think make playground

Penguin catches fish

2011-11-17T14:29:00.001Z

Knitted glove puppet with hand-made sensors in flippers, controlling its on-screen avatar. See http://www.itknit.com for details: early prototype glove puppet used as game controller.

Life Project Exhibition at Space

2011-10-13T23:29:00.000+01:00

Debut for "life but not" creatures in Space this evening, showing off their craftwork, flashing lights, squeaks and tweets. http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/whats-on/courses/openlab-the-real-game-of-life-project http://lifeproject.spacestudios.org.uk/ CreaturesHabitat Playing with exhibitsCreatures tweeting

IT KNIT

2011-10-09T22:28:00.000+01:00

http://www.itknit.com

Vibrobot Saturday

2011-10-09T16:43:00.000+01:00

Homage to Evil Mad Scientist. We scuppered old motors from toy cars instead of using mobile pagers. The manufactured track is from a Hexbug Nano set.

Flawed Code 39 scarf...

2011-10-08T09:57:00.000+01:00

More experimental interactive knitting But look here - someone managed to do it successfully a few years ago - LK lendorff.kaywa.com - with space invaders!

Knitted QR Code

2011-09-22T00:10:00.000+01:00

Created for The Life Project

pH ART

2011-07-12T10:58:00.000+01:00

A day at Chesterton Primary showing Year 2 kids how to make their own litmus paper using red cabbage. Chop and boil the cabbage for 10 min, then paint the dark red juice onto blotting paper. Leave it to dry, or warm very gently in oven. When it's dry, you can cut it into strips. Children painting with lemon and bicarb Use the strips for testing various liquids - try milk, oven cleaner,

Rude Cats

2011-06-11T23:59:00.000+01:00

Clips from toy theatre project, using TAGS hidden in the puppets and an RFID reader in the cottage. The cats make different comments depending on who approaches. Lots of fun making puppets and voicing cats. Using Processing to play audio files, triggered via Arduino (with RFID reader) connected through serial port. The cats have a range of responses for each tag, so the output is

RAT RACE

2011-05-09T00:38:00.000+01:00

Tested simple mobile app at the Digital Shoreditch Festival on Saturday 7th May, 2011. Thanks to Chris Lane for organising the event since I was remote. Rat Race links sms messages to a Flash client via SQL and PHP. Players are represented by the constantly-orbiting rats, which they feed by texting the answers to clues. This makes their rat grow bigger and faster. The game screen also

The Real Game Of Life 2011

2011-04-06T21:09:00.002+01:00

http://lifeproject.spacestudios.org.uk/ Interactive, living ecosystem of machine "life" 5/4/11 First meet-up

Run marble run

2011-03-06T01:32:00.002Z

Thanks to Renzo the Toymaker http://www.toymakingactivities.com/english/homepage.html for the original idea of making a marble run from cardboard. We built this one from cornflake packet, glue, sellotape. Designing it was fun, testing it was better.

SuperMario gets real

2010-12-12T01:16:00.049Z

Hard to explain ... but they set up their own Mario Kart Racing Game (inspired by the original) using toy cars, toy rockets for boosters (Bullet Bill), brio, lego and cushions for tracks and mushroom jumps, gold coins to collect and spiders to avoid. It was an epic race with a lively soundtrack, requiring no consoles, controllers or screens. Watching that spontaneous leap from virtual to actual

icould - choosing a games degree

2010-09-29T23:02:00.005+01:00

http://icould.com/article/choosing-a-games-degree/

Digital Toy Design

2010-07-14T11:29:00.004+01:00

This was the first year we taught Toy Design as part of the BSc Computer Games degree. Second year students were asked to undertake a small piece of research into toys, then produce their own concepts and working prototypes, using Arduino as base hardware development environment. The module focused on technical aspects rather than aesthetics. After a basic introduction to electronics - a

PaintJam

2010-07-06T00:50:00.039+01:00

It started with a fishing game. Transformed into an observation of magnets. Became a snake chasing marbles. Metamorphosed into an automated drawing tool... using metal balls. Jumped out into ovenware and lost the motor. Evolved until finally even the marbles disappeared and total human control took over. Check the video. PaintJam 2010 from Fiona French on Vimeo.

icould - career in video games

2009-12-09T22:57:00.011Z

http://icould.com/talk/are-you-considering-a-career-in-video-gaming/ Questions answered by Laura Weir, the HR Manager for Jagex and Fiona French, Course Leader for BSc Computer Games at London Metropolitan University.

