Go play!
These are the sites used as examples to go and experience and have a think. Most are worth a visit in themselves, they will give you ideas about you might make next.
Timeline-ify
Nice tool that, using Spotify, arranges an artist's output by date, NOT RERELEASE ISSUE... at last!
People Like Us
There are also more inventive forms of audible storytelling like sound collage. Here’s a piece by Vicki Bennett (aka ‘People Like Us’) which takes bits of radio (including The Archers) and tells new stories with them.
Old Operating Theatre
Probably not for the sqeamish (I am, so got to page two) but it's an interactive narrative about a victorian operating theatre. Warning: This story is inspired by a real historical case and contains graphic descriptions of injury and surgery.
Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music
Large visualisation. Zoom in and listen to each genre, from Musique Concrete to Glitch Hop
Hierarchical Representation of UK Statistical Geographies
How difficult is it to know data about the U.K? Check this out.
Sewage Map of the UK
My Little Crony
Wonderful visualisation of connections, companies and corruption with UK politcians.
A Year In Lyrics
An interesting quantified self project in which Eric visualise the lyrics of all the songs he's listened to in numerous interesting ways
Information Is Beatiful
A totally fantastic collection of visualisations and infographics to explore and imagine making yourself.
Laurie Frick's Quantified Art
Laurie uses data about herself to create fantastic artworks, or visualisations, or sculptures. Amazing.
5 Artists Who Are Masters of Glitch Music
One of the strange aspects of technology, whether analogue or digital, is its tendency to glitch. The ghost in the machines, as it were. With music software in particular, glitch and error have become desirable ingredients in sound design and musical composition.
The Zine Library
A lovely collaboration of artists, students, scientists from the Small Science Collective, producing small zines and web comics on topics from ants to cephalopods to galaxies.
How to Free Your Creative Spirit, According to Sister Corita Kent
Article about being creative, and the concept of plork.
Startup Cemetry
All those great ideas that didn't work. Look how many millions were spent trying to get each idea to work. Just because they failed, it doesn't mean your take on it will fail. A good game to play is to pick two failed startup ideas at random, then seeing if mashing them together gives you a killer idea.
Bandersnatch
Bandersnatch was an interactive movie by Charlie Brooker available on Netflix. From Wikipedia: In Bandersnatch, viewers make decisions for the main character, the young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), who is adapting a fantasy choose-your-own-adventure novel into a video game in 1984.
Sneaky Clock
Interesting. The machines have it in for us. A clock that displays the wrong time if it suspects you of looking at it.
Comics I Loved in 2023
Fabulous list of this person's fave comics/graphic novels. I need to get some of these.
On Timeslines
How many ways are there to draw time? Think about what time aspects your data has, and go and see if you could could be displaying it better.
Neuro Symbolic Lab
To be honest, I don't have a clue what this is. It's a brain and er. Oh I get it, it's a very fancy marketing web site that shows off some of the skills of A.I, and could be used as an idea generator.
Infinite Scroll Wikipedia
Wikipedia, but presented as infinite scrolling like Twitter. Honestly, it makes wikipedia more addictive.
R Mock Ward Round Scenario - End of Life Patient
360 VR video used in the medical profession to train staff.
Models of Interactive Narratives
Nice explanation of how interactive narrative games/experiences can be structured.
Polytopias
An article introducing the ideas of polytopias (and how to get there) and world-building... linked with sci-fi and interactive narratives too.
Bop Spotter
Listen To Transformer
Listen as A.I generates music that "evolves" over time, or rather, has the musical notion of change and development within a song. Very clever.
Sound of AURORA BOREALIS 2 | SOUND OF SPACE
Auroral radio emissions are associated with the Northern Lights or Aurora. The most intense of these emissions is a phenomenon called Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR). It is produced in the auroral zones at an altitude between 3000 and 20 000 kilometres.
Nothing, Forever
A.I generated sit-com endlessly spewing out hilarious scenes in realtime on Twitch.
What is CryptoArt?
Really interesting article explaining some of the ideas and concepts behind CryptoArt.
Collection of MacPaint images
Nice collection of black and white images made with MacPaint and Hypercard. (See also, Hypercard at archive.org).
Wonders of StreetView
The strange stuff found on Google Street View, including this brutalist treehouse.
