The “Soldering-iron & Code” -workshop started a series of exploration of reactive space & intaraction within the Design Laboratories program of University of Lapland in Rovaniemi.

A bunch of audiovisual media MA students gathered for an introduction to physical computing with me for a couple of days. We started with the breadboard and NANDsynth for quick intro on electronics followed by bit of a soldering. Next day we hooked Arduinos and controlled the synth. Routing serial from Arduino to Flash lead to bit of a frustration - one simple-to-configure proxy to this one and I _will_ click the donate button. Some rescued toys from flea market got gutted and suddenly we had the inevitable creative chaos on the table. Here it got bit messy. I still have the tendency of focusing on emerging details when overall structure is needed.

The enthusiasm of the participants brought that. We decided to do make a demo at oh-so-lovely Kauppayhtiö -club on saturday evening.  Accelerometer in an eightball was connected via Arduino to Quartz Composer on laptop which rendered the Magic Eightball -answers on retro-TV for curious audience. Hours of fun, for ages 18andUp. The Shy-guy rotated towards anyone who approached it with trembling behaviour. Surprisingly humane piece of plastic. Few bent toys to play with and we had nice demo set-up for the evening crowd.

I had great time. Quartz Composer was a new environment for me so I learned a lot too. Superior multilayer rendering of visuals compared to Jitter / Gem. Definitely my new weapon-of-choice for next resource-intensive graphics. Thanks TomTom and Aku for great intro on that one.

Apologies for anyone who feel this was a waste of their time. I’ll try to improve my workshopping skills with every iteration but every setup is unique. This one was bit too unstructured from my part. Still, I feel the flux nature enabled other opportunities. Strict format is not always the best either.

Thank you Rovaniemi. Thank you friends, the old & the new. I’ll be back.

• flickr set

GOSH - summit & workshop was one intensive gathering of diverse thinkers & makers around the still fluid topic of open hardware. Three-day summit followed the five-day workshops and indeed grounded open hardware from various angles from practices to licensing.


Above Brian Evans’ Modified Pico, Arduino™ compatible microcontroller we managed to assamble.

The workshops were run by the participants and catered us rich buffét of ongoing open hardware projects, hands on tools&skills sessions and discussions. The summit program gathered more experts around and presented more academic insight on the subject matter. Inspiring, almost overwhelming in the middle of spectacular Canadian Rockies.

Ravi, Gisle, Susan, Jon, Chris, Bengt, me, Jürgen, Daniel, Jessica, Brian, Alex (out of >30 of us)

Some of us hit our heads together for tackling the somewhat complex issue of open hardware repository and the licensing schemes that it would require. With the help of Ravi’s knowledge on copyright law and trademarks we gradually sketched down a membership based community where different license options are available for OSH -projects & products. Community would be open to everyone who accepts the terms of use. Documented open hardware projects would available in three different categories, free (no limitations), open (eg. for non-commercial use) and accessible (for proprietary, but useful information like electronic manufacturers documentation). Jürgen further consulted CC lawyer for valuable improvements for this proposed model. Community was named as OHANDA - Open Hardware and Design Alliance. Ohanda would act as a certificate, like Fairtrade™, on open hardware products, in quite the opposite way from the warranty-void stickers, challenging and provoking for opening the product and improving it.

Hopefully soon something will be up and running for dialogue and development with the rest of all you who are interested. For now, GOSH!-wiki is the forum.

Pop-up Landscape Phase-1 was wrapped up in Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol with a seminar and workshop day. We got good feedback and encouragement for continuation and some nice presentations from artist Duncan Speakman, Dr. Simone Abram and Dr. Constance Fleuriot. Big thanks for the Peter Tattersall for wikiplanning workshop, pmstudios, participants and the Finnish Institute in London once again from their support.

Tables were full when young makers of New York started beeping with solar energy and electronic sound. Yet again without prior knowledge of electronics they quickly figured out the breadboard logic and the basics of solar energy. The duration and the complexity was almost perfect this time since no soldering was involved. In the end of the afternoon we recruited bit older kids as well.

Playkka is being exhibited in New York Design week as a part of Playful - New Finnish Design exhibition at Meatpacking district until monday 18th. The Finnish invasion spreads around the district in cargo containers filled with fresh projects from Finnish designers with a focus on play and creativity as elementary forces in human life.

