When creating an interactive thing of art, it’s not always easy to get your next masterpiece funded. Thank the old gods and the new for Kickstarter! More and more interactive artists discover it as a way to crowdfund their work. Submarine Channel presents five of our favorite interactive art projects funded by the crowd. Watch and learn. 

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.