boxel » workshop

Craftivism videos

chris — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:00:30 +0000

So after over 2 years, I’ve finally put my videos up from the Craftivism exhibition that I was a part of here. Enjoy

Craftivism workshop

chris — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:42:02 +0000

As part of the Craftivism project at the Arnolfini, I’m taking part in a workshop with GOTO10 called /mode + v noise. Using Python and Supercollider, we’re gonna be making our own software sound synthesiser and chat bots that will be used to manipulate and turn chat on an IRC channel into a music score.

S-OS swappsies

chris — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:40:18 +0000

Ran a workshop and Plymouth Art Centre today with some young artists. Using gps data and linking it into Google maps, we documented the social exchanges that take place on a typical Saturday morning in and around Plymouth. You can see the fruit of their labours here.

Respect Festival….again

chris — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:38:46 +0000

Along with Jamie, Steve, Becky and Justin, I did another v-mob workshop today which was the second one as part of the Respect Festival. We were tucked away up on a balcony in the Guildhall but despite that, it still went really well. I did have a couple of problems with a kid throwing himself down the stairs and another forgetting that he had asthma when asked if he would take part in some fitness tests, and then collapsing whilst having a bit of an attack but I guess I just bring that sort of thing out in people. I didn’t really get to see much of the stuff going on but people who did the workshop seemed to have good things to say about it so I guess it was a success. But, the highlight of the day has got to be seeing Romain Larrieu, Lilian Nalis and Anthony Barness. They were sat on the stairs behind us watching the videos from the Efford workshop. After getting over the initial shock of seeing them, I was gonna ask them if they would like to take part in the workshop but we got a bit busy. Fortunately, Tom was there at the time with his mate doing a workshop with us so he went up and asked for their autographs.

Anyways, I think the videos will be put on the v-mob mini site but you might need to give it a couple of days for them to be loaded up. Below is some footage of the opening procession I managed to shoot before we got underway.
Procession

Efford Moves

chris — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 16:52:14 +0000

I’ve just done another v-mob workshop. This one was with Sue Smith as part of the Effordmoves project. Along with Steve and Kate, I provided the technical expertise to help the children shoot their dancing on video mobile phones and then edit them. It was quite intense towards the end coz even though we were there for 6 hours as usual everything really kicked in in the last coupla hours. The videos are likely to be online in the next coupla days so keep checking the website.

Respect Festival

chris — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 10:40:55 +0000

Did a v-Mob taster workshop last night as part of the Respect Festival. Toby, a street dancer, came in and did some stuff while the kids filmed him on mobile phones. We then showed them how to edit the footage, add a backing track and then convert it back to 3GP format. You can see Toby doing his thing whilst being filmed here.

v-Idol

chris — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:26:22 +0000

I recently did a series of workshops for iDAT with some summer schools shooting videos using mobile phones. Based on Googleidol, the kids picked tracks and then “mimed” a video. You can see the results here.

Arduino workshop

chris — Sat, 27 May 2006 15:41:08 +0000

I was on an Arduino workshop for the last 3 days run by Toby of C6. We were split into pairs with me working with Bill Wroath a local artist. With the luck I had with the Simontron, I was really looking forward to picking up some tips. The first day was spent playing about with components such as buzzers and LEDs to get a feel for the board and the programming language. On the second day we got to make the board interact with a Processing program on our computers which was good fun. Unfortunately it was all one way and we didn’t get to make the computer “control” the board which is what I really wanted to do as on the final day we had to put our new found skills into practice and make a project. Bill and I decided to take a live video feed and turn it into sound so we rigged up a speaker to the Arduino board and used the brightness in the video to dictate the sounds played. We had a bit of a scare when near the show and tell time a load of the code went missing but that was only coz I mixed control-x up with control-c!! We decided to call it budgie coz by chucking a cloth over the camera it stopped chattering, a bit like shutting a budgie up at the end of the day. We’re looking to expand on it and have it use the the colours in the video feed instead of the level of light – if we had more time at the end we probably would have had a go at doing that.

There was some pretty cool projects done by the others in the group. Mario and Steve made a 3-d etch-a-sketch, Chelle and Jamie took a feed from Arch-OS and turned it into sound, Katina and her partner used LEDs to either smile or frown depending on the light levels, Hannah and Justin took toys apart and with a tilt sensor made some sort of crying-mutant-thing and Luke did a Flash thing that allowed you to control the board over the net which I think he’s hoping to develop further.

The workshop as a whole was brilliant and Arduino is a great board to work with. If you want to have a go at physical computing then you can’t really go wrong with £10 for the board considering the price of similar bits of kit on the market. Seeing as I’ve already got 2 Wiring boards I’m gonna stick with that for now but if I need more then I know what I’ll be ordering.

Listen to the budgie

Arduino board in action

Cornish Film Festival

chris — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:09:10 +0000

This weekend was really busy. Spent all day Friday and Sunday afternoon at the Cornish Film Festival doing a workshop for the uni called v-mOb which involved using mobile phones to shoot video. I was allocated micro-movies whilst some of the others did stop frame animation under the title of micro-mation. Considering we only had 2 hours in each workshop, the stuff that was done, in particular, by the ~~scholl~~ school children on Friday was brilliant.

So being away for 2 days meant that Saturday was rushed. Shopping, ferrying Tom to and from football and constructing a bed for our loft somehow manged to get done. No wonder I’m knackered!

Processing

chris — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 07:30:36 +0000

I’ve just done a 2 day course on Processing at the Watershed in Bristol as part of the Connectors which is a week long event organised by the Sonic Arts Network. Processing is an open source programming language that lets you to create and manipulate images, sound and video. It was quite easy to pick up and the install came with a load of examples but I needed someone who I could ask dumb questions. It’s quite powerful and can even control external devices but it’s not quite up to Director yet.