field trip

this morning, i talked with Jhave Johnston, poet, filmmaker, and Assistant Professor at the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. He is the author the recent release,  Aesthetic Animism (MIT Press).

Jahve has generously offered to meet with us at Mo Tat fishing village on Lamma Island just south of Hong Kong primarily for a training expedition with the sub. he has also offered to give us a little tour. i can't express enough how lucky i feel and how generous the CUHK CMC community is being.

there is a pier we can set up on. we will be headed out on Saturday morning. we will ride a ferry out to his place, practice the procedures of running the ROV snapping pictures, and water sample analysis. looks like it is going to be a rainy one, but at least it is warm.

Dim Sum Labs

yesterday evening some of our team for ISEA2016 ventured out to Dim Sum Labs: Hong Kong's First Hackerspace / Makerspace. DSL hosts a couple open nights a week and Tuesday's are the HackJam night. the DSL members were very inviting and i felt very at home; the makerspace aesthetic of bits and bobs and stacked equipment. they were my type of peeps. we visited for about 45 minutes discussing 3D printing, scanning, membership organization, equipment availability, and where to get the best deal on electronics. they told us to come back by anytime while we were in town. i will be back.

Heroes in our midst

Yesterday, I was reeling abut the damage done to the submarine ROV I brought to HK.

Thankfully my hero, amazing artist and Mensch: Jane Prophet has graciously offered to host us visit the labs at City University of Hong Kong to laser cut the replacement part to repair the submarine. I was so stressed all yesterday.  Jane called me in the late afternoon and connected me with her Senior Assistant Ivan.  I am truly fortunate to have such generous colleagues who can make opportunities like this happen.

Ivan is the man; we worked out issues with the file and he confirmed with me. He also gave me a listing for an acrylics place in HK, so if I need to totally rebuild this tube we may have options.

We will be heading to CUHK at 11AM tomorrow. Wish us luck!!

processing study group

i have decided to study up on Processing again in anticipation for the Fall semesters classes. i will be doing a study group on Thursday nights at the Emerald Coast Community of Makers. tonight, i was able to get an install on the machine at the Makerspace running Ubuntu 12. we will start this week with a screening of Hello World! Processing, a 41 minute documentary about the platform. and then i will demonstrate some simple hello world exercises.

MESS Hall

i have been asked to participate on the Board for a new startup with the mission to found a Science and Engineering Museum to Pensacola. the initiative is headed up the researchers Dr. Megan Pratt and Dr. Jerry Pratt from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) and they reached out to our nascent makers club ECCM to see if we want to do something with this summer's programming atMESS Hall. MESS Hall has an innovative plan to mix up the usually button pushing exhibits with real hands on project based learning modules. called a MESS kit, they are mostly designed to be low cost kits which includes a booklet with a challenge and then a step-by-step guide if you get stuck. Jerry cam to our Makers Group this past Saturday and the members of the ECCM are busily plotting a program for one session this summer.

no less than 2!

two of my students from the PhysiComp class were featured on Instructables this past week! it was the first time i required the students to participate on the community forum and it paid off! they recieved free pro memberships and some other prizes. I am feeling like the proud Patron.

Wireless nunchuk controlled animatronic doll
Beheaded Doll Night Light

Craig Colorusso is BOSS

I ahve had the awesome honor to hang with Craig and his project Sun Boxes currently installed at the Uni this week. Today I simulcast the event for an hour you can watch the recording and hear the discussions I was having:



Video streaming by Ustream.

21st Century Macrame: Open Source and the Maker Movement

i thought i would share the thesis statement for my lecture since i mentioned it in my first post on Kickstarter lessons. i will writing about the accompanying laboratory in this year's faculty exhibition pretty soon.

21st Century Macrame: Open Source and the Maker Movement
The re-emergence of the do-it-yourself culture as a social movement, cultural form, and genre.

