1. Patatap

Showcase site Chrome Experiments is a precious goldmine for all kinds of surprising web experiments. If you want a big smile on your face, you should definitely check out Patatap. The best interactive sound/vision art is simple, elegant and takes no more than a few seconds to figure out. Patatap is all that. In its interface, every letter key on your keyboard is a different synth sound, accompanied by a simple but elegant animation.

Looks: pastel colored animation in Miami art deco style.
Sounds: a minimal kind of trap music. It takes a little practice to make it sound nice though. Find some inspiration over here.
Feels: happy and fresh.

2. Plink

Also found on Chrome Experiments: Plink. It has a familiar musical interface and it makes use of a sequencer to structure your input into a melody that sounds OK. So far so good, but the fun of Plink is that it lets you jam in real time with others who are also logged in on the interface. 

Sounds: very random music for a documentary about tech stuff.
Looks: like a simplistic multi-player arcade video game
Feels: playful and it’s easy to work together to create a nice melody. And even if you don’t work together, it still sounds fine.

3. Tonfall Sequencer

The digital art thingies represented in this top 5 are all open source. Its creators are encouraging everyone to use the technology behind the art and just create whatever you want with it. So does Justin Windle, creator of the Tonfall Sequencer, a musical interface which is based on the nervous system. 

Looks: wandering neurons and receptor cells. Altering their numbers and proximity creates simple tones.
Sounds: electronic minimal ambient music. Very repetitive and soothing.
Feels: beautifully scientific.

4. Maccina1

5013 is a very talented member of the creative coding community. She made Macchina1, an interactive generative music composing tool that’s fascinating for its complexity. We still haven’t figured out how to interact with it properly, but the Machina1 is also doing just fine on its own…

Sounds: very complex minimal classical music. Electronic and oscillating.
Looks: moving and shifting algorithms.
Feels: mathematical.

5. Radar

Radar makes use of a radar interface to generate music. Just put pins in the grid. You can give each radar signal a different key. 

Sounds: loopy ambient tones.
Looks: hypnotizing radar love.
Feels: easy peasy.

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1   A Spacecraft For All

The ISEE-3 spacecraft seems like a play thing for adventurers ever since its first mission in 1978 by Nasa. Up till now, the satellite has been revived three times for new missions. This time it’s the citizen’s taking space research into their own hands with the initiative ISEE-3 Reboot Project. Check out the history of the spacecraft in this new kick-ass interactive documentary, created by Google’s creative coders. Best thing: it makes all the data gathered by the ISEE-3 available for everyone in a beautiful interactive interface. It’s crowdfunded with the help of – how appropriate – Rocket Hub.

2   Infoactive

Making an infographic that’s both informative and easy on the eye can be a drag when you’re not a graphic designer or a programmer. This is where Infoactive comes in: a nifty tool for visualizing all your data into sexy infographics. It’s as beautiful as the data porn on the blog Information is Beautiful and as easy as making a pie chart, say, in Excel. Of course, the thing is fully interactive and shareable.

3. Chronicles of Brixton

Charming and local. Graphic designer Robyn makes psychedelic kaleidoscopic prints from random objects. Right now, she’s gathering pictures from the people from Brixton, UK. She asks them the question: “What’s the one thing you’d save from a fire?” From the answers she collects, she creates huge digital prints that tell the story of the Brixtonians on a public building in town. You can still back her project if you live there. Not with money, but with pictures. 

4. Hollow

Hollow is an incredible comprehensive interactive documentary by Elaine McMillion, that’s also crowdfunded in more than one way. This documentary about the brain drain of small-town America is all about the population that didn’t move to the big cities, but it’s also put together with footage shot by them. Even as a viewer, you can still contribute to the masterpiece, by giving your feedback and telling your own story. 

