22 February: Make a Plant Thirst Detector

Rough Trade East – London
6:30 to 9pm.

Have you ever wanted to know when your plants are thirsty? Wouldn’t it be grand if they would turn a little light on to tell you when they were dry? Join us for a workshop where you will make your own sensor, and your own electronic circuit to tell you when your thirsty plant needs attention.

Get Your Tickets Here

Deadline: Wednesday 22nd, February, 2012

11 February: DIY Speaker Workshop
Rough Trade East – London
10AM to 1PM

Join us for a workshop where we teach you how to solder an amplifier and then attach it to a pair of exciters which transform almost any material into a speaker. Work with our resident expert sound engineer who has many years of speaker making experience to understand the best way to get the best audio response from your own hand made speakers.

Get Your Tickets Here

Deadline: Saturday 11th, February, 2012

This course will help you develop for the iPhone using the openFrameworks coding toolkit, learning about the different sensors the iPhone has and how to utilize them for interaction design.  We will explore audiovisual instruments, or how to create sound and video using interaction from the user and the sensors the iPhone provides.  This will be an intuitive way to understand the basics of iPhone programming with openFrameworks, while also learning about audiovisual processing and synthesis for developing creative, interactive applications.

Led by Parag K Mital. http://pkmital.com

Suitable for beginner-level and intermediate programmers who have some familiarity with environments such as
Processing and/or MaxMSP. Course attendees must bring their own device to use in class.

Tuesdays, 31 January – 27 March (excluding 14 February)

Course Outline

31 Jan – 27 Mar (28 Feb break), 18.30-21.00, V&A Sackler Centre Digital Studio

31 Jan: Introduction to the iPhone, iPhone Developer Website, and XCode

7 Feb: Introduction to openFrameworks, basics of an openFrameworks program

14 Feb: iPhone Sensors introduction, Sensor input to openFrameworks, Basic graphics

21 Feb: Video input, Intermediate graphics, Video/Graphics blending

28 Feb: BREAK

6 Mar: Signal analysis, Frequency decomposition, Sound texture analysis, Onset detection

13 Mar: Video analysis, Motion detection, Object detection

20 Mar: Basic interface design for creating instruments using processing and synthesis

27 Mar: Publishing your apps to the App Store

http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/1583/developing-apps-for-iphone-and-ipad-2725/

A space of hybridity can assimilate potentially any set of concepts. SCANZ2013 3rdNature seeks to develop a fresh space, carrying memes from previous SCANZ events (which have all had an emphasis on environment) and other Intercreate projects that have involved scientists, indigenous peoples and artists working together. We are aiming to build new knowledge and establish legacies around this work, unencumbered by old perspectives and distant categories.

We ignore the environmental crisis at our own peril. Integrating the indigenous perspective, creative environmental and scientific views on the environment is essential for continued human habitation of the planet. From these trajectories it is possible to conceive of a fresh hybrid space, composed of overlapping elements.

We ask tangata whenua, artists, technologists, teachers, environmentalists, scientists, philosophers, educationalists, indigenous peoples, technologists and lecturers to contact us with ideas for talks, discussions, presentations, residency projects, exhibition ideas for gallery space and a botanic garden. And to join us on the weekend of January 1st- 3rd, 2013 at a hui to share knowledge and build resources.

Important Dates:
Early expression of interest: February 12, 2012
Residency proposed dates: Saturday 19 January to Monday 4 February,2013
Symposium proposed dates: February 1-3, 2013

Call
This is a call for project concepts for the fourth SCANZ residency to be held in New Plymouth, New Zealand early in 2013. Planned are: a two week residency and Open Lab beginning with a one night stay over at historic Owae marae, an exhibition at Puke Ariki museum, four projects in a local botanic garden, a Pecha Kucha night and a three day symposium with a presentation evening on the middle night.

3rd NAURE THEMES
This project involves creativity and innovation at the intersection of three critical interfaces:
*Acknowledging the environmental crisis
*Engaging with Maori and indigenous peoples
*Engaging the Sciences and Hybrid Arts

These three intersecting dialogues together provide space for a 3rd Nature, a fresh space for engaging with new knowledge and approaches vital to a sustainable civilisation.

Possible Activities
Exhibition projects – in Puke Ariki Museum
Residency projects at the Western Institute of Technology, Tarinaki (WITT) campus
Projects in Pukekura Park Botanic Garden
Workshops at WITT campus or local environs including the beach and parks
Symposium papers and presentations
Pecha Kucha Night
Open Lab at WITT campus

3rd Nature application process
A two-stage process will be used. The first involves developing a blog by the applicant. If the project concept succeeds at this first stage, a letter of confirmation will be sent to enable fundraising. A first selection of projects is expected by the end of January 2012. The second stage involves a more detailed level of information. Projects that have passed stage one of the processes will be invited to submit more detailed application at a later date, which can include requests for part funding.

Make a blog
Blog sections (compulsory): Project description (500 words max); Image; Relevance (max 500 words); Outputs; CV and bio (one page). You can add pages to an existing blog, but it MUST have the sections described below.
Email the blog address to ian.clothier@intercreate.org with the subject ‘Third Nature application’.

1. Project description
Write a project description (max 500 words) of your proposed work for SCANZ 2013 3rd Nature.

2. Image
Provide a high quality image. The blog site may restrict you to 800 pixels wide. This image can be optimized for the web. The image need not be directly from the proposed project, which may be in development, but it should be representative of your activity working with similar themes. If your application passes the first stage, at a later stage you may be requested for a higher resolution print-ready image.

