Human Adventures
in Creative Technology

Art & Technology

collage of images, flowers, laptop screen, server wires

Long Read

Can A Website Be A Garden?

Container resident Harriet-Horobin Worley reflects on reasons for choosing to tend and grow the internet alongside the soil in their garden.

Long Read

What happened to performance post-pandemic?

In 2020, Container published a long read on the pandemic's effect on live performance. Two years on, we're going back to ask how things stand. What was temporary and what's permanent? Has access to events changed for good? What was learned along the way?

Short Read

Élan Vitale: A Story Of Death

Resident artist Uma Breakdown's Élan Vitale is a short interactive fiction with a gothic sci-fi angle on death, experimental technology, and life at the edge of it all.

Social & Climate Justice

Long Read

a haunting at the cloud factory

Morgan Jennings visits planned demolition sites, tracking ghosts left behind by the UK's energy network and Northern 'regenerations', and hauntings yet to come.

Long Read

The Promise of Salvation from ‘Smart’ Borders

The UK aims to have “the most effective border in the world” by 2025. But how did we get to this situation, where border surveillance is a multi-billion dollar industry? And what does it mean for people seeking asylum, for whom crossing borders is a matter of life and death?

Long Read

Open and Closed Software: A Climate Concern

Janna Frenzel and lee wilkins write about the impact and implications of open licensing for software in the wake of the climate crisis, the use of software in resource extraction, and how developers are actively responding to the ethical concerns raised by this issue.

Long Read

Engineering Futures In Nigeria’s Rice Culture

Chidinma Iwu presents an investigation into the state of rice farming, bio-engineering, and traditional food culture in Nigeria's flood affected landscape, considering the future of the crop under climate and social pressures.

Short Read

Tuning in to Nature

Dawn Attride shares insights and audio from scientists across the world listening in to nature to understand its health status.

Extended Realities

Illustrated article

The Making of a Virtual Influencer

A peek behind the curtain at this million dollar industry. Can virtual influencers make a positive social impact or are they just a dystopian money-making tool from big marketing?

Audio

Podcast: Queering VR

This episode’s guests explore what it means to bring queer perspectives to the predominantly straight world of VR.

Short Read

Deep Nostalgia

To compensate for generations of lost family history, poet and writer Ashanti Anderson turns to deepfake technology to connect with three members of her family.

Data & Automation

A kid is shown in a wheel of selectable avatars in different visual styles, and a conversation between her and a brother, both wearing VR, is had He says

Illustrated article

Window to a Betterverse

A 'preferred futures' narrative and vision for future online experiences. From the project 'MetaversEngine', a collaboration between Awarri and UWE Bristol - funded by MyWorld.

Illustrated article

The Fight for Data Rights

Many of us are alarmed at reports of data abuse but it’s easy to feel that – as ordinary citizens – we have no control. What can we do as a creative tech community to improve data privacy?

Long Read

The Promise of Salvation from ‘Smart’ Borders

The UK aims to have “the most effective border in the world” by 2025. But how did we get to this situation, where border surveillance is a multi-billion dollar industry? And what does it mean for people seeking asylum, for whom crossing borders is a matter of life and death?

Audio

Homecooking, by robots, with love

Many local food cultures in developing countries are feeling the pressures of modernity, but is automation the solution?

Digital Communities

Long Read

Blackness, Glitch Feminism and Evasion

Tope Olufemi draws on personal experiences, Legacy Russell's 'Glitch Feminism' and a conversation with writer Lola Olufemi in locating Blackness, queerness and resistance at key points of online and AFK complication.

Long Read

The Sound of Intimacy

Exploring the simple technology of voice recordings, and their power to connect loved ones across the globe.

Long Read

Virtuality As Becoming

Zach Deocadiz, VR and XR designer, writes a personal reflection on finding self-identity and queer community through customisable web-based social media, and the technical similarities and experience design needs in VR social platforms today.