|
electrolobby – Make It Simple
'David Cuartielles
David Cuartielles
Within the Ars Electronica Festival, the electrolobby is the festival area for Digital Culture & Lifestyle. With the title Make it simple this year’s electrolobby takes a look at the myth of electronic nomadism. D. Cuartielles, curator of this space, briefly depicts the contemporary new-media creators’ reality and how it is represented in the electrolobby.
Whether as laptop performer, software artist, web-designer, or network administrator, we assist in the realm of the Digital Tuareg. With laptop computers as Tagelmusts,(1) these nomads master the craft of digital creativity. Following the path of open self-education these wanderers have found tools to resist the omnipresence of media conglomerates and created an intellectual niche in modern digital lifestyles.
Easier forms of software have helped introduce many to the complex desert of bits. Tools like Processing, PureData, and their close-source equivalents have made it possible for many to learn collaboratively and share knowledge in their communities of practice.
On the other hand, we assist at the birth of Open Hardware, a new category of tools designed mainly for lighting up the somewhat obscure world of hardware. Unlike software this media has a physical entity, and also a completely different set of assets, licensing strategies, and production means. The electronic nomads now have a whole range of alternative ways of “riding” their laptops available, interfacing them with new types of sensor technologies.
The electrolobby offers an interlaced program of workshops, minishops, talks, company visits, interactive works, and performances, all of them spiced in indigo turbans and with the openness of a community of creators willing to expand.
(1)
Tagelmust: the Tuareg’s veil  back
Arduino Workshop
http://www.Arduino.cc/
Arduino is an open hardware and open/free software initiative by David Cuartielles from K3 (Sweden), and Massimo Banzi and Dave Mellis from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (Italy), who are all engaged in the field of Physical Computing.
From the beginning Arduino has been an initiative aiming to provide the design and art community with a tool to create alternative electronic interfaces. These could act as more natural bonds to computers and digital artifacts in general, allowing us (humans) to interact in new, unforeseen ways.
The project was born from the need of having a set of tools to conduct courses in electronics prototyping at art and design universities. The authors wanted to unify the work in form and function, through providing designers and artists with access to the essence of digital technologies.
More than 20 universities are using Arduino in their education programs, some of them for their engineering classes. Several open source (and free software) communities have welcomed Arduino as their platform for interfacing the physical world. Furthermore, the project has expanded into secondary education in some schools in Spain, after a pilot run during Spring 2006 in Madrid.
The whole project is under a Creative Commons license that allows other people to manufacture their own boards.
The Ars Electronica workshop is an introduction to electronics for art installations and design making use of the Arduino platform. The participants require no previous knowledge of electronics or programming, just an open mind for a challenging week with a hand full of bytes.
Prix Ars Electronica 2006, Honorary Mention Digital Communities
Python Workshop
http://www.mobilenin.com
Python is best defined by a quote taken from Wikipedia: “Python is a multi-paradigm language. This means that, rather than forcing coders to adopt one particular style of coding, it permits several. Object orientation, structured programming, functional programming, and aspect-oriented programming are all supported.”
In other words, it is a scripting language, whose design focuses on ease of use. It is extremely portable, to the extent that it is used for many mobile devices as well as embedded systems or game consoles.
Python has been released under a GPL license and operates under an Apache-like model, which allows developers to include it in their systems and migrate it to different platforms.
On the other side of the screen, we find the possibilities for artists and designers to use this powerful programming language as the basis for the development of new concepts. In the course of relatively short practical creativity workshops, it is possible to learn how to handle digital contents within mobile devices, share video streams, build storytelling applications, or communicate wirelessly to other systems.
OpenFrameWorks Workshop
http://www.openframeworks.cc
It is only recently that everyday computer systems have become able to process full frame video in real time. As the computational and hardware costs drop for such systems, video manipulation and analysis becomes an increasingly useful tool for artists’ use in interactive installations and performances.
OpenFrameWorks is a new open source, cross platform, c++ library, which was designed to make programming in c++ for students accessible and easy. In it, the developers wrap several different libraries like OpenGL for graphics, QuickTime for movie playing and capturing, and Free Type for font rendering, into a convenient package in order to create a simple, intuitive framework for creating projects using c++. It is designed to work in freely available compilers, and will run under any of the current operating systems.
Workshops using OpenFrameWorks concentrate on helping students make engaging, challenging and meaningful work through creative software coding and intelligent use of computer vision techniques. They are a mixture of practical advice related to the world of computer graphics and animation, coding, and computer vision.
Students are also introduced to the examination of the aesthetic implications of the vision systems and the challenges involved in employing them in meaningful, artistic practice.
Interactivos?
http://www.interactivos.org
A workshop held at the MediaLabMadrid, within the Centro Cultural Conde Duque, that was organized together with three developers of open hardware and software tools, David Cuartielles, Zachary Lieberman and Hans-Christoph Steiner. Twenty-five participants worked together on fifteen projects over the course of two intensive weeks, in a workshop environment charged with, and full of creative energy.
A selection of projects developed at interactivos? are on exhibit in the Ars Electronica Festival’s electrolobby.
Interactivos? was a hybrid workshop, exhibition and seminar which, rather than focusing on skill learning, concentrated on the production of actual projects. A unique environment was created in which participants worked collectively from day one to create compelling work that explored the boundaries of physical computing and human computer interaction. The typical format of instructor and pupil was eschewed in favor of an open one, in which participants worked side-by-side with practitioners as well as the public.
Interactivos? was designed to fill a need, specific to the community in Madrid, for more advanced, production-oriented events. The desire was to transcend the typical one-way experience of normal workshops in order to find a way to open up these events to a wider audience. At the start of the project, the exhibition space, where the event was held, was transformed overnight into a work space. When the workshop concluded it became once again an exhibition space, where the works produced were then displayed.
Most of these projects should be seen as prototypes, or the beginning of longer-term research. For example, IC_Multidimensional Particle Projector for Emergent Processes is an experiment in combining computation with architecture. The project presents a multidimensional space of cellular automata that can be manipulated by users, creating emergent patterns that are represented as fluid, structural forms in a 3d space.
One line of research was physical computing projects that strove to build meaningful, beautiful, and even controversial relationships between humans and artifacts.
UrbanForest, White Lies and The Rocking Chair are three interactive prototypes that explore the realm of the personal through haptic interaction. Waves presents a kinetic and sound sculpture in which the shapes and sounds of movement are made physical by interaction with the audience.
Additionally, Zachary Lieberman led a group in the workshop that focused on exploring computer vision techniques utilizing a new open-source c++ library entitled openframeworks. Four resulting works are on display: Predator, Memento, Magic Lamp and D3Sombra. These projects combine auditory and visual responses to users’ motions in order to create seamless, organic, and playful forms of interaction.
Interactivos? was one part of MediaLabMadrid’s overall strategy of creating compelling environments for exploring and expanding the discipline and discourse of media art practice.
|