In the latter half of the 1960's and throughout the 1970's, a group of independent artisans and everyday people shared a moment of intense creativity that sought to return to the 'handmade'. This group was motivated commercial culture; life had been subsumed by market, social, and industrial forms that arose post WWII. Heavily oriented around the then nascent Ecological Movement, this group sought to live closer to the earth, they encouraged the idea of sweat equity, and they desired to directly engage hands-on living. This generation spawned sewing circles, social justice movements, organic food co-ops, collectives, and communes around the globe following the Leary-ian mantra "Tune In, Turn On, and Drop Out". The Foxfire series, the myriad inexpensive 'how-to' publications form the era, and magazines like Mother Earth News are some of the artifacts that evidence the a desire for life without corporate mediation.

Today a new generational movement is flowering with many of the same goals of the 1960's and 1970's Love Generation. They are known colloquially as The Maker Movement; this group is motivated by many many of the same wishes of the earlier generation. They are decidedly anti-specialization and hands on, but they approach it with a very different set of politics—shaped by an increasingly interconnected world. Oddly enough this generation has weaved a relationship with factorization and corporations to achieve similar goals. They are at ease with any means by which they may create. The contemporary DIY peerage can comfortably outsource a new design to be manufactured via the miracles of print on demand technologies, create Frankenstein mashups of existent products, reapply older to ancient technologies as an option, or even ingeniously hack a commonly available materials to cobble into new, cheap, and functional fixes. Many of this generation's reverse engineers and hacks do this work as contemporary artists.

a lesson learned from kickstarter

i learned a boat load from our kickstarter experience. i am going to make posts over the next few days to get them down.

the model is good, but it is definitely geared toward product/business development. community development projects are a lot more ephemeral. i know that i am splitting hairs here; there are plenty of artists using kickstarter, but i see a big difference in those who are developing something like an album which is meant to be reproduced again and again by a manufacturing process and/or delivered by a retail method. i received a lot of messages that were serious and importantly asked "so what?". i do think this is a valid criticism to ask: "past the parlour tricks aspect of the device, what is it for?" business focused folks had a really hard time figuring out why we would ask for investment. i would like to share an email i got Monday. i have obscured the name for privacy:

Hello Thomas!

One of my friends shared your project with me. I watched your video about the glove and turning anything into a speaker. My question to you is "So what?". In other words: "What is the benefit of turning anything into a speaker?" "Why could this project be significant?" "How could it be used in the marketplace?"

I am not asking to be insulting but I am asking to help you help us non-techie people see the benefit and why it would be prudent to invest in your idea. If you could shed some light on that, I will be glad to share this information with all of my contacts.

Have a great day!
r.e.

in my reply i tried to decscribe why open source it vital for our world and told the person about another email i had recieved a few days earlier:

Hi R***,

These are all good questions and let me see if I can unfold it a bit and describe our motivations.

First a bit of background, James and I are developing this as an open source project, which is a concept that revolves around community development, strengthening an individual through 'know-how', and freely sharing information. It is a very academic pursuit which fits right in to my career as you can see. You may want to read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source or you might want to see it in action look here www.instructables.com/

Now to our madness, 'contact transducers' (the tech bits we are using), are indeed used in commercial applications all the time. They get used in fixtures like lamps or other objects at a shopping malls to turn those objects into a speaker to play background music or advertisements. Our projects seeks to use the tech for other audiences. One scenario could be for a group of actors who could show up and do a live impromtu performance at some public space activating sound effects, music, etc. This could allow performers to really open up their interaction with the performance space.

One other application comes from a local person who contacted me. She is a care taker here in Pensacola that uses the same technology to treat children with Autism. It sounds as if they have planted transducers into furniture that the children use to calm themselves. She has the intuition that the touch combined with auditory stimuli could expand her treatment options with the technique.

And that is the great thing about open source. It encourages innovation. It is quite likely that there are dozens of applications using the gloves that James and I haven't thought about. We are academics and artists, so we have a different take on the project. It is not our intention to be the inventors of ProductX. The Kickstarter campaign is really to help support us in building community/share the thought with the world. So that is the basis for raising money with Kickstarter.

BTW I will be leading workshops on building this, and talking about open source as a movement in November at UWF. I want to build community here also!

Don't hesitate to write back if you have other questions.

cheers!
t-

when it rains it pours!

YAY (mini)Maker Faire is coming to Atlanta! ...while i am in Istanbul. Wow. That was one of the fastest let downs in history.

