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

Openlab Workshops’ mission is to use open source and free software tools and knowledge to both inspire and enable creativity. Since 2009 we’ve developed and taught over 24 workshops in such areas as Programming for artists, Processing for designers, Interactive lighting, Livecoding, Arduino, and Sound generation and analysis.

Technology Will Save Us is Hackney based alternative education space and haberdashery for technology. We believe in lowering the barrier of entry to technology to enable people to produce and not just consume technology.

For Kinetica this year, Openlab Workshops is pleased to partner with our friends from Technology Will Save Us to offer three fun filled days of drop-in workshops. We welcome everyone from artists, and designers to students, professionals, tinkerers and families. Join us to build lighting fixtures that respond to the world around us, or magically make music out of simple electronic circuitry. If you already have a project or idea and want to know how to bring it to life, enter our contest and win an opportunity to get personalised feedback from our professional panel of experts.

All workshops will include friendly instructions from our lovely facilitators and all the kit you need to make something and take it home with you when you leave.

OpenLab Workshops:
About us: http://openlabworkshops.org/about/

Technology Will Save Us:
http://www.technologywilsaveus.org
http://learn.plankman.com

Workshops:

The Art of Soldering (1 hr sessions, every hour from 11am-7pm, Friday-Sunday. Advance booking not necessary, please pay at the front desk).
Drop into one of our hourly soldering sessions and learn how to make music out of simple electronic circuitry. We provide all the electronics, parts and guidance you need to learn basic soldering while building a sound and light toy.
Level: Ages 9 and up, all skill levels (because: soldering irons are too hot for small fingers.)
Cost: £12/10 for individuals with group rates available (includes kit of parts to make an sound making instrument for you to take home)

Synth Sounds of Circuits (2 hr sessions, 12pm & 4pm, Friday-Sunday. Advance booking recommended or pay at the front desk on the day)
Using basic circuitry, we will create some sound-making machines to impress your friends and astound your enemies. Does not involve soldering. We provide an exploratory kit of electronic parts, sensors and expert guidance. You provide both yourself and your creativity. Result: sonic cacophony for people of all abilities.
Level: All ages and skills (warning: Small parts are suitable for younger kids who might eat them.)
Cost: £18/15 for individuals with group rates available (includes kit of sound-making electronics and a snazzy booklet for you to take home)

Interactive Lighting with DMX and Arduino (2 hr session, 2pm Friday-Sunday. Advance booking recommended)
Fancy sending ripples of light shimmering through your bedroom, or building an stylishly interactive chandelier to impress dinner guests? Do all that and more using the DMX Arduino shield from this workshop and an open source Arduino device, combined with some off-the-shelf lighting fixtures. Good for designers, architects, VJs, and others who appreciate some responsive lighting.
Level: Ages 15 and up. Some basic familiarity with programming required.
Cost: £34/28 (includes special DMX Arduino shield kit for you to take home)
Requires: a laptop with Arduino downloaded (http://arduino.cc). Arduino Uno kits recommended.

Experts’ Surgery (Saturday Night Event)
Do you have an idea for an interactive art project, but need some guidance as to how to pull it off? Are you immobilised by all of the options and technical possibilities? Propose a project to us for a chance to participate in a very small group session with our panel of top interactive artists. We pick a selection of the best proposals and invite their authors to come present their projects to our experts for some personal assistance.
Cost: £10 entry fee to submit a proposal, free to watch the event.

To book: email reserve@openlabworkshops.org

First, we’ve slashed the price – now £20 for the whole day, and we’re giving away 6 free tickets to the first 6 people who contact us!

What sort of device can you make, activated by only a single, simple button?  Openlab Workshops and Cybersonica, in partnership with the AND Festival challenge your minimalist interactive design skills.

This Manchester workshop will take place at Cornerhouse from 11am-5pm on this MONDAY OCTOBER 4 at a cost of £45 £20, including materials.  An optional second day will take place on Tuesday, 5th October, 11am-5pm at Fablab Manchester, Ancoats – part of a a global network of local labs, enabling invention by providing access for individuals to tools for digital fabrication and supported by the Manufacturing Institute, introducing you to this fantastic free resource and enabling you to fabricate your own custom made enclosures and/or display mount for your one-button device.

Space is limited!  Please email us to book, or with any questions.

A 6 week immersion into making art in a digital age.  Through hands-on workshops, talks, lively discussions, and local gallery and studio trips we explore the current state of digital art and gain some hands-on skills.  We will use free, open source tools such as Processing and Arduino, look into digital color theory, interactive hardware and sensors, and discuss techniques and ideas, with the goal of creating an interactive work of art by the end.

Schedule: Wednesday nights at SPACE Studios in Hackney from 7-9PM starting Oct. 13.

Cost: £120 for 6 weeks (does not include materials such as Arduinos)

Please register at: http://digitalartanalogueworld.eventbrite.com or email us.

