What a great initiative @bmoren ! I’m constantly on the lookout for new coders/artists to discover (like many people here I presume) and have always thought it would be nice to have a place on this forum to share and discuss our personal favourites.
May I suggest to extend your list to cultural events (exhibitions, festivals) and publications (books and magazines) evolving around media art ? I think they can be great places to find documention. Not only they bring together the work of different artists/coders coming from various places but also it can be a good opportunity to read/learn more (though exhibitions, interviews, talks…) about their coding routines, their personnal experiences and inspirations or about the evolution of technics and practices in the field. It is also worth mentionning that a growing number of cultural institutions start to make their content available online.
Magazines
The first reference that comes to my mind is HOLO magazine. Created and currated by Filip Visnjic (founder of CreativeApplications) and Alexander Scholz, it’s a biannual Berlin-based magazine about emerging trajectories in art, science and technology.
What I liked:
- Issue n°2 (current issue) contains interviews with computer art pioneer Vera Molnár (94 years old !) and with one of my favourite digital artist Ryoichi Kurokawa, among many others.
- Conversation between Casey Reas and theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson was an interesting read.
- I enjoyed finding pieces of Processing sketches and introductions to famous algorithms (Voronoi, Reaction/Diffusion, L-systems…)
More on the creation of the magazine here.
Another outstanding publication (my personal favourite) is Back Office. A Paris-based magazine addressing various topics from history of computer science to the philosophy of digital technology.
What I liked:
- Articles can be quite sophisticated sometimes but always captivating (complexity in map design, concept of “Information” for Alan Turing, the impact of information visualisation on society…)
- A lot of info on Data Visualisation (history, good practices, main protagonists ranging from Jacques Bertin to Mike Bostock)
- Beautifully illustrated (pictures, charts, graphs…)
You can read it online for free.
Also, not a present-day publication but legendary “Cybernetic Serendipity” has just been reprinted to mark the 50th anniversary of the famous eponymous exhibition on computer art.
I do not own a copy myself but feel confident in saying that every vintage computer graphics lover should grab one real fast.
Museums
ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsrhuhe, Germany. Certainly the leading cultural institution for Media Art in Europe. They regularly hold events on digital culture that are then uploaded on their YouTube channel. I personnaly like to watch the videos presenting the work of selected artists.
micro | macro – Ryoji Ikeda
interview with Daito Manabe
YCAM is the Japanese equivalent of ZKM. It’s a beautiful museum located in Yamaguchi prefecture and desiged by metabolist architect Arata Isozaki. The institution is known to be an active supporter of OpenFrameworks and regularly invite artists from outside Japan (the usual suspects Kyle McDonald, Lauren McCarthy, Joshua Noble, Cyril Diagne… have already been there). It really gained popularity when it started to host the performances of dance troup ElevenPlay made in collaboration with Rhizhomatiks research.
Work of Daito Manabe himself (founder of Rhizomatiks) is also often showcased. Unfortunately, YCAM has no official YouTube channel but you can find some very insightful documentaries on past residencies.
Exhibitions
Recently IRCAM (birthplace of Max/MSP and Pure Data) and Pompidou Center held an exhibition on contemporary digital creation. It was based on six timelines: The History of Code, The Algorists, Music and Code, Digital Literatures, Digital Forms in Architecture and Design and The Body and Code. A catalogue of the exhibition should be available online very soon.
I was personaly delighted to see some of the work from the folks at Onformative (Cedric Kiefer, long time Processing user, and Julia Laub, co-author of the fantastic Generative Design book).
Probably the most interesting piece was from another Berlin-based studio called Certain Measures. They came up with an algorithm that designs new architectural structures from existing scrap.
“Mind the scrap” is also being showcased at this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture.
But the main attraction of the show was undoubtedly Ryoji Ikeda’s giant wall installation. Being a fan of his work I must admit I was a bit disappointed by the lack of originality of his most recent visualisations. This is probably because Ikeda, much like Alva Noto, is a sound artist above all, not a programmer. Most of his past work was actually designed by various Japanese artists and designers whose names are unfortunately rarely mentionned: algorithmic designer and architect Shohei Matsukawa, visual programmer Norimichi Hirakawa, media artists Tomonaga Tokuyama and Satoshi Hama among many others.
datum – Norimichi Hirakawa
Festivals
I think it’s no secret that most festivals put their content online but as a reminder:
- lectures and talks from Eyeo festival (US)
Computational Concerts – Ari Melenciano
- lectures and talks from Ars Electronica (Austria)
Hiroshi Ishii from MIT Media Lab
- lectures and talks from Sonar Festival (Spain)
The Neural Aesthetics – Gene Kogan
- vimeo channel of Elektra Digital Art Biennal (Canada)
Introduction video
- lectures, concerts and talks from Mutek Montreal (but also in Mexico, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Dubai, San Fransisco and Tokyo)
Digital Imagery in the Urban Space
- Sou Festival (Georgia)
I’ve recently stumbled upon several series of short video portraying various media artists/coders on YouTube. It doesn’t really belong to any categories aformentionned but I thought it would be worth sharing anyway
YouTube channels
Memo Akten
Refik Anadol
Karsten Schmidth, creator of Toxiclibs library
Frederik Vanhoutte, creator of Hemesh library
I’m stopping here. Really hope that we can keep that thread alive with regular updates.