Interview with Meghna Jayanth
During her decade in the gaming industry, Jayanth, a British-Indian immigrant, has become known for highlighting the effects of British colonialism as much as for her award-winning work on games such as inkle’s 80 Days and Guerilla Games’ Horizon: Zero Dawn.
IBM 1401, A User’s Manual
nspired by a recording of an IBM mainframe computer which Jóhann’s father, Jóhann Gunnarsson, made on a reel-to-reel tape machine more than 30 years ago, the piece was originally written to be performed by a string quartet as the accompaniment to a dance piece by the choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir.
The Ground Itself
A really interesting "game", or to my eye, more a collaborative methodology to create a story or world. It describes itself as "The Ground Itself is a one-session storytelling game for 2-5 players, played with household materials (a coin, a six-sided die, and a deck of cards)."
Mushroom Colour Atlas
Almost a paint colour chart of fungi. "The Mushroom Color Atlas is a living study of color derived from mushrooms"
Herzog Chats with Zizek
As stand up goes... A.I generates a conversation between two intellectual heavyweights.
Ela-TV
Brilliant, video heavy interactive narrative created with Twine. The story of ELA takes place in a fictive scenario in near-future. In this future the so-called ALGOs are responsible for the administration of cities.
Alice In Wonderland Visualised
How many different ways has Alice In Wonderland been visualised - you've always wondered. The answer is 58. Amazing
Palimpsest
In textual studies, a palimpsest is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document.
The History of Memes
Everything you need to know about the history and evolution of memes. We've come a long way over the years. From the I can haz cheeseburger cat to the this is fine dog to a vile and racist frog.
Python scripting in Inkscape
If you know a little Python you could start making art with PyProcessing or script Inkscape.
Sound Effect Story
Simple but wonderful example of telling a story using only sound effects from Freesound.org
Blackout Poetry on Pinterest
Pinterest is a fun place to find inspiration and links to interesting sites.
Bartosz Ciechanowski Explains Sound Waves
Incredible resource explaining how sound works, with lots of interactive widgets.
River - Image Connection Engine
I'm not entirely sure what this is, but it drifts effortlessly from one visual thing to another.
New Educational Models
A collection of orgs that are pedagogically interesting and at time brilliant. Well worth exploring.
Entangled Origins
Chung is an internationally renowned artist and researcher exploring the relationship between human and machine. She paints "with" a robot.
Creative Problem Creating: Jon Satrom
Jon is an artist who undermines interfaces, problematizes presets, and playfully bends data. He spends his days fixing things and making things work. He spends his evenings breaking things and searching for the unique blips inherent to the systems he explores and exploits.
Every Single Frame
Explore movies frame by frame in random order from critically acclaimed films to gain a new perspective on the art of cinematography.
Chapbooks at the British Library
Chapbooks were small, affordable forms of literature for children and adults that were sold on the streets, and covered a range of subjects from fairy tales and ghost stories to news of politics, crime or disaster.
Undeniable Streetview
A Google maps-like interface to the destruction that has taken place in Ukraine.
School of Media Arts Projects
Honestly, some fabulously conceived projects here. Every one an inspiration.
Apps Made With Thunkable
The 2019 list of apps made with Thunkable you can go and download from your App Store.
The Warden Game
Who has power in prison and how do they exercise it? The Warden Game provides an unexpected way of thinking about these questions. Rather than a total institution of some predictability, the prison turns out to be susceptible to different forms of activity by incarcerated people, their families and loved ones, journalists, guards, judges, state legislators, and political appointees.
“Plotto”: Generating Truly Offensive Stories Since 1928
Incredible article covering storytelling, gender and visualisatuon
Coldwar Steve
Cold War Steve aka Christopher Spencer is an artist from Birmingham, England who specialises in surreal, satirical and hilarious collages originally made on his phone and iPad.
Three.js
Three.js is code to help create web 3D. Explore the creations people have made with Three.js.
Sheffield Tape Archive
Archive of live music from Sheffield in mainly from the 1980s, so Crass, Fall, Eek-a-mouse and many others.
Making numbers louder
Excellent article that links to a number of projects working in the area of sonification, turning data into sounds.
Chapbooks at the University of York
Over 40 chapbooks with images of each page and covers. Very high-quality images are downloadable too.
