Living systems are inhabited by organisms with complex forms of communication and information processing. Suitcase Science is an attempt to package these systems and tap into them in order to form new alliances between nature and technology.
Suitcase Science represents a turn from the Modernism’s use of technology to control nature to a postmodern use of nature to enliven technology. By approaching living systems as technology Suitcase Science challenges traditional views of nature and suggests that new relationships to nature can be formed.
More concretely the Suitcase Science project investigates how living systems can be sustained in portable controlled ecological life support systems (CELSS) and how system parameters like environmental conditions, volatile organic compounds and electrophysiological activity can be intercepted and interpreted.
Suitcase Science is a project sprung out of the recently started Strange Eden Lab at the Interactive Institutes Art and Technology Program, it was most recently shown at New Media Meeting 3. Suitcase Science is a work in progress, more information will be available at SuitcaseScience.net as the project develops.
Suitcase Science is a collaboration between Erik Sjödin and Michel Bussien.
Fringe has put together a workshop and an (almost) all inclusive weekend package from Stockholm to New Media Meeting in Norrköping (19th to 20th of September). It’s not too late to join Fringe and sign up for the package or the workshop yet (you don’t have to sign up for both). Drop a mail to Tina Finnäs if you’re interested. The package is at least half the price of what you’d pay if you’d pay for everything separately, and it’s more fun than traveling alone…
NEW MEDIA MEETING
In only two years NMM has become one of the most important media festivals in the Nordic Region – attracting an impressive line-up of renowned and upcoming international artists on the media art and electronic music scene.
This year NMM has invited around 50 international artists, hackers, DJs, VJs, researchers, media-activists, designers, movie producers, etc. from more than ten countries. Young and old, beginners and world-renowned. During one weekend concerts, installations, performances, workshops, lectures and seminars will be crammed under the same roof.
FRINGE NMM PACKAGE
- Buss-trip, Sthlm-Norrköping-Sthlm.
- Two nights of accommodation, 19th-21st, at the Hostel Above in shared or single rooms
- Entrance to the both days of the NMM.
Price: 600 SEK.
FRINGE WORKSHOP @ NMM
A one-day Introduction workshop in circuit bending with Olof Bendt and Magnus Gyllenswärd from Ergonomidesign in Stockholm.
Price: 300 SEK (includes all the required equipment for the workshop).
Contact Tina Finnäs for more information about the workshop and the NMM package.
Making a robot from scratch in three days with hardly any previous knowledge of programming or electronics is quite a challenge, but the participants at CRACs the Art of Robotics workshop proved that it is possible.
We were all too busy working to gather any decent documentation of the results, but some of the material that we used during the workshop is available here. ..
Besides from being used by tinker.it, as3Glue has been used to teach physical computing and prototyping at Stanford and at least one commercial project (the Spelar roll exhibition by Doberman). So far I’ve had around one thousand downloads of the code, and since I’ve received no bug reports since the last update it looks like it is working pretty well. Glue is the first library I’ve released as open source so I’m really happy about this…
Creative Room for Art and Computing, CRAC organizes a Workshop in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence catered towards material based artists and other interested. The workshop is result oriented, designed to provide the skills, knowledge and guidance to enable the participant to build her own robot. I will be facilitating the workshop together with Chandana Paul and Alberto Figo.
We are putting together an interesting collection of sensors and actuators and we will be using the just released RBBB Freeduinos from Modern Device, so it should be fun. More information is available at CRAC…
Documentation from the Rag-tag workshop are now online at the Rag-tag Workshop 2008 website. Among other things there are slides from Bengt Sjöléns presentation (see my previous report), slides from Bengts and David Cuartielles media player dissections, slides and summaries from Davids physical prototyping presentation, tutorials + code from Davids Arduino workshop and some thoughts and experiences on how to construct installations for public spaces from Nils Claesson.
There are also presentations of works from among other people Michelle Teran, Tina Finnäs and Performing Pictures.
Today was the first day of the RAG-TAG* workshop. I didn’t have time to see all the speakers but luckily I made it in time for Bengt Sjölén from Teenage Engineering. Here is a brief report from his talk:
Using Absolut Choir** as an example Bengt started of by talking about the importance of building scalable systems and the advantages of being able to remotely control, update and monitor installations. He then went on to highlight the benefits of using embedded Linux devices (such as the NSLU2 and the ASUS WL-HDD) instead of or together with micro controllers and PCs.