3. Relevance
In 500 words maximum, explain the relevance of your idea by either discussing your project in relation to one or more of the three themes. -Acknowledging the environmental crisis;Engaging with Maori and indigenous peoples; Engaging with Earth Sciences and the Hybrid Arts
Or:
Discuss the way your project contributes to a fresh space for engaging with new knowledge and approaches important to a sustainable civilisation.

4. Outputs
What are the potential outputs of your project? Select as appropriate: Exhibition, Workshop, Symposium, Presentation Evening, Open. Stating options does not at this stage guarantee acceptance.
There are six places for exhibition at Puke Ariki, the local integrated museum and library, In addition there are four proposed places at a local botanic garden which has botanical and network resources including a data sensor network connected to an Open Mesh box.
The residency will also involve an Open Lab, for residency participants to share and collaborate (interested members of the public are welcome). At this time two workshops are proposed, one involving low cost electronics, and second involving wind powered art.
A presentation evening is planned on the final Saturday of the residency and a three day hui symposium will be held also over the final weekend.
5. CV and bio (one page)

Provide a one to two paragraph biography (in the third person) followed by your selection of career highlights in the form of CV. When copy and pasted, the Bio and CV should not exceed an A4 or US letter page. You can either simply refer to the last few years, or a range of years.

Email the blog address to ian.clothier@intercreate.org with the subject 3rd Nature application.

SCANZ2013 organising team
Ian Clothier – Producer/Director; Nina Czegledy, Trudy Lane, Tengaruru Wineera – Project Executive; Mike Paulin – Art/Science Coordinator; Thilani Nissanga – Administrator.

Deadline: Sunday 12th, February, 2012

To get involved and join one of the projects send an e-mail stating your name and the project to info@tintarts.org. All  projects are free to participate although places are limited!

Please note the events Bodies in Communication and Optical Sound are nearly booked. We’ll however set up  a waiting list.

Saturday 25th of June

David Strang & Andy Prior: Mixing the City (11:30 – ~19:00)

Participants in the workshop are invited to create content for use in the bespoke Quicktime WebJay (QTWJ) environment, using field recording techniques and video capture within the surrounding area. You will explore a range of field recording techniques and abstract video capture, using various sonic arts and video arts methods, to create A/V rhythms which are then manipulated/controlled within QTWJ.  The recorded material will be added to a database and will continue to be used by any QTWJ workshops/users in the future.

This content will then be used by the participants within QTWJ to create a live performance of sound and visuals at the end of the day.

http://www.davidstrang.co.uk, http://x2.i-dat.org/~ap/2010PhD

[fully booked] Stephen Fortune: Computational Crystallomancy (14:30 – ~19:00)

This workshop brings the occult methods of crystal gazing into proximity with the DIY entry point to ubiquitous computing.

This workshop will combine the arduino and psychological experiments for discerning trance states. The arduino is the amateur-enthusiast avenue into sensor aware environments. Those psychological experiments used bodily traces to determine the subjects inner state of mind. Both will be combined to see what data sampling all elements of the crystallomancy circuit can tell us about the computational modelling of reality that ubiquitous computing entails.

This project is at it’s conceptual inception and is looking for people who are interested in how reality can be made sensible to computers and those who would have an interest is seeing how intuitive practices like crystal gazing reconcile with the rational & cognitive disposition of computational culture. Introductory arduino (input feeds) and processing data feeds will be explored.

More information: http://thereisnowetware.wordpress.com/

[fully booked] Deep Media Research: Bodies in Communication (11:00 – ~19:00)

Deep Media Research develops simple prototypes to explore the vast field of infra-verbal bodily communication. In our workshop we will explore how we can use sensors to measure signals of our body and actuators to make those signals perceivable by others. We’ll make use of simple electronics, the Arduino microcontroller, and some code and are looking for beginners and intermediates who want to be introduced into body sensing (galvanic skin response, pulse, …), experiment with actuators and/or help to develop the project further.

More information: http://deepmediaresearch.org

[fully booked] Dominick Allen: Optical Sound (14:00 – ~ 19:00)

Optical Sound will be a practical, hands on workshop building and exploring optical microphones (devices that turn fluctuations in light into sound) for use in field recordings, performances etc. Everybody attending the workshop will have the chance to build their own optical microphone which they can take away with them for a small donation. The workshop will be followed by an audio-visual performance to explore the possibilities of these microphones. Everybody is welcome and no previous experience of electronics is necessary

Saturday 25th of June (~19:00+)

Workshop performances and TINT BBQ. All welcome!

Sunday 26th of June

Madi Boyd: Performing Screen (11:00 – ~18:00)

This project in progress is to create a robotic puppet like screen which will interact with the film projected onto it in order to create an intense dialogue. The screen will be composed, eventually, of hundreds of small independently moving parts. The parts will be controlled by servos so that they move in all directions in an organic but choreographed formation. They will appear to react to and be sculpted by the film. This performative dialogue between the projection and the screen will extend into a tussle in their attempts to shape each other, creating a new dynamic form in the process.

This project is at the concept/experimental stage and invite interested artist and technicians to partake researching several aspects needed to complete this work. These include: materials which will be able to move effectively, materials which reflect and absorb light in varying amounts, programming/controlling up to 80+ servo motors.

http://www.madiboyd.com

Open Lab (11:00 – ~18.00)

The previous days projects to be continued if required. In addition the Apiary Studios will be open for everyone to bring their own subject of tinkering to join the collaborative exploration. All projects welcomed!