Supercollider Sounds, Interactive Visuals

For: Beginners, with some basic experience with programming recommended but not required.
Cost: £135 for 5 weeks
Dates: 5 Tuesdays in May: 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
Time: 7-9:30PM

Please email reserve@openlabworkshops.org to book a place!

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.

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.

Doodle 3 by Martin Schneider

Hi gang,

Our last Processing course was so successful that we have been scrambling to schedule another one to accommodate all of you who couldn’t get into the current run.  Now, we’re happy to announce that we will be running another 5-week introductory Processing workshop at the lovely organic pub, gallery, and performance space called The Flea Pit, on Columbia Rd. near Shoreditch and the top of Brick Lane.  Workshops will take place on 5 Tuesday nights from 7-9PM, starting March 9th Tues March 2nd and ending April 13th (skipping April 6th) March 30th.

The course itself will be a relaxed but project-focused introduction to Processing and interactive art and design in general.  We will spend the bulk of the first two sessions on basic methods of working with code, general workflow, and feeling your way around the Processing environment, then focus more on project ideas and specific technologies such as sensors, 3D, OSC, and video.  We will be flexible based on the needs of the people attending.

This will be a small workshop, so please reserve soon!   The cost will be £130 for the entire 5-week course, paid upfront.  You  will need to bring a laptop, preferably with Processing installed (very easy to do!).  Please email reserve@openlabworkshops.org to reserve spot.

The class will be taught by resident Processing guru Evan Raskob and a few special guest lecturers.

Happy coding!

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)

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/openlabworkshop

When: Tuesday 3 Nov from 6pm-10:00pm
Where: The Roebuck pub (upstairs room), 50 Great Dover Street, SE1 4YG
Nearest transport: 5, 133, 343, 21 buses, Borough Tube (Northern line)
About 8 minute walk from London Bridge Station (Northern and Jubilee tube, rail, and bus station: 48, 47, 149 buses)

Cost: £15 for the entire night, or per workshop (see below).
How to pay: At the door, or via Paypal to be guaranteed a space (limited to 30 people per workshop).  There will be a few spaces for people who show up on the night.  Please email reserve@openlabworkshops.org to reserve a space in any workshop.

Schedule:

6PM: Hardware Noise Hacking with Ryan Jordan – £10

In this session of Hardware Noise Hacking you will be making some PSYCHEDELIC SQUARE WAVE TOILET GOGGLES!!!! Yes indeed, your very own hallucinogenic, drug free goggles!

Aside from that, the workshop will teach you simple circuit and electronics building to make your own square wave synth and stroboscopic lights, both with controllable frequency.

No programming skill is required.
No electronics skill is required.
No musical skill is required.
Only your body and brain are required.
This is an open workshop for anyone interested in DIY punk noise machines.

There is an additional £15 charge for the kit, if you wish to take it home with you and scare your friends and impress your enemies!

The kit includes:

1. 555 timer circuit
2. capacitors
3. resistors
4. small speaker
5. breadboard
6. 9v battery and clip
7. potentiometer
8. LED’s
9. Instruction and reference booklet.

What you will need to bring to the workshop!!!:::

• 2 x inner tubes from toilet rolls
• a pair of goggles or glasses
• a sense of sonic adventure

7:45PM: Understanding Sound and Music by Programming Computers with S. Jagannathan – £10

Session 2 (of 2): Synthesis From Scratch

Part 2 of audio enthusiast and professional computational motivational speaker Jag’s 2 part series on making sound from basic computer code. About 50% of the workshop/talk will have computer sound & music ideas – these will be programming language agnostic – in a format that people without any prior programming background but with an interest in computer music can understand. PD, max/msp, SuperCollider, etc. users will benefit from looking into that primal black box of sound generators!

Requirements:

• Basic knowledge of programming – variables, loops, conditionals, basic pointers. (if you have done programming in the past it should be fairly straightforward.)
• A computer with a C++ compiler (Linux, XCode, etc.)

