PIFproject Archives - Page 15 of 17

DIY aerial mapping by Cindy Regalado

In this two-part series of workshops participants will learn the art and science of DIY aerial mapping using kites: fly a kite, map an area of land, learn how to make a composite aerial photograph using MapKnitter.org, how to interpret and use aerial photos, and learn from examples of how DIY mapping has been used around the world by the Public Laboratory for Open Technology & Science community.

NDVI analysis of NIR aerial photograph over Regent’s Park, London. UK. Warmer colours = more vigour growth.

In Do-It-Yourself aerial mapping Part 1 we’ll learn how to use kites to gather aerial photographs over the surrounding area. We’ll use both an ordinary camera and a DIY Near Infrared (NIR) camera to capture data on plant health. No prior experience required!
What to bring: wind breaker as protection from the elements; sunglasses (we’ll be staring up at the sky a lot!); sunscreen and/or hat (that won’t fly away!); a water bottle; a notebook; a camera (on phone works) to document our adventure. Optional: an SD card to collect your own photos.

In Do-It-Yourself aerial mapping Part 2 (indoors) we will learn how to stitch together and interpret the images that we collected in Part 1 of the workshop. Bring your laptop.

Cindy Regalado is part of Public Laboratory for Open Technology & Science: a community that develops and applies open source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. As an open community of contributors from around the world, they collaboratively build a set of experimental open source tools and a network of local groups. They are creating an open data archive and free and open source software (from map making to spectral analysis). The platform publiclab.org helps them to build collaborations, practical knowledge, and provides organisational capacity.

Hack your own food!

So, we are told the best food grows on the shelves of superhiperultramega markets. And that eco/bio/organic is the best? Well, here’s the rest of the truth: we are literally surrounded by nutritionally very well rounded wild edibles, which can be prepared in any culinary way. But the rule is that the simplest is the best! This time we will leave cockroaches, larvae and other bugs behind (they are more or less edible by the way) and will concentrate on wild vegetables and herbs.

The aim of the node is to get closer to the plants, edible or not (all of the poisonous ones are very medicinal indeed, but there is a thin line between their medicinal and poisonous effect).

And, yes, did anybody mention Fly Agaric and Belladona? Some connections with the quite recent use of these Old World shamanic psychoactives in the region not that far away from the PIFcamp base will be mentioned, too.

The node is led (or at least he tries do it (t)his way) by Dario Cortese, an agricultural dissident and a proud dog pack leader. In his spare time he even wrote a few books on the subject.

Protect Me From The Future by KOBAKANT

Hannah Perner-Wilson and Mika Satomi from KOBAKANT will be joining PIFcamp this year to design and build “all-natural wearable technology”. Merging natural and technical materials and mechanisms to produce a new style of technological cladding – wearables that will protect us from the future.

We will hunt and gather nature’s treasures from the Soca valley and investigate how we can use these resources to build a new category of wearable technology. Technology inspired by the properties, qualities, textures, colours, rules and smells of the outdoors. These wearables will make us want to run out into the wild, to make noise and take action, to express our concerns through moving our bodies in all kinds of nature.

We will investigate, make, talk, choreograph and perform!

1) INVESTIGATE nature’s ability to make sound – both analog and digital

Explore following concepts with our hunted and gathered materials:
– Resistive and piezoresistive properties of materials
– Piezoelectric properties of materials (solar cell, temperature difference, physical strain….)
– Electromagnetic pickups (generating and amplifying small voltages)

Experiment with different sound circuits:
– Those from Bastl Instruments
– We will order some 555 timers and ATtinys
– Participants please bring stuff too!

Make things loud!
– How can we amplify these sounds so that they are heard? Especially outdoors.

2) MAKE the results of our investigation wearable

– Design wearables so that we can make sound with the movements of our bodies
– Make these designs durable so that they can be worn and performed

3) TALK about nature, human nature, technology and the built environment

We will gather around the fire to share and discuss:
– What is nature, what is natural?
– How are humans and nature intertwined?
– What do we want to make noise about?
– Who are we performing for?

