Featuring an all-star lineup of renowned interaction designers and installation artists, the second-annual INST-INT is a Minneapolis gathering focused the art of interactivity for objects, environments and experiences. From the creators of the Eyeo Festival, this September event will bring together presenters and guests from around the world to talk about amazing projects. As an official media partner of INST-INT 2014, WebUrbanist is pleased to provide an introduction to a small sample of its outstanding participants below.

Janet Echelman builds incredible public works that respond to forces of nature, including light, wind and water. Working in open urban spaces, her iconic net sculptures represent “a sophisticated mixture of ancient craft and modern technology [that have] led to collaborations with aeronautical and mechanical engineers, architects, lighting designers, landscape architects, and fabricators.”

Affixed to local architecture, some of her dynamic pieces involve audience participation, with observers choreographing real-time light shows to dance on her suspended pieces. The scale of these creations is hard to fathom – Skies Painted with Unnumbered Sparks in Vancouver, for instance, consists of “a complex matrix of 860,000 hand and machine-made knots and 145 miles of braided fiber weighing nearly 3,500 pounds span 745 feet.”

Daniel Leithinger works with the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, with work on tangible interfaces and interactive shape displays previously featured on WebUrbanist.

Turning gestures into physical responses, these experimental interface prototypes imply rich possibilities for remote interactions of all kinds, both practical and artistic in nature, enabling actions-at-a-distance in ways that were previously impossible or cost-prohibitive.

So-So Limited boasts a diverse portfolio of “interactive installations, applications, and live performances. These projects incorporate elements of dynamic typography, video manipulation, computer vision, sensor technologies and sound design.”

At INST-INT this year, the So-So team are inviting participants to join them “for an off-screen behind-the-scenes look at the asks, solves, and learnings of the interactive installation business. We’ll lift the hood on some of our recent projects [and] talk about lo-res data viz, interfacing with architecture and architects, the realities of making things for people that aren’t you, and the pains and pleasures of working with non-traditional display technologies.”

To learn more or buy tickets, visit INST-INT.com – beyond the array of talks and workshops, there will also be show-and-tell sessions as well as launch and closing parties. Artists and creatives attending include: Dan Goods, Daniel Leithinger, Janet Echelman, Jen Lewin, Joel Gethen Lewis, Joshua Noble, Kate Hollenbach, Klaus Obermaier, Kyle McDonald, Micah Elizabeth Scott, Minimaforms, So-So Limited and Sputniko!. Meanwhile, to get a sense of last year’s event, visit this Vimeo channel.

From the organizers of INST-INT: “This September in Minneapolis, INST-INT presents 3 days of lectures and workshops with renowned creators of interactive art and media rich experiences. Centered at the Walker Art Center, the international roster of speakers and guests will explore the intersection of art, technology and interaction. If you’re interested in installation art, interactive art, or responsive environments don’t miss INST-INT and the opportunity to learn from and connect with some of the most fascinating people in the field today.”

The most remote and climactically unforgiving place in the world, Antarctica has served as a setting for only the hardiest and most practical of architecture since its initial exploration in the 19th century. An exhibition at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale examines how the man-made structures of the continent have evolved over the decades since, and how aesthetics could come into play in the future, adding some form to all that function.

‘Anarctopia’ is a pavilion featuring a model of the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI Research Station by Hugh Broughton Architects as well as work by 15 international architects and artists examining the provisional nature of architecture in Antarctica and new design proposals that go beyond the scientific, industrial and military missions that have directed the continent’s utilitarian architecture in the past.

Directed by artist Alexander Ponomarev and architect Alexey Kozyr, the pavilion offers visions of snowflake-shaped structures covered in solar panels nestled into a snowy landscape dotted with wind turbines and penguins. The organizers hope that the project will have an impact on the design of real stations in the future. “Among enthusiasts and unbolt schemes dwells the promise of a new Antarctic man.”

And while most of us will never get to explore the actual Halley VI Research Station in Antarctica, visitors to the Biennale can get up-close and personal views of models of the world’s fist mobile research center, which opened in 2013. The pods that make up the station are set on adjustable ski-like feet so they can be relocated inland to avoid being stranded on an iceberg, and raised above high snowfall accumulations.