Nortd Labs a.k.a. NOR_/D is an international research and development collaborative dedicated to the merging of

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

art, architecture, software and

system design The basic study of system design is the understanding of component parts and their subsequent interaction with one another. Systems design has appeared in a variety of fields, including sustainability, computer/software architecture, and sociolog ...

. NORTD Labs is also a studio of creative thought that engages science, art and design. Historically, NORTD Labs has developed

open-source hardware Open-source hardware (OSH, OSHW) consists of physical artifact (software development), artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by th ...

such as CUBIT in 2007, which has been built and used by thousands of people, labs, hacker-spaces and universities worldwide. NORTD Labs work is released under various open licenses. According to co-founder Addie Wagenknecht, NORTD Labs "wants to change how people create, build and consume objects. Living in a software/internet powered world we forget about how physical products are created. We want to allow makers to feel empowered and to lose the black box feel of closed systems." NORTD labs commitment is to support open values and the public domain through the use of open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship and the admonishment of copyright and intellectual property patents in exchange for support of open licenses. Although NORTD Labs work is typically highly technical in nature, they define themselves as artists, not engineers.

History

NORTD Labs was founded in 2006 by Addie Wagenknecht and

Stefan Hechenberger Stefan Hechenberger is an Austrian artist and programmer. His works include interactive software, computer vision projects and open-source hardware. Hechenberger has worked with Zach Lieberman in creating the OpenCV library for openFrameworks, ...

during graduate school at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

and established officially during a research fellowship at the New York-based

Eyebeam Art and Technology Center Eyebeam is a not-for-profit art and technology center in New York City, founded by John Seward Johnson III with co-founders David S. Johnson and Roderic R. Richardson. Originally conceived as a digital effects and coding atelier and center for ...

in 2007-2008. Most of NORTD Labs researchers and collaborators are based in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

as well as

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. Their work is documented and published online at th
NORTD Labs website
NORTD Labs has recently held fellowships at Carnegie Mellon University STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and CultureLab UK.

Founders

Addie Wagenknecht: Co-Founder (United States)

: Co-Founder (Austria)

Select collaborators

Scott Snibbe Scott Snibbe (born 1969 in New York City) is an interactive media artist, author, entrepreneur, and meditation instructor who hosts the Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment meditation podcast. His first book, ''How to Train a Happy Mind'', was releas ...

, Laban Motion Player

Free Art and Technology Lab The Free Art and Technology Lab a.k.a. F.A.T. Lab was a collective of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and musicians, dedicated to the merging of popular culture with open source technology. F.A.T. Lab was known for producing artwork crit ...

, BrickiPhone

OpenFrameworks openFrameworks is an open-source toolkit designed for creative coding founded by Zachary Lieberman, Theo Watson and Arturo Castro. OpenFrameworks is written in C++ and built on top of OpenGL. It runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, ...

, OpenCV library
Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture dFAB, Optimization of Parenting

Notable projects

Lasersaur Addie Wagenknecht (born April 15, 1981) is an American artist and researcher living in New York City and Liechtenstein. Her work deals primarily with pop culture, feminist theory, new media and open source software and hardware. She frequently ...

, 2011
Publicity
2010
Black Hawk Paint
2009
TouchKit
2008
ShadowProject
2008 *

CUBIT The cubit is an ancient unit of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. It was primarily associated with the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Israelites. The term ''cubit'' is found in the Bible regarding Noah ...

, 2006

References

{{reflist

External links

NORTD labs

Lasersaur

Chittak
Computer art Non-profit organizations based in New York (state) International artist groups and collectives