Embedded Linux devices do unlike micro controllers often have USB and networking capabilities and since they run Linux you can write full fledged applications for them in your language of choice. They usually lack the inputs and outputs that are necessary to communicate with sensors and actuators, but on the other hand they can communicate with micro controllers such as Arduinos over USB. Their advantage to PCs are their physical dimensions and their prices, which now are getting close to Arduinos.
After having having talked about embedded Linux devices Bengt finished of by discussing the possibilities of building new platforms for creative engineering around chipset such as the Sunplus SPHE 82xx which normally are found in cheap DVD players. The SPHE 82xx chipset are capable of outputting video and 6.1 audio as well as controlling servos and motors. Their limitations lie in their undocumented and closed firmware but there are now Yahoo groups dedicated to understanding and analyzing that.
An Arduino-like platform with video and audio outputs that is capable of running applications written in Processing or openFrameworks doesn’t seem that far from becoming a reality. All that is needed is a community to organize itself around some of the inexpensive embedded Linux devices and multimedia chipset that already exist on the market…
**Absolut Choir is an architectural installation consisting of a robotic choir which people can conduct over the Internet. The installation and website are both impressively well built. It is currently up and running at the PUB department store in Stockholm. A lot of information about the design and technology behind the installation is available on the website.
New Media Meeting 07 is getting closer. This years theme is “Digital Media and Arts in Urban Environments” - integration and the usage of digital media technology and arts in urban surroundings. I’m really impressed by the program, especially considering that this is just the second year the festival is running. Some of the highlights are a onedotzero showcase, installations and a workshop from Zach Lieberman and Theo Watson and the French VJ collective Play together with dAta. New Media Meeting is well on its way to become one of the most important new media events in Scandinavia. The dates are September 21-22 and the location is Norrköping, Sweden…
Last year me, Carl-Johan Rosén and Marcus Appelback held a Processing workshop at NMM. This year Zach and Theo will host an openFrameworks workshop. I’m sure it will be really cool and I would so much have liked to participate somehow. Unfortunately it collides with the kick-off of the Man Machine II project which I will be working with this autumn / winter (more about that later)…
I’m back from having tutored at an intense but very rewarding 2-day workshop arranged by NVIS at the New Media Meeting in Norrköping. During the workshop we taught how to make interactive installations using simple computer vision and sound analysis in Processing.
Processing is a programming environment “created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool”. It is in deed excellent for teaching programming, and it works well as a software sketchbook. However I have to say that it’s limitations as a professional production tool are painfully obvious. It’s just too slow and too limited when it comes to high resolution sound, video and images. Hopefully openFrameworks (to be released at openframeworks.cc) will combine Processings simplicity and easy of use with high performance.
Anyway, Processing is remarkable in that it actually is possible to learn it and create something rather advanced with it in just two days. Our twelve workshop participants ranged in ages from twenty to sixty years old with very varying experiences from computers and programming. Some people had never programmed at all, still they managed to produce something to show by the end of day two. Examples of projects that evolved during the workshop are: a flock of birds that flew around heads of people passing in front of a projection, a monkey whose eyes followed people who walked by and who smiled when you talked to it, a game where an animated character walked and jumped when the player did the same and a slide show that reacted to sounds.
All in all the workshop was a success. The participants had fun and we received a lot of interest from passerbys. I hope we will be given the opportunity to build on this inexperience and arrange another, even better workshop.
On 1-2 December I will hold a workshop at the New Media Meeting in Norrköping, Sweden, together with Carl-Johan Rosén and Markus Appelbäck. The workshop is titled “Do It Yourself - Computation As A Creative Medium” and is arranged by NVIS, Norrköping Visualization and Interaction Studio.
During two intensive days we will be experimenting with video- and sound interaction in processing. The idea is to support artists with simple, inexpensive yet powerful tools that they can use to create interactive installations. We will be using Processing and computers with cameras and microphones and possibly also Arduino boards and sensors.
More information is available here (Swedish only).