BRIAN ENO - HIS MUSIC AND THE VERTICAL COLOR OF SOUND
Brilliant article by Eric Tamm which looks at Brian Eno, who was part of Roxy Music, worked with David Bowie and went on to invent functional music, and the whole ambient genre. Has lots of tips regarding creativity.
A.I Chapbooks
The 18 chapbooks presented below were developed in Spring 2023 by first-year undergraduates from the CMU School of Art
Calculating Empires
A quite amazing diagram, that is "A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500"
Generate Husband
Er, not quite sure what this is, but I discovered the kind of husband I don't want pretty quickly.
REVEIL 24+1
Lovely project where on one day people all around the world will stream the sound of the dawn chorus where they are.
Myst (first person shooter)
You might not remember Myst, the ethereal game (created in HyperCard). This isn't that.
OpenProcessing
The OpenProcessing site is a gallery of the amazing projects that have been made with Processing and p5js. (Slightly confusingly, p5js is the modern Javascript version of Processing. Processing itself is java-based) Not only is this site inspirational, you can also view the source code, and remix any project you like to develop your own version.
Google Museum Views -
Explore lots of 360 views of heritage sites, from the Taj Mahal to Stonehenge, all around the world.
17 Creative Brainstorming Methods
...That (Might) Produce Brilliance! A nice list of creativity techniques, go try them!
Lauren presents p5js
Lauren both introduces the making of p5js and demonstrates how totally cool p5js is, highlighting some of it best features.
Dear Data
...whose creative practice ranges from book design, information design, data visualisation, and commissioned artworks using data.
How To Draw With Code
For Casey Reas, software is the most natural medium to work with. He uses code to express his thoughts—starting with a sketch, composing it in code, and witnessing the imagery that it ultimately creates. We visit his studio to see how he uses color to convey emotion and how his programming language Processing is closing the gap between software and object.
Wikipedia Random
Click on the Special:Random link to get real items to use in your writing. I got "Swarfega" and a Serbian footballer.
Lumen Prize Finalists 2024
Some really interesing digital art projects, but you have to ignore the embarrassingly awful art speak. Sheesh. Still, worth a look.
How Machine Learning Impacts Music Production
Skip to half way through this video to see some really interesting uses of AI or Machine Learning (ML) in music creation.
Drive and Listen
Drive around cities from all over the world, with the car radio on. Strangely enjoyable.
Hypercard Stacks at archive.org
HyperCard spawned so much creativity it's incredible. Just browse this collection to see some of the stacks created. Archive.org has Mac emulators so you can now run these stacks as if it was 1987 on a MacPlus.
Data Visualisation Guide
Fabulous resources explaining a huge range of different visualisation types. Check out this excellent page on TIDY DATA..
Trouble In Paradise - Nuclear Dissent
Interactive story about the French nuclear tests in Polynesia.
Dadabots - Generated Music
AI/ML continuously generates music in a number of different genres. This death metal AI has been continuously streaming noise since Sept 2019! Are they any good? What do you think?
Editions At Play
An unusual concept, stories to be read on your phone. The stories incorporate images from your camera and where you actually are. I found that aspect quite freaky tbh.
Discovering Speed Data From Photos
Interesting article on how photos are used to generate speed data from the Tokyo Olympics.
Brian Foo
Brian Foo's site has lots of interesting art/comp sci crossover projects, working with archival material and producing both visual and audio works. Go explore.
Scratch Gallery
Scratch is an amazing block-coding tool, a place where kids learn all they need to know about coding concepts. It's amazing what you can do with Scratch, go explore and have fun.
The Temple Of No
Fun and fantastic example of what can be done with the form of interactive narrative in Twine.
The Life And Times of Yahoo Pipes
Yahoo pipes, a visual data plumbing tool was one of the really cool tools/ideas of the dotcom era. You can see a little of it in Orange3 or Enso (check them out too).
Chrome Experiments
Hundreds of cool web technology examples that require the Chrome browser. Go and be amazed at what can be made.
Best Thunkable Apps 2019
Nice list of the sorts of apps you can make with the block-coding (like Scratch) tool, Thunkable.
Yorb Spring Show
Dozens and dozens of fantastic student projects. A 3D gallery well worth a visit, some wonderful ideas in here.
AudioCommons
Collection of really interesting audio projects that make use of Freesound.org's archive of sound files.
