastic, and the manipulated plastic to effect the adjusted fabric.

Created by Dana Zelig, Traces project explores the concept of programming everyday materials, a form of “physical programming” where objects are “made to act” on some form following specific instructions.

Transient Materialization explores the relationship between digital and material-based digital fabrication through n-hedron structure composed mainly of soap foam, which is blown, through a mixture of air and helium, into a foam structure.

In a world increasingly concerned with questions of energy production and raw material shortages, this project explores the potential of desert manufacturing, where energy and material occur in abundance.