The Big Woolwich TXT Game

2009-07-30T09:55:00.093+01:00

www.thinkmakeplay.co.uk/tbwtg 25th July 2009: Greenwich Heritage Centre, Woolwich Arsenal Murder or misadventure? Be a time-travelling detective and contact the spirit world using your mobile phone. You have 1 day to solve the mysteries of 3 unexplained deaths at Woolwich Arsenal... Commissioned by Stream as part of London 2012 Open Weekend in July 2009. This was a participatory art

Global Game Jam LONDON 2009

2009-02-13T13:46:00.004Z

www.thinkmakeplay.co.uk/gamejam 48 hours of innovation, creativity and experimentation: the first ever Global Gamejam comprised 1600 participants in 23 countries including USA, France, Denmark, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, South Africa, Venezuela, Norway, New Zealand, Spain, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Israel, The Netherlands ... We hosted the London event. "In a Game Jam,

Why do girls avoid us?

2009-02-12T23:08:00.061Z

French, F. (2009) Why do girls avoid us? Presentation for British Computer Society on Feb 12th, Southampton Street, London Here's a brief synopsis of some of the points: 1. Consuming not creating Although women seem to be using computers as much as men, they tend to be utilising software rather than actively developing it. 2. Back to school

Grl Gmrs Tournament

2008-10-30T11:45:00.005Z

www.thinkmakeplay.co.uk/grlgmr The Rocket, Holloway Road - Saturday 25th Oct 08 5 games, 5 winners, 1 champion Inviting all female gamers to an action-packed celebration of prowess in the virtual arena - the Grl Gmr tournament will kick-start the annual London Games Fringe, a week-long festival where you can enjoy all that is great about games and interactive entertainment. Winners 2008:

The Pink Wink Workshop

2008-09-30T23:40:00.003+01:00

Ice-breaker workshop for Women in Games 2008, 10-12 Sept at University of Warwick. I ran this with Barbara Zambrini from http://www.gamelablondon.com. We presented conference participants with the challenge of designing a new character for a new computer game. Working in teams, they were given character profile forms to fill out, with back stories to develop and details to fill in. And

Dr Zoogles Bestiary

2007-10-30T11:16:00.027Z

http://www.txt4treasure.com/ Dr Zoogle's dangerous bestiary escaped into Central London but intrepid treasure hunters tracked down some of the fiercest beasts over the weekend, during the London Games Festival Fringe. The treasure hunt ran on Saturday and Sunday 27/28th Oct 2007, from 11am. There was no time limit, and everyone who reached the warm and exciting finish received a goody bag.

Mobile Learning Adventure

2006-09-13T22:51:00.055+01:00

Emerald-funded project, therefore strictly hush-hush for copyright/IP reasons. How annoying was that. The most interesting part was a visit to Hayling College, early in March, to talk to a focus group of 11-year-olds and a selection of teachers. The original concept changed dramatically in scope after chatting to the kids, who were full of excellent ideas for mobile resources they would like

Gunpowder Park

2003-12-13T13:20:00.004Z

A development for Lee Valley Country Parks, which was part of a range of projects under the banner "Fatband Revelations". This treasure hunt was designed for school groups and park visitors - to entertain, practise team skills, simple orienteering and promote environmental awareness. Who took part? Three teams from Ponders End Youth Centre in Enfield. The teenagers had to find out

Animals on the Edge

2003-11-26T12:45:00.001Z

This treasure hunt was designed as an activity to entertain and promote communication between teams of playerstaking part in Design Challenge 2004, sponsored by DfES and Nesta Futurelab, organised by Gamelab London. Who took part? Nine Design Teams from around England. Each team included multimedia developers, teachers and students. The route was around the Thames between Charing Cross and