Some proposed texts for reading:
Donna Haraway: Staying with The Trouble
Richard Sennett: Together

4) CHOREOGRAPH a performance (a ritual, a protest, a march, a dance, a game, a movement…)

Any choreographers and performers at PIFcamp? We would love your help and input on this part!

5) PERFORM on the last day of PIFcamp

FAQ:

Q: Who can join this node?
A: You must hunt and gather, learn and share. Then you may join.

Q: What do you mean by “natural”?
A: Good question. Lets discuss.

Q: What do you mean by “make noise and take action”?
A: We will discuss together what we want to make noise and take action on. This discussion will inform what costumes we build and the choreography of our performance.

Q: What materials and tools can I contribute to this project?
A: Bring yourselves, bring your bodies, bring circuits that make sound and materials that conduct. Bring your sewing needles and pocket knives. Your hiking boots and bathing suits.

Current Dictionary Definitions:

wearable – “an item that can be worn”
cladding – “a covering or coating on a structure or material”
technical – “of, involving, or concerned with applied and industrial sciences”
natural – “existing in or caused by nature; not made or caused by humankind”

More about the project.

Digital Naturalism with Andy Quitmeyer

Andrew Quitmeyer’s node will incorporate concepts and activities from his work in Digital Naturalism. The goal is to discover ways that DIY technology, created in the wild, can let us explore nature in new ways. The key relationship in this work is between field biologists (of any level) and technologists (of any ability), thus many of our activities will involve hybrid artistic and scientific examinations of the wilderness surrounding us. For instance we may develop biological tools for studying nearby creatures, and then adapt these into artistic devices for continued exploration and sharing of this phenomena.

Helping lead our investigation will be Digital Naturalism’s four main design guidelines (illustrated examples here).

The first is Behavioural Immersion, and looking at projects and activities that connect our senses and actions to those of wilderness creatures. For example, participants might be interested in making wearable scientific probes can map our senses to the activity of nearby ants, or birds, or fish.

Open Endedness encourages creating tools for general exploration increasing chances of serendipitously stumbling across interesting new phenomena. Making simple capacitive touch sensor probes that we can connect to nearby flora, for instance, lets us openly poke and probe novel questions in the environment. We might also program generalised tools, such as robotic arms, to poke and probe different ecological systems in multiple ways.

Technological Agency seeks to ensure our tools are open, understandable, and manipulable. By making our own devices together, and taking apart, or modifying existing tools, we can increase our collective ability to extend ourselves with these tools.

Finally, Contextual Crafting encourages shrinking our gap between the workspace and where we employ the objects we create. At PIFcamp we will, of course, be building our tools and devices in nature, and we will also be studying ways to harmoniously adapt workspaces to various natural features. Creating light-weight, transformable organisation units, and modular work surfaces that can be carried, or even incorporated into one’s clothing, is a goal we continually work on. Adaptable, portable, and wearable studios also lend themselves to exploring less utilitarian (and more fun) designs for keeping tools always close at hand.

No previous experience in anything is necessary, just be alive and excited.

Op-amps, modular synths and jams!

Here is what Václav Peloušek from BASTL Instruments will be doing at this years PIFcamp!

Václav will focus on trying to develop a new project / prototype on the spot together with other participants. He would provide already existing tools from the Bastl portfolio which can catalyse certain types of real world interfacing by providing simple translation interfaces from sensoric input into motoric, sound & light outputs. With such tools artificial ecosystems could be easily created and reconfigured. The general goal would be to not get stuck at the technological reality of inventing the tools but fully use the potential of existing modular synth tools which already provide the extreme flexibility. This would be an extension of topics he dealt with in his master thesis.

The general topic is using Control Voltages as an universal representation of anything in the world. Such voltage could be processed in many different ways by using a modular synth. This basically means analog computing.