¡you! yes, you. you need to go. unless you are accompanying me to Turkey this is a special thing, i was at Maker Faire 1 and 2. do not miss this opportunity.

http://www.makerfaireatl.com/Atlanta_Mini_Maker_Faire/Home.html

seeking performers & activists in Istanbul

in a post from last week, i mentioned the Touchstone workshop project from Mr. Bricolage which was picked up by the curators of ISEA 2011.

the focus of the project is to build a platform/instruments and working with communities rather than making an artifact or specific performance. Stone and i want to release the idea to the world as a creativity tool at this phase.

we are seeking to partner with a Turkish or international performance or activist group who we could guide in building the low cost hacktivist sound generators. Mr. Bricolage is working on securing the funding for hardware and logistics of getting ourselves and materials to the conference and soon we will be announcing fund raising campaigns.

we specifically seek groups interested in using our design of wearable device for mobile and tactical sonification of the performance space. ideally, we would like to work with a local Turkish performers. if you know of some group who might be interested in an extremely low cost or no-cost workshop to build new sound tools for their work, please contact us at:

info [at] mr-bricolage [dot] us

this could be very interesting

last night i started my re-striped phys. comp. class. this year we are not going to take it slowly, we move into micro-controllers right away. i borrowed heavily from the syllabi of a good friend Steve Durie from CADRE to make up the schedule and syllabus, in addition there is a cross class collaboration planned to have students of Arch. Ceramics and Digital develop final projects together.

i applied some lessons i learned last semester:

• don't go too slow, my last students handled the technical practice fine


• you need your own tools, ya wouldn't expect to borrow a 00 watercolor brush in the other studios


• have fun, cause mayhem

i gave IMNSHO was a stirring speech about the wealth of resources, the generous community around Arduino, and how cool it is to fail bombastically and gloriously. and i showed the trailer for the Arduino Documentary. i guess i will see what the enrollment is on Wed. if we do maintain most of the 20 students it will be one hell of a semester.

the syllabi are coming together

and dates are aligning, just got off the phone with my collaborator Adam Shriverdecker, the workshop dates that i projected are good and we are green lighted. this is an unholy union betwixt Digital Media and Architectural Creamics, muhahahahahaa. i am really looking forward to this experiment. we have scheduled peer workshops where the students of each class will teach their focus to the students of the others to create a mini project. after the hybrid student teams will design and build a cross disciplinary project for the Final. i wish i was taking this class :D

reaching out

i notice that i am engaged in quite a few moments reaching out this past month. i am very interested in developing my contacts in the SE region. this morning i dropped a note to the director of the AUX Festival. AUX is an Athens GA music, art, and technology festival that occurs in the spring. last year, i came across the listing for AUX 2 weeks before the event and i just could not organize a trip in time.

earlier this summer, i discovered an organization in Atlanta name Flux Projects who are supporting really interesting artist projects, on small to medium budgets. i am very keen to watch what they are bringing to bear as well as applying for a grant. i was very impressed with their director, Anne Dennington. during our chat she was advocating for artists to be paid a living wage for making art, w00t!

i have made contacts and started conversations additionally with hackerspace organizations in Dallas and Brooklyn (the outer limits of the SE ;) and as i listed a few weeks ago, i am proposing local art and technology workshops to generate community locally.

& finally i am trying to cook up a proposal for the Receiver festival in Charleston SC; the only bummer is that it is scheduled just before our Spring Break this year and i am trying wrap my mind around what kind of project i could unpack and set up in a few hours to a day maximum.

stupid fun club and current tv

i was thinking about old friends the other day and i remembered a fun event James Stone and i helped coordinate last year with Mike Winter, a principal with the Stupid Fun Club(SFC), a Berkeley entertainment-gaming-think tank. Mike had made an interrogation machine known as the docuBot which would ask you questions culled from interrogative methodologies.

DocuBot was unveiled during the regular Tuesday night openings at the SJSU School of Art and Design. it was a great time. we had a room which we had draped the room with all black fabric, the bot had an impossibly bright light which shown at the interrogated subject from what you would call the 'face' of the machine.participants could only enter one at time for the DocuBot ran the 2min sessions.