5. Kūpuna / CLOUDS

Since its successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012, there is an interactive documentary about the Hawaiian town of La’ie, called ‘Kūpuna’ in the making of the same greatness as Hollow. Or is it? Where is it?! The very promising preview gives us no date to look out for yet…

The same goes for the super techie interactive documentary CLOUDS about coding and storytelling. All the previews are oozing with innovative gadgets (RGBD 3D filmmaking!), but it’s hard to find out where to experience this thing of technical brilliance. Turned out we already missed it. It was screened at a handful of prestigious festivals in 2014. We’re still waiting impatiently for the Mac and/or Windows app to release. 

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Right?

The prospect of a Hal 9000 refusing to open the proverbial pod bay doors (“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”) is making some of us –yours truly included– feel rather existential. We know that technology is already taking over parts of our lives. We all have friends who knowingly and willingly allow their consciousness to be permanently plugged into their phones. The blessings of social media may be manifold, but it also seems to hold us hostage in a very un-social state of numb.

The following five interactive stories investigate the fading boundaries between us and machines. Let go of your ego and allow these projects to take over for a while to manipulate your body and mind. Don’t worry about singularity, for now; there are real humans behind every one of these projects.

Seven Digital Deadly Sins

This interactive documentary by the NFB reflects on the digital society and what sins it makes us commit. Likeable celebrities such as British comedian Bill Bailey tell us stories about the numbing effects of the flood of superficial Facebook campaigns tackling social causes (Release the snails!), YouTube binge watching, and Twitter addiction. But it also puts us to the test with some painful questions: ‘Are you a cyber bully? A Facebook friend hoarder? Or perhaps an online stalker?’

Karen

Created by Blast Theory and funded by Kickstarter, Karen is a new app that is capable of taking over your life. She is kind of like the operating system with the sultry voice of Scarlett Johansson in Spike Jonze’s sci-fi RomCom ‘Her’. Karen is your ‘life coach’, who friendly asks you detailed questions about your personal life. By doing so, it appears that she knows much more about you then she should, giving the coach-client relationship a creepy vibe. The app is currently in development. We can’t wait to try out our new best friend.

The Machine to be Another

There’s an explosion in altered body and mind experiences thanks to virtual reality becoming more and more accessible. The last edition of the new media festival IDFA Doclab featured events and showcases of projects by pioneering artists, storytellers and filmmakers exploring the potential of virtual reality. One of those projects was The Machine to be Another created by BeAnotherLab. This is a fascinating experiment that allows you to experience what it’s like to be inside someone else’s skin. Two people wearing cameras and Oculus Rift headsets are instructed to touch their bodies in sync, as their goggles relay the feed of the other camera. Now it gets freaky. What you feel is your hands touching your body. But what you see is the body of ‘the other’. Body swap!

Seeing I: 28 days living only through Virtual Reality

More of a “life swap” than a “body swap,” the intriguing project by Mark Farid, which launched on Kickstarter last November, is like an art performance and a social psychology experiment rolled into one. During 28 days non stop, Farid will be completely cut off from reality. He’ll be wearing an Oculus Rift headset plus earphones. As he’s going about his day in the gallery where the experiment is taking place, he’ll be experiencing other people’s lives through VR. During the experiment, the artist will be guided by psychologists, to prevent him from losing his mind. If that doesn’t freak you out, you can apply to be ‘the other’ in the experiment and donate your experiences. Here’s hoping Farid will go ahead with his fascinating experiment, even though the crowdfunding didn’t work out.

Modular Body

Artist Floris Kaayk, who caught the attention of the international news media with his Human Birdwings project in 2012, takes the notion of the body manipulation through (bio)technology much further. His upcoming online story ‘Modular Body’ will revolve around the fictitious scientist Cornelis Vlasman, who is developing an artificial, bio-engineered organism named Oscar. The interactive mockymentary remixes a huge collection of documentary material about artificially synthesized body parts, sewn together into new fantasy bodies. The project will be presented in 2015. More info (in Dutch) here.

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