Over 3 nights (2.5hrs each), fueled by a tasty spread of sliced Italian and French meats, olives, hummus, and the all-important beer and coffee, 4 teams of participants hacked our example code into 4 very different “superheros.”

Jesson Yip and and Nicola Plant created Laura Croft (with Rainbow Shooting Crotch^TM) and MegaMan (complete with a working version of his particle weapon).  Hats off to Jesson for illustrating the characters himself:

Dan and Pollie created “Super-Bach,” a hopped-up version of the venerable composer in digital puppet form, Danny and Stewart pieced together “Batfink” complete with real head (a superimposed live video feed of the participant’s face):

Lori Ho hacked a Harry Potter puppet:

As always, you can find our workshop materials online.  The main materials are at hosted on Codasign’s website and the code is in a github repository (as always, open source).  We’re going to do this workshop again at the Kinetica Festival in February, hope to see you there!

More photos of the workshop can be found here.

6pm – 9pm Thurs 13 and Fri 14 October 2011

Openlab Workshops and SPACE Studios invite everyone to an exhibition of the Life Project, an ongoing series of weekly making sessions where we build a digital ecosystem of aftificial creatures.  Part art project, part communal crafting excercise, it could be described as both a conceptual work of art and a colelction of “Tamagotchis on steriods.”  Come see for youself, talk to the participants, and even participate in future sessions!

SPACE STUDIOS (in the Medialab)
129—131 MARE STREET
LONDON E8 3RH
020 8525 4330

Week 1 Evan gave a lecture in cellular automata (via a long wiki page on http://wiki.openlabworkshops.org), generative art, “biological” creatures rendered in digital-mechanical form, and went over the original proposal for the project.  Then, we introduced ourselves to each other and had a getting-to-know-you session which eventually ended in a small session at the local pub, the Cat and Mutton at the top of Broadway Market.  Before that, we expressed our preferences for the 4 “teams” we’d vow loyalty towards over the course of these 8 weeks – an “embedded systems” team responsible for microcrontrollers and hardware, including sensors; a “design” team responsible for overall design including sketches, user scenarios, storyboards, etc.; a “materials” team composed of hands-on artists with practical experience responsible for the actual physical building of the devices, and choosing the materials to build it out of; and a “web” team to take charge of communication with the greater world outside the project team, including coordinating Twitter, the project blog, and .

Week 2 we got down to discussions, via our brand-new forum at http://forums.openlabworkshops.org.  After a brief re-introduction of the project concept, that of “digital husbandry” and cellular automata writ large in a physical installation using smart cultures that communicate, love, live, and potentially die, we started working out the details of what we’d do over the next 7 weeks.

The original plan was to divide up into 3 teams – design, embedded systems (lets call it “hardware” for now) and materials, then have each brainstorm independently, bringing everything together at the end in a mass discussion form different points of view.  What made more sense, as we looked at people’s strengths and expertise, was to divide up into 2 teams that could tackle the problem from two different (and possibly opposing) perspectives – a “conceptual design” team working on a high conceptual level, working out issues of artistic intention, human interaction, as well as the conceptual relationship between the different parts;  on the other “side” sits a more practical-minded hardware-focused team responsible for looking at the problem of communication, interaction, and ecosystems from the view of what is possible with sensors, microcontrollers, and related techniques.

As the facilitator / project manager, I flitted between both groups to get them started and keep discussions on track.  Both teams, start out sprouting a dense forest of ideas and concepts and discussion from our original conceptual seed.

The design team looked carefully at the relationship between the creatures and humans, and between the creatures and their environment.  To sum up from their notes, they first started out simply with “robots that talk to each other” and looking at the interaction between them: feeding, sleeping, procreating, being lonely, loving each other, even boredom.  Without care, they die; left to themselves, they cooperate with one another; overstimulated, they grow apathetic and, bored, even to the point of dying.   This follows closely the basic concept of Conway’s simple cellular automata, his “Game of Life.”

A theme arose about anthropology vs. husbandry – watching these creatures and trying to figure them out from a distance without disturbing them, versus taking a hands-on, directly intentional approach to guiding their evolution.  Captivity versus “The Wild.”  Nature versus Nurture.  Ecology or Evolution.  Here is where the discussion entered moral territory, where we could explore our ideas on which one was, for lack of a better term, “better” in our minds, and whether or not that was a fair, or even defensible, point of view.   Is it a questions of “purity” and “contamination?”

“Please don’t feed the machine” writes Elvia in her notes.

“Robots should communicate with one another foremost and then how the audience interacts with them can be considered the emergent behaviour of the system” writes Gustavo.