Ali and i dressed as agents of (what i dubbed) the 'Dept. of Homeland Robotics'—black suits and shades and he had a SRL to take pictures of the crowd! we DHR agents also handed out invitations to be interrogated (i need to find out if Ali has picture of us in our disguises). it was a stunning success and we had a line all night.

fast forward to the recent past(last week sometime)
i was checking in on the SFC website. they now have a manifesto (which i need to write about soon) and they have an email to sign up to beta test SFC projects. of course, i signed up. a few days later, i was invited to join the beta event code named "the Creation Project", a crowd sourced narrative that is being made into a high value television production for the Current TV network. they are going to start shooting the pilot this week, so i am a bit of a late comer, but i am really intrigued by the concept. they have designed a small social network to develop the entire program. the characters, setting, plot lines, costumes, artwork has been a crowd sourced project where they directly respond to the input, creativity, and feedback of the membership. i am finding the niches where i can contribute and there are some really interesting questions being posed such as: how the voting effects the actual production and whether good writing will be subsumed by the 'noise' of the crowd.

venue

i attended the opening of Munch-Key Business at Artel Friday night. and i give the curator, artists, and gallery kudos; it is a very good show. I think this maybe the 5th or 6th show in the new space at the old county courthouse. beside having the stately ghost of history embedded into the marble, it is just a beautiful open space. each one of the events and/or openings has drawn several hundred attendees. and in comfortable fashion. i know it has been said many times before, but this is a wonderful step up for the organization.

it allows all manner of new possibilities, such as the workshop I am proposing. next Friday, one of the active Artel members is organizing a performance. i traded cards and briefly discussed the possibility of this becoming a part of an ongoing venue for noise art as one of the performance methodologies.

i have wanted to bring the SHARE organization to this area, there are at least 2 students working in experimental sounds at UWF. one of them is a performer and maybe we can start a P'cola SHARE. so i am assuming there are some others close by. i will attend the performance art event next Friday will hopefully get this ball rolling too.

Ars Virtua Closes: Gallery Burns to the Ground Amongst a Hail of Gunfire

Shocking video and stills from last night; apparently virtual terrorists burnt down Ars Virtual New Media Center during the closing ceremonies.



The following images may be disturbing to some viewers. Parental discretion is advised. The following are raw images from the events late last night.

Closing Performance at Ars Virtua Gallery from kid Neutrino on Vimeo.

Second Life Collab?? & Remap Berlin Closing Day

i had a promising meeting with two faculty from the CS department yesterday. some decisions were being fleshed out about the use of the UWF campus in SL. while they want to also explore other options like Open Sim and Croquet we had an exciting moment where it was suggested that we work together on a cross-departmental project in SL. in the meantime i am going to try to connect these folks with the likes of the Ody Project folks, some of my colleagues using Open Sim, and drop some links (like the totally awesome Aesthetic Computing Classes at UF) to them. and it looks like i will be relocating the New Traditionalists Gallery to the UWF campus. this could be really good.


today i attended the closing reception for Remap Berlin at Odyssey. marco Manray has a very interesting intersection between Google Map's Panoramio and a MUVE called Twinity which simulates Berlin, Deutschland. Manray has been adding Twinity shots into the geolocative photo recording API of Panoramio & Google Maps. essentially Manray haas been adding the 'simscape' (hmm i like that!) snapshots to the Google Maps of Berlin in a recontextualization of the territory. here's the essay marco wrote on the project. and a few snaps from the closing party:

3 Fundred Million

There are many things that were amazing about CAA 2008 but, I feel I need to report on an important project I learned about from Mel Chin and spearheaded locally from Mary Rubin called the Fundred Project.

At this point Mel asked me to swear you to secrecy. Please only pass this info to the most sane individuals you know. ;) This project is so amazing I volunteered to participate.

Fundred is an artist intervention to remove the lead out of the soil in several communities in New Orleans. As you might know lead poisoning has been linked to cognitive disabilities but it is also linked to crime and violence. This poisoning hits the children the hardest because they exposed to more of it for their size and weight.

Mel has concieved of a project to collect the 300 Million that it would take to clean this up from student artists drawing their own Fundred Dollar bills. An armored car converted to burn vegetable oil will travel the US collecting the 3 Fundred Million and deliver it to Washington to 'pay' for the clean up.

To learn more see: Fundred Project. Agent, your password to the site is: Paydirt