He will also offer introductory course into analog computing with op-amps (operational amplifiers) and provide same basic insight into reading analog synth schematics.

Further his personal goal will be initiating more musical situations / jam sessions and developing new ways to play music together.

Don’t forget to bring your instruments!

The Hacktivated Reactive Network by Luka Frelih

The Hacktivated Reactive Network will take on signals from the real world environment of the PIFcamp and its participants, react to them trough live-coded scripts and feed them back to the camp trough screens and kinetic sculptures. The physical input and output devices speaking the OSC protocol will connect trough Noise Make-up Language (NML), a web livecoding bridge, and form a living, pulsating and growing network inhabiting the camp site, its computers and browsers, not to mention the minds and bodies of campers.

Continuing from last year’s camp, we will be making more input and output modules based on ideas from kinetic sculpture, DIY and kids robotics, modular synthesizers and the beautiful natural surroundings. We will combine humble potentiometers, servo motors and microcontrollers, glue and sticks into abstract expression carriers capable of transforming gestures into numbers and back again. This year we will also try to develop good ways to use other projects sounds as inputs. Perhaps we’ll even manage to give the network a voice and sound. Join in!

Lynne Bruning: Intersection of Technology and Craft

Conductive thread, conductive fabric, velostat, Arduino, breadboad, Attiny, LEDs, Surface Mount LED, esistor, vibration board, Maxbotix range finder, 3V coin cell battery, battery holder, multimeter and scissors

A project by Lynne Bruning, creator of exclusive wearable art, eTextiles and adaptive technologies, will explore the whats, whys and hows of the connections among differing systems.

Exploration of the synaptic junction between electronics and textiles will lead to the development of new hardware and textile methodology for eTextiles, adapted traditional electronics hardware thru soldering, circuit making and prototyping, to integrate, fuse and interweave with traditional textiles.

Open Source Estrogen project

Open Source Estrogen explores the various ways that estrogen performs a molecular colonization in our society, bodies, and ecosystems. Estrogen is the most ancient of sex hormones. Therefore the mutagenic effects of environmental (xeno) estrogens disrupt species across all animal taxa, including humans. In response to our collective mutagenesis (becoming alien), the project uses DIY/DIWO estrogen-hacking protocols as a way of detecting & extracting slow violence.

Open Source Estrogen is a project by Mary Maggic and Pippo Pruscha.

A Wearable Studio Practice by Hannah Perner-Wilson

Hannah Perner-Wilson has been working on A Wearable Studio Practice project since 2015. The project packages the work environment of a typical Electronic Textiles studio into a series of portable items that can be worn or carried on the body. Providing the functionalities normally contained in static furniture and the architectural infrastructure of the studio/lab, these items allow the electrical engineer to become nomadic in her or his practice.

Now is a perfect time for electrical engineers to become mobile with their practice. It’s not just electronic parts that have become smaller and smaller, but also many of the tools used in electrical engineering (power supply, multimeter, oscilloscope, programmers… ) have become more compact and portable. Many practices closely related to hardware such as software/programming and CAD/design have been liberated from static infrastructures because laptop computers – their primary tools – are powerful and lightweight. Co-working spaces and FabLabs offer temporary workspaces all over the world. There is an awareness of the benefits of local production and site-specific development.

More about the project is available here.

PIFproject: Hacking the tuning fork

Hacking the tuning fork is a project by Alexander Zaklynsky.

At PIFcamp I will be working on a project which will be developed for my current master program in ArtScience at the Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag, NL. I will bring a couple tuning forks which I have made from Aluminum as well as some modular electronics I am currently building at Bastl in Brno. I aim to build some devices for the activation of the tuning forks as well as manipulation of the audio for composing interactive audioscapes. Another part of my work is about natural soundscapes so I will bring various mics and a hydrophone for the river. Along with my current projects I am also excited to learn and absorb as much as possible from the offerings at PIF and see how my ideas evolve as a result.