Either way, the “cellular” machines could have their own behaviour when people were not around, as well as their own language for communicating with one another.  Soon the creatures would organize themselves into neighborhoods of those nearby, following the age-old urban pattern.

There was some discussion as to whether this light-and-sound-based language would be understandable to humans at all. Either way, the creature would use Twitter and possibly other Internet mediums to broadcast out thoughts and desires whenever they felt necessary.   “Language as virus” – our language or interaction can spread amongst them, and they can contaminate us right back.

The hardware team started on similar conceptual territory, of course wanting to tackle the main issues first, but I gently prodded them towards more of a hardware-design focus as the discussion wound on.  We looked at what sensors were available (and affordable) and what experience we’d had between the group of us with using them.

We came up with a laundry list of techniques and hardware, some of which would make interesting experiments:

Wireless
Photocells
RFID
Infrared
Twitter
Color sensors
Part of a system
Compass
Tilt switch
Solar powered water pumps
Temp sensors
Capacitive sensors
Microwave motion detector – how much movement
Sound impact sensor – clap patterns

vibrating motors for when held
Tricolor LEDs

What’s more, we expanded on the idea of simple single creatures to look at “tribes” and mother/child relationships:

Motherships and babies? Reproduction? Could “babies” be sensors? Would “mothers” protect them?

Are there tribes that emit different sounds, different colors?

Many questions that will need some discussion/resolution at the next session.

Some tasks for next week:
- Nominate forum moderators
- Customize forum
- Choose WordPress template, install, customize

Evan did a the “Silky Sounds of Circuitry” workshop at The School of Everything’s HQ in Bethnal Green, and we made a wicked amount of synthtastic noise, including some 2-player synths (video included!)

We’re very pleased to announce our new schedule of workshops for early 2011!  For starters, we’re offering three multi-week workshops on the ever-popular topic of Interactive Lighting, a new foray into 3D Animation, and an update on the classic introduction to Processing & Arduino. All workshops will take place form 7-9:30PM at SPACE STUDIOS, 129—131 Mare Street, London E8 3RH.  More details and a payment like is below, or if you’d like more information, would like a concession rate, or would rther pay via bank transfer or some other method, please email us at reserve@openlabworkshops.org.

Also, we’ll soon be announcing a weekend of workshops at London’s premiere digital art fair, the Kinetica Art Fair, coming up February 4-6, 2011! Keep up to date with us via the email list (link above) , Twitter feed, or right here on the blog.

Workshops for January to March 2011:

1) SOLD OUT! Make your own Interactive Lighting Artwork with Daniel Hirschmann (using Arduino and DMX).

Hands-on strategies for controlling lighting in art, architecture, and beyond.

There has been an explosion of LED lighting installations and interactive technologies in the art world recently. This is inspiring artists and designers to use interactive elements in their own light-based works. If you’re equally inspired, this course is for you.

By demonstrating methods and technologies for using existing interactive systems, this course will help you create your own responsive light art works. Using the open source Arduino as our platform, we will:

• Cover the DMX lighting control standard in depth
• Offer strategies for building responsive lighting systems
• Use off-the-shelf controllable DMX fixtures
• Explore a variety of sensors

By the end of the course, you will produce your own interactive lighting project.

Level: Mixed beginner. Very basic familiarity with any kind of programming is recommended.
Cost: £165 (includes most required equipment)
Schedule: 5 x 2.5 hr sessions on Wednesdays starting January 19th, with a one-week break for Kinetica

2) CANCELED – 3D Animation using Processing with Olivier Ruellet and Evan Raskob

The basic concepts and techniques of 3D animation, presented in Processing.

This course is for people wishing to push their animation practice using free, open source software.  During the course, we will:

• Cover the practical aspects of handling 3D data and transformations
• Explore procedural methods of animation
• Get to grips with 3D-related concepts and methods (3D coordinates, cameras, lights, shapes, movement)
• Apply all of this to a project of your choice

Level: Intermediate. Basic experience of Processing necessary.
Cost: £85
Schedule: 4  x 2.5 hrs sessions on Tuesdays starting February 8th

3) SOLD OUT! Introduction to Processing and Arduino with Evan Raskob (more info & schedule)

Hands-on starter kit for anyone interested in interactive art

This course is for complete beginners who have an interest in the possibilities of interactive art. We will introduce how to create interactive art using both computers (screens and projection) and hardware (sensors, motors, servos, LEDs).

We will use the free, open source software Processing for computer graphics, the open source hardware platform Arduino and the Firmata library to create our own physical devices that control light, sound, and video.  By the end of the course, the goal is to create a device that interacts with the physical world.

Level: Beginner. No experience necessary.
Cost: £85
Schedule: 4 x 2.5 hrs sessions on Tuesdays starting March 1st