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.

Field recording

The 1st Gif below were generated with a camera modified to take photos at arbitary intervals using a tilt switch in place of the trigger button.  The camera was carried around hung over various peoples necks throughout the first day.  The 2nd Gif is from the second day as the heavens opened and hackers continued building and debugging until 5am!

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first day of PIFcamp
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working on diy projects (2nd day) as the rain starts

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

PIFcamp is almost here! Information for visitors.

A weekend is all that separates us from the beginning of the first Slovenian international hacker camp, when on location in Trenta (Soča village, house number 25) more than 50 participants will join forces and work on 12 projects from the fields of DIY electronics, circuit-bending, bio-hacking, e-textiles, wearable technologies, computer art, light interventions, food hacking and all other “ordinary” hacks of life!

We invite all, who are interested in this sort of activities, but are unable to attend for the whole week of PIFvacations, to visit us on Open Saturday (AUG 8) and join us in the activities throughout the day and PIFproject presentations.

There will also be plenty of guaranteed opportunities to converse with the unique, sagacious, resourceful and playful individuals, who participate in the camp.

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It should be noted that all PIFcamp visitors have a special 20% discount, if in the time of the PIFhappening they choose to set up their tents in the nearby Jelinc camp (tourist tax is not included in the discount). You are able to get this offer, if you bring proof of your visit to the PIFcamp, which you will receive on PIFcamp location.
Looking forward to seeing you!

Let's plant a PIFcamp web-tree!

In his project Tomaž Strgar, a graduate of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, as well as a post-graduate student on the Faculty of Arts (both in Ljubljana), who develops alternative principles of display and organization of on-line content, restores and designs smaller pieces of furniture and much more, questions the foundations of contemporary tendencies of web, technologies and society in general development.

»Web 3.Tree«

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The theoretical part will predominantly include hacking of the concepts of our web future, all of which have been accumulated under the term »Web 3.0«. We shall discuss the production of web tools and technologies, the intelligence of machines and people, the meaning of semantic web and content organizing, and visions, such as the intelligent networks of intelligent machines. As needed, we will enlist the help of Descartes, Darwin, Turing, Huxley, Hegel and other spirits to the discussion. With the help of the visitors from the interested participants of other PIFcamp projects we shall gather ideas and material to develop our PIF web tree.

Practically speaking, we shall perform a radical cut into the foundations of modern web aesthetics. A web page will no longer be a scroll, but will always – just like a poster – be visible in it’s whole; the interactive elements will following a click open a new page with same characteristics. With the combined use of standard and non-standard tools we shall plant the PIF web tree, which will function something like this. You are warmly welcome to collaborate!

More light on PIFcamp!

Another project group be mentored by Michael Murray (IE), who is an arts technologist working in the technical areas of Theatre, Circus, Music and Video with a background in electronics and computer technology and a true passion for  lighting, and Tom O’Dea (IE), a Dublin-based artist, whose work encompasses sculptural works and mixed media installation across sound, electronics and video and is currently a researcher at the Arts Technology Research Laboratory in Trinity College Dublin.

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The project aims to explore the idea of comparative rupture within the natural environment through the use of structured geometric lighting and sculptural installations, driven by data from local or networked sources. The aim of the project is to explore and deconstruct the claims towards neutrality and objectivity inherent in the data structures of the ‘hyper-real’ systems of global computing and communication technology by drawing them back into the affective and asignifying register of the natural environment.

The project will make use of various LED lighting technologies to create a system by which we can explore with other PIFcamp collaborators the effectiveness of different aesthetic strategies for reconstituting data as an affective or subjective entity.

The project also aims through collaboration to generate discussion about how a particular technology can act reflexively on the artist to shape their practice, through the setting in the natural environment, PIFcamp forces the project to coexist with elements outside the control of the technology’s parameters.

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