Concessions available – please email reserve@openlabworkshops.org for details.

Also – look at our wiki to see our working outline of the 5 weeks!

One Button Challenge

A combination workshop and challenge to see who can build the most creative device using only a single button for user interaction.

The Idea

In a world where our interaction with technology is dominated by qwerty keyboards, multi-functional hand-held devices, motion-detection controllers and touch screens what becomes of the lowly, single button? Is it still possible to find inventiveness in simplicity?

The One Button Challenge attempts to answer the question – setting this simple limitation as both a physical and creative boundary.

This October, Openlab Workshops and Cybersonica present a One Button Challenge as part of the AND (Abandon Normal Devices) Festival in Manchester, UK.

In the run-up to the event, we are offering both a 5 week workshop in London at (and supported by) SPACE Studios, and an intensive workshop in Manchester on how to design and build your own One Button Device.  We trust in your imagination to create devices which will amaze, surprise, entertain, inform, humour and perhaps even offend.  So go on, ask yourself what your button would do… and take up the challenge!

At the end of the workshop, participants and instructors will choose two of the best devices to include in the AND Festival.

We Provide:

We will provide some useful electronics (plenty of LEDs, resistors, servos, motors, capacitors, etc) inspirational examples, and hands-on expertise to help guide you through the development of your one-button object.

You Provide:

A creative idea and anything else you require – feathers, knitted objects that can fit buttons inside, LED matrix, solenoids, motors, speakers.  We’ll help you choose them based on your project.

You also should have some basic familiarity with Arduino (or basic electronics, if you don’t plan on using one).  If you know how to program your Arduino to blink an LED, you’re all set.

What Is A One Button Device?

It has a single button.

When that button is pushed, something happens.  Something profound. Something exhilarating.  Or at least, minimally entertaining.

It is ready to be installed with minimal fuss.

It is a work of art; a game; a toy; a useful tool; a nihilistic statement of futility.

Photo by Audrey Penven (audreypenven.net) of Jonathan Moore’s Doubt Button exhibited as part of One Button Objects curated by Kokoromi (kokoromi.org) and Create Digital Motion (createdigitalmotion.com) at GAFFTA (gaffta.org), SF, 12 March 2010.

Ok, But WHAT?

Maybe you’d like a more concrete example of some fully-realized One Button Objects: http://www.flickr.com/photos/audreypenven/sets/72157623614749574/

We were very inspired by Heather Kelley of Montreal-based video games collective Kokoromi and Peter Kirn of CreateDigitalMusic who both organized and curated GAMMA IV: One Button Games, earlier this year at the 2010 GDC:

“In an age of sophisticated multi-touch, augmented reality, and sensors, what can be done with a single, lowly button? Inspired by a one-button challenge to game designers for the Gamma game competition, a group of artists, working with sound, interaction, light, and gaming, answers that question. From a plush, beating heart to a drinking game to one-button musical instruments, these handmade circuit objects push the envelope of what a single button can do.”

We are thankful that we have their blessing to run this event!

We were also inspired by Gamasutra’s excellent article on designing one-button games.

Schedule and Cost

The 5-week London workshop will take place every Wednesday night at 7-9:45PM from September 1st 8th until September 29, 2010, at the very well-outfitted SPACE Studios in Hackney. That’s 4 Wednesdays plus one or more Tuesdays, total.  This workshop costs £160 for the whole 5 weeks, which includes some very useful electronics (but sadly, not Arduinos for everyone).  A £30 deposit is required to secure a spot, with full payment due by the 3rd session.

The Manchester workshop will take place at Cornerhouse from 11am-5pm on October 4 at a cost of £45, including materials.  An optional second day will take place on Tuesday, 5th October, 11am-5pm at Fablab Manchester, Ancoats – part of a a global network of local labs, enabling invention by providing access for individuals to tools for digital fabrication and supported by the Manufacturing Institute, introducing you to this fantastic free resource and enabling you to fabricate your own custom made enclosures and/or display mount for your one-button device.

Space is limited!  We also have concession rates available.  Please email us with any questions.

Reserving a Spot

To reserve a spot, please email reserve@openlabworkshops.org and provide us with your name and a short description of yourself (what you do, what you are interested in, anything else you’d like us to know).  We’ll send you back a confirmation of your place and payment information.

Press Release

Cybersonica and Openlab Workshops with the Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival, Manchester, UK, ask:

What kind of device would you build that is activated solely by the push of a single button?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LONDON and MANCHESTER, UK, August 24, 2010: From September through October 2010, open source software educator Openlab Workshops and digital arts organisation Cybersonica challenge anyone interested in makings things for themselves to conceive, design and build a device with a single button input. What this device actually does once its button is pressed is entirely up to them.