That Creative Code Page
A lovely collection of the common algorithms used for lots of creative coding pieces.
Grotesque Tables
Based on Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, Grotesque Tables is a deck of creative prompt cards that are all anagrams of the Oblique Strategy cards.
Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting In A Room
From Wikipedia: I am sitting in a room is a sound art piece composed in 1969 and one of composer Alvin Lucier's best-known works. The piece features Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the tape recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies (e.g. different between a large hall and a small room), the effect is that certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually, the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself. More
David Attenborough Mindful Mix
What is this? An ambient track with David's voice occassionally drifting in and out. Very strange. I quite like it.
Data Sonification Archive
This curated collection is part of a broader research endeavour in which data, sonification and design converge to explore the potential of sound in complementing other modes of representation and broadening the publics of data.
5 Awesome Chapbook Publishers
Chapbooks are small, quirky, limited print run publications. Here are five publishers where you can explore chapbooks further.
VHS Glitch Art Example
In the "olden days" people would crush videotapes and then see what strange effects they got. People did effectively the same thing with digital files, deliberately wrecking them.
MIT App Invention of the Month
A gallery of great apps and games made with MIT App Inventor, and the best thing is, you can look at the code to see how they did it, or remix an app to make your own version.
Bring Me My Fire Truck
Interactive online animation of William Blake’s Jerusalem running through the 24 official languages of the European Union, Scots Gaelic and Welsh via Google Translate.
Salvador Dali Deep Fake
The museum employed deepfake technology by analyzing archival footage of Dalí and digitally superimposing his face over an actor with similar body proportions. The museum also hired a voice actor to mimic Dalí’s distinctive Spanish accent. The result is an interactive experience for visitors, where no two guests will ever have the same experience.
Abandon Normal Strategies
Based on Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, this art project evolves it based on living through current times
Open AI Jukebox
Here, artificial intelligence generates music in various different genres. Go listen, sometimes terrible, sometimes amazing. Also, lots more here.
Creativity Prompts and Ideas
A huge collection of creativity-related techniques. Go learn, and try some.
The Cool Club
A massive collection of "cool sites" displayed in a cool way. The history of the internet kinda (so far).
Machine Learning For Kids
Lots of worksheets to do really amazing projects with machine learning and Scratch!
The Daily Create
Short digital creative prompts, with people sharing their creations via hashtags. Something new to do almost every day. Go there and give one a go.
Hey, what aaabout...
A curated list of 80+ activities you can do in a short time to expand your interests
How to use AI to generate almost anything
Interesting collection of projects from MIT generating music, fashion and even pizzas
The Processed World
Are you the processor or being processed? "Processed World magazine was founded in 1981 by a small group of dissidents, mostly in their twenties, who were then working in San Francisco's financial district."
Make It Pop Cards
Like Oblique Strategies, these cards are a great "game" for making you come up with something creative.
Country Comparisons
Select a country to view its performance relative to the Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries and see how it compares with other countries. Dark green circles show the social foundation and ecological ceiling. Blue wedges show social performance relative to a threshold associated with meeting basic needs.
Sci-fi Covers Made With A.I
Lewis Hackett makes sci-fi covers with A.I and even links to the Colab notebooks so you can make your own.
Should this be a map or 500 maps?
Quite amazing story, sort of a Doomsday Book prototype where it all went wrong. Or right.
Jennifer Mills News
Who'd have thought a whole 20 years of personal news (a blog) but in an original way.
25 Amazing Examples Of Glitch Typography
Here are 25 amazing examples of glitch typography that are based on the idea that making things go wrong can be fascinating in its own way.
Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data
This video debunks the whole notion of sonification.
List of Cyptoart Galleries
https://knownorigin.io/drops https://app.rarible.com/ https://async.art/ https://www.cryptokitties.co/ https://opensea.io/assets https://makersplace.com/ And even more CryptoArt sites here, and this Digital Art Gallery, Cryptovoxels is relevant.
Citizens on the Mountaintop
A historical satire of the corporate personhood movement in America, written in Twine.
Fantastic List of Generative Tools
From creating maps, to languagues, to dungeons or artwork, this list has lots of generative tools to help you. There are end-user tools, code frameworks, free tools, paid tools and lots I'd never heard of.
Fake Victoriana
Posted as genuine victorian early photographs, too many details smacked of A.I ... like horses with no legs