• Chair: Areti Galani
• Maria Chatzichristodoulou aka Maria X, Doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths, lead a session including researchers in the field of music / instrument making. She talked about Performing Intimacy, situating digital practice in new venues

• • Kazuhiro Jo (University of Tokyo)- Talked about sinewave orchestra, of making a space and a technology for others to perform in/with. Jo is between the cultures, and explains that few artists in Japan dont write in english, and as such they dont figure in the tome of known works.
  • Adam Parkinson (Newcastle University) Talked about how he is designing new interfaces for him to perform as a ‘laptop musician’ that maybe curators in the context of live music is the job of the promoter.
  • Miguel Ortiz Perez (Queens University Belfast)Talked about using sensors in his musicianship, trying not to get hung up on the theory of the new music as much as making music that is fun (ie circuit bent / toy hacking  / making).

Finished trialling my light-responsive objects that I developed at the AA2A placement and the ISIS Arts mini-residency. My motivation was to make a work that encoded knowledge of natural systems, to create a gentle empathy in the viewer. Over time these devices have transformed themselves in my eyes into pets, or dependant creatures. Although simple, they are evocative, they have metaphorical attachment points for anthropomorphism.Some of the verbal reactions to the work are that they are “sweet”, “cute”, “life-like”. So as well as a model system to learn about interaction, they are also a site of inquiry into human relationships with machines.
Approximately thirty people came to the work during ‘Feeding Times” in tic space at the Fine Arts School of Newcastle University. This was part of Connecting Principle2008 event. As the theme was Dialogue, it was apt that this gave me the opportunity to discuss the work, its future directions and get feedback from an diverse audience.

The work is a series of light producing and responsive devices. By having more than one, a feedback loop comes into being (emerges?), where the movement of one causes changes in the local light environment that produces a movement in the other, ad infinitum……

In this first installation, the 3 arduino devices share power through a mains powered usb hub and it is apparent that there are fluctuations in the power supply. This could be removed by separate power supplies, but this would remove some of the glitchyness and perhaps the idiosyncrasies that make this work appealing.

video LightResponsiveDevice

Image via Wikipedia

Whilst I didnt get to BarcampLondon last week, I was present at some fairly interesting conversations and seminars.

Monday night was the inaugural meeting, or pilot meeting of SuperMondaySomethings at the Beehive Research Center at Newcastle University. Whilst it has a strong focus on open source, I think the main thing is dialogue. The turnout was a pleasing 20 or so IT enthusiasts, with Pete Hindle, Derrick Welsh and I as the ‘digital artists’.

Looks to be fun, first Monday of the month, theres also a Googlegroup that is linked from the main site

Super Mondays is a strong and vibrant community of IT enthusiasts based in The North East of England. We meet up once a month for a range of IT user group meetings and some unstructured discussions.

There is no membership, no fees and no rules….the community is basically undefined! If you want to attend then just come along.

You can find out more here:

http://www.supermondays.org