Beltane Fire Festival

Basket weaving with grass and rafia

Learning how to weave with grass in the Woodland Workshops at Beltane Fire Festival.

I've never camped in such cold conditions before - all the tents were covered in ice every morning.

Came back with a didgeridoo...

EMF Camp 2014

ElectroMagnetic Field 2014
Near Milton Keynes, last weekend of the school holidays.

The light saber workshop kick-started the weekend and broke the ice with all the kids - swimming pool noodles + tape.

Kite-mapping was fun - we attached a camera to a picovet hanging from string of kite and launched it from the field.  The resulting photos showed the landscape emerging every 3 seconds as the camera rose.





There was a very popular retro gaming tent where kids tried Pacman ("it's great!") and Indiana Jones pinball (I had the top score) for the first time.

A gigantic LAN tent with Free Quake for Linux; a badge made from a micro-controller with LCD screen -  TiLDA MKe -

We hammered silver rings, played with makeymakey, learned how to pick locks and tasted freshly made Dutch waffles.

Laser-cutting was cool - perspex dragons sketched on paper, drawn in Flash, exported to Inkscape and tidied up for the hardware.  These were inspired by hanging birds and mobiles.



Press comments: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/03/electromagnetic-field-camp-emfcamp-drones-arduino-burning-man

laser cut dragon pair

3D Printing Minecraft

It was Mozilla Festival on Oct 26 2013, halfterm weekend.  My children were very excited to create and then 3D print models using Minecraft as the development tool. 

The person running the PRINTCRAFT server is Paul Harter, who used to work with my old colleague Simon Schofield on Simon's art algorithms.

Clyde created an elephant which was then saved and exported as an STL file.  The original Minecraft blocks were reduced to 2mm cubes for printing on a Makerbot 2.

We snapped off the strands holding up the trunk, cleaned out his ears and he was ready to play.

Cardboard record player

 

Wood Festival 2013, DIY cardboard record player workshop from www.ifoundsound.com.  We left them on car roof but more to follow...

EMF camp 2012

The first EMF Camp (https://www.emfcamp.org/) in Pineham Park - blacksmithing, soldering, hammock-knotting, SuperCollider, lock-picking, stoves from beercans, hacking the Tilda (http://blog.emfcamp.org/) - otters running along the canal underneath the M1... 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greenrocket/sets/72157631365691028/

Basketcase

Willow basket

Proudly displaying my first attempt at weaving willow, crafted over several hours at Shambala.  Now sits in the kitchen, holding onions.  Just wait for my Wicker Man...

MAKER FAIRE 12-13 March 2011

Just back from Maker Faire in Newcastle, and it was one of my best ever festival experiences.

Kids loved ZU3D workshop - http://www.zu3d.com - where they made their own playdough models and created stop-frame animations.  Also DIY PIE (although they ran out of pastry for jam tarts), where they cut out and decorated oven gloves.  They made pin-hole cameras from beer cans, designed and created pop-up cards, built amazing marble runs from cardboard and plastic piping and empty bottles (and masses of gaffer tape), also home-made compasses from paper cups and paper clips... We never made it to the guerilla knitting zone.

Some great audio stuff, in particular Mike Cook's hexome...

BIG PIECES: El Grando the fire-breathing dragon was pretty hot, there was a noisy robot fighting arena + Arc Attack show.

Fun pieces: the robot toilet cruising around outside the venue, illuminator imaginator pictures from glowstix, chainmail makers and a giant cardboard spider over a giant cardboard racetrack hosting wiimote controlled cars equipped with their own webcam eyes, a flirtboard interactive table that senses when your beermat is close to mine, the pulsing Emergence tree...

PLAYFUL 2010

24th Sept 2010 at Conway Hall - here's a summary of an interesting and enjoyable event:

Clashing with PICNIC in Amsterdam - check out at http://www.picnicnetwork.org/  
Toby Barnes (Mudlark) and remotely Stuart Candy (Futuryst) introduce proceedings...
HG Wells - Floor Games and Little Wars

Naomi Alderman - narrative in games
http://www.naomialderman.com
Raph Koster - Ola's Law - http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml
Quickstart a narrative with desire, fear, secrets, character development.
Games generally written in second person, which is unusual - it happens to you - so the pleasure of getting to know a character is mitigated by giving the player autonomy over decisions the character can make; and character becomes necessarily bland or ambiguous.
Recommended interactive fiction - All Roads, Slouching towards Bedlam, The Act of Misdirection.
And games - Bioshock, Silent Hill, Shadow of the Colossus, Prince of Persia Sands of Time

Paul Bennun - http://www.somethinelse.com 
Papa Sangre, new audio game - http://www.papasangre.com/ - lose yourself in the game, freedom from the screen.

Jim - http://www.madeinme.com
Ladybird did it for books, Sesame Street for tv, so The Land if Me aims to inspire pre-school kids - without any traditional educational 'measureable outcomes'.
Toys vs. games - the game/play is not predetermined in a toy, depends who picks it up.  Where there's interest, there's learning.

Bea-Davy Sutherland - ethical games
Checks out Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin - http://vimeo.com/15278745

Nicholas Nova - evolution of game controllers
Neat tactile feedback on direction control cross.

Pat Kane - http://www.theplayethic.com/
http://oldjewstellingjokes.com/
Dispirited by Frankie Boyle's sardonic humour, but understanding its value as a social pressure valve ... temporary transcendence from routine and acceptance of life.  Also humour keeps alive the prospect of hope, represents a permanent oasis of cognitive freedom 
Paolo Virno - Wit and Innovation http://www.generation-online.org/p/fp_virno13.htm

Richard Hogg - contrarian
... makes choices based on being in the minority in everything ...

Tom Muller - http://www.hellomuller.com/
Graphic design in comics.

Jonathon Smith - Lego games
Our deepest conflict - what we really, really want vs. what is expected of us.
Lego - has infinite possibilities, systematised, has both overt and discreet affordances, can attain mastery.
In video games, there is conflict between freedom and constraints.  Particularly noticeable in boys over 5 (after school kicks in) is the dramatic orientation towards finding and dealing with expectations, rather than free play, which has informed the design of the games.

Spots vs. Stripes - http://www.spotsvstripes.com/homepage.aspx

Cadbury Pocket Games competition finalists - James Wallis (FlickRacer) and Sally (Eggathon).
Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle, psychogeography, 'sous les paves, la plage'

ShiftRunStop - http://shiftrunstop.co.uk/
Podcast with Dominik Diamond

Sebastian Deterding - http://cargocollective.com/codingconduct
Talking about gamification, badges and stats used as marketing tools. But real play has to be voluntary.  Theodore Sturgeon
James Carse - Finite and infinite games - http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/infinitegames.html

Margaret Robertson - Hide & Seek
What is Mindcraft?

Bertrand Duplat - http://www.volumique.com/en/
Paper video games - pawns and cards on top of ipads, iphones sailing on top of maps

Alexis Kennedy - Fail Better Games
Narrative engineers created Echo Bazaar (Fall London) and why gamers enjoy delicious misery.

Dom Hodge - Frukt -  and Dave Haynes - SoundCloud
Music mashups, smule, geocaching music, disco snake, isticks, other hack-day musical ideas