Apart from my screen almost melting under the sun, the first day was well nice. Lot of people flaneured on the streets in über-trendy Meatpacking and bumped in to us & our containers. Still bit struggling to filter genuine interest from many Americans who seem to be so amazed after every sentence said so not quite sure is Playkka really that wonderful. Tomorrow we give a solar sound workshop for kids with Dan. Bit worried on the clouds in the sky and the grim forecast.

The nice but sweaty first day got a perfect ending in a rooftops of Williamsburg chilling with good friends.

Pop-up landscapes toured to rural town of Mação in Portugal for set of workshops and showing the installation. Mação is situated between the transitional climate zones of the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The area is famous for its pre-historic art examples some of which are the richest in Portugal and in Europe. Over the last ten years the region has suffered from severe droughts, which have radically changed the landscape. In addition the area not only suffers from a physical desertification but also from human desertification. The region has approximately 8,000 people, spread over 400 sq kilometers, the majority of which are over 50+ years. In the 50’s and 60’s a combination of influences resulted in massive migration towards Lisbon and decreased use of land for pasture and agriculture.

In Mação we focused on developing a set activities with members of the community (senior citizens, master archaeology students and primary school children). The aim of these activities was to gain a greater awareness of how a community would transmit a sense of its place. For example, what sites would it choose to show to someone as an example or memory of Mação? What changes have occurred in the town? What have people been happy to lose? What would they like to preserve?

Working with the photo archives collected by the Museu de Arte Pré-Histórica e do Sagrado no Vale do Tejo we used these images as a starting point. We selected a general vista image taken in the town 70-100 years ago and along with other archive images used discuss with the senior citizen their memories of changes in the town. We also asked the senior citizens to select a place in Mação their favorite place, which they would like to preserve and show to others from outside of the town. Five sites were selected from which we choose one of the most popular the Praça Gago Coutinho to work on in more detail.

Taking the Praça Gago Coutinho as the main site selected by the senior citizen, we presented the archaeology students with two snap shots -  one past image and one current day image. We also presented the project aims to the student and asked them to carry out a visual analysis of the present day image from an archaeological perspective. This resulted in a deeper awareness of some of the key transformations that occurred in Mação. The analysis also provided the stimulus for discussing the students experiences and personal accounts of living in Mação.

Taking the current day image of the Praça Gago Coutinho and blowing this up to A2 size we described to the young people the process of how this image was selected by the senior citizens and analyzed by the archaeology students. We asked the young people to image that they were living in 2109 and sending a postcard from Mação of this spot. What from their perspective what would survive in this site, what kind of culture would exist and lifestyles would exist?

The outcomes of the workshops and our period of research and development in Mação was exhibited in a beautiful former primary school. We used the archive images, current day photo impressions and the young people’s future imaginations of Mação as the timelines, which we played in the Pop-Up Installation. Exhibition was a success, opening apparently new perspectives even for the city mayor. Most importantly we managed to connect different generations of the citizens together around the theme of their environment.

Portugal and Mação treated us with warm hospitality. Special thanks to Casa Velha’s Donna Mena for The Food. Obrigado e adeus.

• pop-up-landscapes flickr feed
• my flickr feed

Artists in the Archipelago (AiA) delegation of ours toured eastern Skåne in Sweden for a couple of days, visiting their Konstrundan. Dating back to 1968 ÖSKG Konstrundan has grown to a nine-day event and draws tens of thousands of visitors every year. The concentration of artists and crafters in relatively small area is amazing although they represent quite a traditional set of methods and subjects. Newer artforms are missing, even photography and video seem to be too contemporary or perhaps just more difficult to sell. Mixed media and installation art are also mere curiosities in the pictoresque gardens.

Indeed, life seems overly happy under blossoming magnolias of Skåne. When the world around us is spinning downward in ecological and economical crisis, there is little of that visible in their art. Shouldn’t reflection of the world be integral part of art? Beauty and hope are absolutely necessary but we should not escape the reality. Not us, we who can make the invisible visible and document our time with so diverse voices.

