PIFcamp day 5

Except for the mandatory walk to the river canals Thursday was all about work. Projects had to be finalized and the finishing touches of course took longest. But everyone was feeling the hype that often happens before the deadline. Everybody is ready for the opened Saturday and all the knowledge searching visitors. Werner’s speakers play music and charge phones, Tilen’s lamp is creating outer space in the neighbour’s garden, synthesisers are plucked the all sorts of devices, Marcs laboratory is waiting to be taken out to nature and to be used for basic analysis. We put together the schedule of Saturday’s presentations, so everyone is invited to take a look at it and join us with the afternoon activities. Melancholy that often accompanies goodbyes is starting to get a hold of the campers. So please come and we’ll make the PIFcamp closure even more grand and amiable.

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Photos: Katja Goljat

PIFcamp day 4

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Till now our evenings were all about work and for some early rest, Thursday night was a welcomed exception. Roused by the camp fire our energies magically connected and formed a wonderful spirit of party. Sounds of electronic music rushed through the Soča valley, lifted our feet and swung our hips. We gladly put our working brain to rest and danced almost till dawn. Even the ones that hiked to Krnska lakes earlier in the day found enough strength to dance and chat.

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Projects are slowly coming to its finish and unfortunately so is PIFcamp. But we still have some exciting things in store! On Saturday we will prepare an open presentation for all the curious folk, and we will show our inventions to everyone who will want to see it. We are also planning on building a garden bed for which we will use all the organic waste that we gathered in the past week. What keeps us focused in this high temperatures are a lovely breeze and frequent jumps into the Soča river.

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Photos: Katja Goljat

PIFcamp day 3

Wednesday was again a working day that ended far into Thursday. Projects are coming together, and soon they will be ready to be shown at open Saturday (welcome everyone!). Although we hadn’t done any hiking today, we did gather some herbs and flowers on the nearby meadows. We used them to garnish our potatoes, which we ate with a healthy mountain air appetite. Some went on a short excursion next door – our neighbouring house is St. Josef’s church famous for its exceptional murals. After the Second World War Tone Kralj has hidden a whole bunch of antifascist and anti-Nazi simbols into them. By a strange coincidence (or maybe god’s will) the church also has a representation of St. Ljudmila, who surely looks after her disciples living next door. Even though an accident has happened on Wednesday as well. One of the girls got stung by a wasp and she got an ugly swelling. Our evening was brightened by people playing some instruments, board games were being played again and we didn’t lack beer and wine. We got a good thing going!

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Photos: Katja Goljat

Short briefing on PIFcamp nodes and participants

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Lynne:

Basics of the breadboard! Lynne is here today for everyone who wants to get into that. Once you understand this part it will make it easier for you to work with Peter and collaborate with other projects.

Dario:

Tomorrow Dario is taking a group of 10 to Krnsko lake. The trip starts at 7:30, the hike will be two and a half hours in one direction, so the whole thing will take us about six hours. We encourage people that haven’t gone on a trip, to apply. Places are limited! We will take some food with us, but you can also get something to eat at the lake.

Marc:

He is still working on his box, at the end of the week we can make some basic analysis of the surrounding material. We already tested the resistance of plants with an instrument Marc built. We can use chlorophyll that we extracted yesterday. We will also use light today, and step by step we will get a collage of tools that will enable us to look at plants from a different point of view.

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Sebastian:

Took some recordings of surroundings using headphones. He already has a small prototype board. He still has some work with different cables, but the plan is now to add three more pieces and go further in the process. People are welcomed to join!

Michael:

The multiplying cameras project is going quite well. We already have some nice photos. Photographing is taking a nice course into different directions.

Tom:

We want to make a LED canape, and note the ownership of natural environment!  We’ll try to build a frame that will help us show the environment ownership in this area.

Lavoslava:

Selfie wearables – three parts – camera with a photo cell, a glove with a trigger and a broche with a led lamp that triggers the glove. We need to improve the light, so it works in the day time. For now it’s a selfie camera for night scene!

Peter:

We were working till 5 in the morning. Fixed the filter, 9 working synthesizers! Two days of hard work. Today we’re doing the final stage, reviewing the material. We want to integrate with other projects. We plan to have journeys into the woods and connect gathered footage with synths.

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Robertina:

We have been working together on different nodes, and we want to connect them together.

Boštjan:

Finished drum sets! Today working on synthesizer. We need a midi interface synthesizers!

Tomaž:

Looking for material and pictures from the camp. The web page is already coming together!

Werner:

He’s finishing his synthesizer. It’s almost working already! Today he’s starting to work on his bluetooth speakers and connecting it with synthesizer.

Luka:

Today he’ll be starting putting up the web server, people can come and learn about it. He also started setting up the 3D printer so we can slowly start printing. If we can have some concerts and jam sessions! Nothing depressing please.

Katja:

People should bring photos to her so we can put it in an archive and also use it! We want to have as much material as possible by the end of the week.

PIFcamp – day 2

For a group of PIFcamp participants the day started early. At seven in the morning brave hikers left the camp for a nine hour hike to a nearby mountain called Travnik. The ones that left behind also had a futile day! Some of the achievements were: close to finished synthesizers that are being made as a part of Peter Edwards’s node Soča Synthesis, chlorophyll has been extracted in Mark Dusseiller’s node and a kite was let loose. We also had a bitter incident – a laptop was dropped on the ground. This was fortunately passed with hard work and good spirit, so the day ended with hanging out, more soldering, sewing and creating. We were joined by even more electronics enthusiasts and together we are looking forward to tomorrow!

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Photos: Katja Goljat

PIFcamp has begun!

Although we had already had a working weekend, Monday was an official opening of PIFcamp. After breakfast our guests presented their project and other participants introduced themselves. Some of us went for two shorter hikes guided by one of our guests Dario Cortese who is also running a food hacking node. After a busy day we finished out night eating worm dinner, playing board games and drinking beer. And some just kept on working.

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Photos: Katja Goljat