~=~=~=~For More Information~=~=~=~
See our entire Fall / Winter schedule on http://openlabworkshops.org

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/openlabworkshop

You can also keep up with all Openlab events, performances, workshops, etc. on our low-traffic email list: http://lists.pawfal.org/listinfo.cgi/openlab-announce-pawfal.org

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~= Workshop #6: Special Daniel vs. Daniel Edition ~=~=~=

When: Thursday 15 October, from 6pm-9:30pm
Where: Space Studios, 129 – 131 Mare St, Hackney E8 3RH
Nearest transport: Bethnal Green (tube), London Fields (Overground), Buses – see http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/contact/SPACE/

Cost: £15 for the entire night, or per workshop (see below).
How to pay: At the door, or via Paypal to be guaranteed a space.  Please email or Paypal to reserve@openlabworkshops.org to reserve a space in any workshop.

Schedule:

6PM: Simulating and Sonifying Natural Systems with Daniel Jones – £10
An increasingly popular practice in digital arts is creating sonic representations of dynamical systems — simulating natural phenomena such as insect swarms, tree growth, wind turbulence and neural networks, and translating such phenomena into sound, to create organic, dynamic audio-visual works. Working from a *basic knowledge* of the Java-based Processing environment, Daniel Jones explains how to create such a simulation and subsequently connect it to the open-source SuperCollider synthesis engine, providing a valuable addition to a digital artist’s toolkit.

Requirements:

• Processing (from http://processing.org/download/)

7:45PM: Introduction to Arduino: Microcontrollers, LEDs, Sensors, and You! with Daniel Hirschmann – £10
Newly-minted Goldsmiths’ lecturer Daniel introduces you to the Arduino as a platform for prototyping physical & digital interactive objects, installation, and things.  We will cover the programming environment, some basic electronics, and learn how to make sensors do stuff to lights.

Requirements:

• laptop computer with Arduino downloaded and installed.  Go through the Getting Started guide on the website.
• An Arduino Microcontroller platform.  These can be bought from Tinker.it.  If needed, a few will be on hand for use, or for sale.  Please let us know by email (see above) whether you’re interested in buying one on the day.
• Breadboard, hook-up wire, switches, LEDs, Potentiometers, Infrared Rangers, Ultrasonic rangers, FSR’s, other sensors…  If you don’t know what these are, DON’T worry!  We’ll have some available to use during the intro.  If you DO know what these are, and you have a them – bring them along and we can help you wire them up!

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~= Workshop #7: Programming is More than Just Words ~=~=~=

When: Tuesday 20 October, from 6pm-10:00pm
Where: The Roebuck pub (upstairs room), 50 Great Dover Street, SE1 4YG
Nearest transport: 5, 133, 343, 21 buses, Borough Tube (Northern line)
About 8 minute walk from London Bridge Station (Northern and Jubilee tube, rail, and bus station: 48, 47, 149 buses)

Cost: £15 for the entire night, or per workshop (see below).
How to pay: At the door, or via Paypal to be guaranteed a space (limited to 30 people per workshop).  There will be a few spaces for people who show up on the night.  Please email reserve@openlabworkshops.org to reserve a space in any workshop.

Schedule:

6PM: Processing Beginners’ Workshop with Evan Raskob – £10

You’ve heard Evan’s intro workshops and been slightly terrified by the advanced stuff (it’s ok to admit it).  So bring your basic questions and project ideas, and Evan will work thorough them to everyone’s benefit.  Or, if people are feeling quiet, he will go through some of his endless bag o’ tricks, including OSC and MIDI.

7:45PM: Understanding Sound and Music by Programming Computers with S. Jagannathan – £10

Session 1 (of 2): Building a music tuner program.

Your very own accurate musical instrument tuner spanning the entire audio range to tune any instrument.  Several tuning schemes supported including roll your own.  About 50% of the workshop/talk will have computer sound & music ideas – these will be programming language agnostic – in a format that musicians without any prior programming background but with an interest in computer music can understand. PD, max/msp, SuperCollider, etc. users will benefit from looking into that primal black box of sound generators!

Requirements:

• Basic knowledge of C – variables, loops, conditionals, basic pointers. (if you have done programming in the past it should be fairly straightforward.)
• Computer with the ability to compile and run C programs linked to portaudio libraries.

~=~=~=~For More Information~=~=~=~
See our entire Fall / Winter schedule on http://openlabworkshops.org

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/openlabworkshop

You can also keep up with all Openlab events, performances, workshops, etc. on our low-traffic email list: http://lists.pawfal.org/listinfo.cgi/openlab-announce-pawfal.org