But beauty we saw, some great humor as well, Sven-Åke Ekbergs amazing miniatures to name a favorite of mine (Kassa Balans, Cash Balance, pictured above). And the houses and gardens, tasteful, rustic and prosperous, just like in the magazines.

But just when we are about to announce in unison our intentions to move all here immediately and live happy ever after eating apples we gaze out to the open Baltic Sea and one thing stands out. There is no archipelago! Welcome to Finland we say.

Still, a word of appreciation, Thank you Skåne for all the positive energy we got from you.

Pixelache! Wow. All those people. Brilliant! What can I say. Massive! Say no more. Suits you Sir! Until next time, it’s all here:

• los postos blogos
• los videos
• los fotos mediasocial

Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

www.pop-up-landscapes.net
www.hangar.org

[TBC]

The formal manifesto:

The Climate Hack workshop brought together a team of researchers, designers and artists dedicated to reframing the international political climate using means well-outside the traditional political rhetoric. Driven by the often-absurd nature of politics and the collective creativity often generated from equally absurd artistic mediums, the workshop rallied around the task of hacking Cotton Candy machines. Custom and hacked electronics, connected to live political news and weather feeds, informed and animated the project.

We have documented several different methods for manipulating candy floss which we discovered during the workshop and during the several weeks of experimentation that took place beforehand. The methods that we will be demonstrating at Transmediale Salon include the Candy Floss Tornado, Candy Floss Crystals and Candy Robot.

In my own words - it was even better. The dynamic Kibu team (Adam Somlai-Fischer, Melinda Sipos, Eszter Bircsak, Christopher Baker, Marton Juhasz and Simon Forgács) had done an outstanding prep-work by hacking and experimenting with candy floss more than a month prior to the workshop so it was a flying start. Massimo Banzi & John Nussey from tinker.it and Bengt Sjölen from Teenage Engineering injected their experience in and we were boogie. The Pixelache posse from Deep North, included Juha Huuskonen, Aleksi Pihkanen, Miska Knapek and myself.

Intense three-day period prior to TM09 event involved climate data research, both environmental and political, candy floss machine hacking, robotics, design work and loads of hot sugar in the air. We experienced through numerous possibilities how to route external data in to the process. Due to somewhat chaotic and most importantly quite slow process of floss cumulation, none of the tests produced results that would be realistic to realise in workshop context: automated, data driven floss making that is. That did not let us down one bit. We continued with three discoveries that emerged from the process.

1. Sugar Crystal Accumulation (SCA™)

Chris discovered interesting and more controllable side effect on our floss process. The spinning sugar cumulates to any surface around the machine. By gradual motion of the capturing surface, any realtime data could produce fragile layers of melt sugar.

2. Sugar Twister and the Disasters (< - free glam-punk band name, anyone?)

Aleksi, our aerodynamics engineer developed a turbine cylinder, which with the power of two candy floss machine, produced enough lift to make continuous stream of floss propel up. This alone was quite an aesthetic performance and a subtle reminder of fragility and systems, but even more so with our tagline: "Energy Talk = Sweet Hot Air" made a link to the absurd "Carbon Jargon" in the times when action is needed.

3. The Church of Carbon Syndicate

Since the act of making your Candy Floss and eating it is quite rewarding performance, can this be used as symbolic action for our cause. Yes. Based on your carbon footprint, even an average, your debt to the planet can be calculated. If you are not exhausting the earths resources, you get a dose of sugar that produces normal size candy floss. Anything more wasteful increases your “measure of sugar” leading to lengthy process of contemplation when the floss is building up, not to mention the confrontation and eating of the mother-of-all-sugar-döners on your hand.

For me, the candy floss as a material and as a process combined with the theme of (political) climate discourse were most rewarding as performances. We were quite aware of our climate debt just as a result of flying to Berlin, with the little extra consumption of the hot machines themselves, let alone the impact from the sugar industry. However, creative beings, us all basically, will need to live and to meet in order to innovate. Billions of us will still more likely stumble on some quite serendipitious environmental innovations than all the scientist in the world. Otherwise we just end up in the grim deduction of “killing ourselves for saving the planet” as pointed out in the Environment 2.0 talk in when the meaningfulness of artists solving the climate crisis was questioned.

Thanks again for all the sweet fellow hackers and see you in Pixelache09 for continuation!