In a world where our interaction with technology is dominated by qwerty keyboards, multi-functional hand-held devices, motion-detection controllers and touch screens what becomes of the lowly, single button?  Openlab and Cybersonica’s One Button Challenge uses this physical and creative boundary to inspire inventiveness from simplicity.

This October, Openlab Workshops and Cybersonica present a One Button Challenge as part of the AND (Abandon Normal Devices) Festival in Manchester.  In the run-up to the event, they are offering both a 5 week workshop in London at (and supported by) SPACE Studios and an intensive workshop in Manchester on how to design and build your own One Button Device.  Both workshops culminate in an ‘interventionist’ display of one button objects starting October 5 in Manchester, throughout the conference hub and its environs.   An online blog will document the progress of the workshops their final, public outcome.

The first workshop series will take place weekly on Wednesday nights, from September 1st until September 29th, 2010 at the media lab in SPACE Studios, 129 Mare St, Hackney, London.

The second workshop series will take place at Cornerhouse in Manchester from 11am-5pm on October 5 and 11am-5pm at FabLab, also in Manchester.

One Button Challenge is inspired by One Button Objects – a collection of playful interactive circuit-based creations presented at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA), SF, 12 March 2010 and co-curated by Heather Kelley from Kokoromi (kokoromi.org) and Peter Kirn from Create Digital Music (createdigitalmusic.com) and Create Digital Motion (createdigitalmotion.com).

One Button Challenge is part of a season of collaborative activity organised jointly by Cybersonica and Openlab Workshops which also includes Make It Yourself – an exhibition of inventive Arduino and DIY electronic-circuitry projects to accompany the major solo exhibition Recorders by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Manchester Art Gallery between 18 September 2010 to 30 January 2011.

Openlab Workshops (http://openlabworkshops.org) are London’s leading independent organizer of workshops in art and technology using free software. Since 2009 they fulfill the need for practical education about digital art and technology by providing workshops focusing on open source and free software, with its idealistic emphasis on transparency, knowledge-sharing, and international collaboration.  Workshops are developed and taught by working artists and media practitioners, giving participants access to direct, practical experience.  Topics include: programming for artists and designers, interactive lighting, and sound design.

Cybersonica (http://www.cybersonica.org) is an annual celebration of electronic music, sonic art and audiovisual experimentation. Now in its eighth year, their rolling schedule of collaborative events and projects are a key destination for anyone interested in the theory and practice of how new technologies are shaping and changing the way musicians, digital artists, audiovisualisers and creative software developers make and present their work. Cybersonica’s programming brings together a vibrant community of sonic and audiovisual innovation, nurtures new talent and showcases the freshest and latest work in the field.

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) (http://www.andfestival.org.uk) is a cross-regional festival of new cinema and digital culture that spills from screens and galleries into the streets and imaginations of the Northwest. During 01- 07 October 2010 AND ventures into Manchester and Cheshire – investigating how normality is closely intertwined with the constructing and collapsing of identities. Expect cinematic shenanigans, installations, online projects, work in public spaces, debates, workshops and live events.

Contact: Evan Raskob (info@openlabworkshops.org) or Lewis Sykes (lewis@cybersonica.org) for more information.

Processing for Visual Artists

Openlab Workshops presents a 5-week long introductory course in Processing and interactive art.  From 28 January until mid-March, take two Thursdays each month and learn some generative visual art chops.  Learn Processing from the ground up, exploring ActionScript and Arduino in the process.  This will be a project-led course with a relaxed atmosphere and small class size.  We will invite special guest lecturers, in addition to the regular staff, taking you through creating basic sketches up to creating videos, interactive art, and games.  At the end of the course, you will have a working project (game, installation, video piece) of your own design, and some knowledge and inspiration for future projects!  Compare with the V&A’s £240 Processing class for 6 weeks.  Main instructor: Processing guru and lecturer Evan Raskob.

Cost and Reservations
Reservations are limited.  The cost (before January 15th) will be £125 for 5, 2-hour-long sessions (£150 after Jan. 15th).  Sessions will take place on two Thursdays each month, form 7:30-9:30PM at Space Studios, Hackney.  (It’s easy to get to Space! Hackney Central is easily accessible from most stations, and various buses serve the area.  The Bethnal Green Tube station is about a 10-minute walk. We will provide you with more information).  Please email reserve@openlabworkshops.org to reserve a spot!

More Information
We will start from the beginning and cover the basics of Processing and interactive art – drawing to the screen, creating sketches for the web, some basic programming practices.  Then, since the workshop is project-focused, we will work with participants on more specific topics, including some of the following:  creating and analyzing sound; working with and saving to video; webcams; network communications using OSC (including communicating with SuperCollider).

If you have any questions at all, please email us and ask at info@openlabworkshops.org !!

Private sessions are also available – please email for details.

(By the way, the header image was generated in Processing)

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