May-June projects and ideas

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leila johnston

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May 29, 2012, 7:51:12 AM5/29/12
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Afternoon!

I know I said I was going off the radar AND I DID, but I found I had a minute when I was supposed to be doing something, so I thought I'd quickly bring you up to date on my dates for the next couple of months, and let you know about some of the fun I've been having.

HAPPENSTANCE

We've just passed half-way on the Happenstance Project... and people are still asking me what the hell it's all about. It's actually quite simple. It's an experiment in seeing what happens when you put people who know about technology into arts institutions. There are three pairs of nerds in three galleries around the UK, and the Site Gallery in Sheffield ended up with myself and James Jefferies. As an example of the many things we've done in the last 5 weeks (15 days), we ordered 2 arduino internet printers from Go Free Range, called them Cathy and Heathcliff, got them working wirelessly, and set them up with phone numbers to text or call, so they can print any messages that are texted to them. Cathy is on reception being used as a textable guest book, but Heathcliff is fully mobile. Check out this film about his adventures around Sheffield. Much as I love my friend Sandy, getting our Polargraph working was a fucking nightmare, I can't lie. I've also been playing with Processing on the Kinect. I love being allowed to be a technologist, and Polargraph software notwithstanding, feel amazingly lucky and chilled out about everything.

All of us Happenstance residents shared a quick slot at Future Everything, the big Manchester digital conference, just over a week ago. It had a green room and everything. I ran into some people I knew and some robots invented by some people I knew, this very good article in the Guardian briefly mentioned us, and Caper's Rachel Coldicutt wrote about us in the Guardian a few weeks ago (ooh that's my photo!)


Unfortunately, Happenstance must come to an end in a few weeks. But I have just started renting a desk at the Site Gallery, so I'll be around for a while yet.

EVERYTHING ELSE

One of my fave collaborators Duncan Gough and I have won a spot at the Dublin Maker Faire and are taking something there on July 14th. We have a fun idea but it's not finished yet, so can't say much... 

I should have two pieces in the new Wired UK. Something about tanks, and something about landing a plane when the pilot has died. I had something in the May issue about the Hack-a-Day organisers top picks of mad hacks, including the famous VHS toaster.

The ZX Spectrum 30th birthday event I co-hosted with Imperica's Paul Squires at the BFI a few weeks ago was so, so wonderful. I wrote a bit about it here, particularly how creativity happens at a tangent to education, but my favourite write-up is the Eurogamer report – the journalist interviewed me on day 2 and there's a quote from me in there somewhere. That's not why it's my favourite write-up though, it's just brilliant. Paul is absolutely the chief organiser and imaginer of the whole thing, though, and you can see the Imperica official aggregation here.

We interviewed Eben Upton, inventor of the Raspberry Pi, for our latest episode of Shift Run Stop. I've known Eben vaguely through mutual friends for a good 7 years now, and it's amazing to see his escalation to king of the world.

Roo and I are part way through a new episode as well. It's taking a while, long distance, as you can hopefully appreciate. YOUR PATIENCE WILL BE REWARDED. Trust me, you'll like this one.

I've been invited to accompany Turing campaigner/Geek Atlas author/Shift Run Stop interviewee JGC to the Turing exhibition at London's Science Museum in June. It looks like a great exhibition, very much looking forward to that. 

Finally (for now) I was thinking we could have some kind of low-key coin-op themed event called #PENNYCON in Sheffield later in the summer (August?) Would you be up for that? Maybe a little penny falls tournament, plus a talk from someone who knows about coin operated machines, something like that? What do you think?

As soon as I send this I'll think of all the things I should have said. Regular Happenstance updates from me and the other residents are happenstancing here, in any case. I'm back Down South every few weeks, though not always for very long.


L

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