genzai·chi

fizzPOP: thoughts about meeting, sharing and learning

Following on from the artist-led spaces podcast, there have been various other fizzPOP-centred events and conversations recently.

[Quick recap: fizzPOP is a hackerspace I'm involved with; hackerspaces being a place where people from all sorts of backgrounds can work on projects that typically involve varying degrees of programming, electronics, craft and/or jiggery-pokery.]

Antonio Roberts presenting at Eastside Projects

On Thursday 19th of November, Antonio Roberts gave a presentation to the Eastside Projects associate members. In the short time available he gave a very good, comprehensive, whistle-stop tour of how the hackerspace came about, what we do there and what our aims for the future might be.

The bit that has stuck with me most though, was when someone in the audience asked what kit we hoped might furnish a more established fizzPOP with. Antonio’s response included the usual basic toolkit of soldering irons etc etc, but then for his ambitious one-day-we’d-like-to-have item he went on to mention web servers. That would never have even occurred to me!

Now, Antonio comes from a graphics/code sort of a background, and I come from more of a maker/sculptural background. If I’d have been asked the same question, I would have answered with something along the lines of a laser cutter or a rep rap for rapid prototyping of physical objects. My point is not that one or other of these answers is right or wrong, just that it was a timely, healthy reminder that fizzPOP plays host to a really diverse range of people and that, if we asked 20 people that question, we’d quite likely get 20 different answers!

Right from the beginning we’ve said that the community is our number one priority and as fizzPOP grows it will be interesting to see what shape things settle down into.

drone's eye view (we wish) of a small part of the fizzPOP Howduino event in full swing

On Saturday the 21st of November, fizzPOP and Howduino joined forces to host a day-long hacking event at VIVID as part of the Hello Digital fringe events programme. This is something we’ve been itching to do for some time since our regular Wednesday evening haunt, The Edge, can only hold about 15-20 people and we’re only there for a couple of hours in the evening once a fortnight.

Saturday was intense and involved about 40 people, whatever stuff they bought with them and lots and lots of ideas. It was amazing to see how all these ingredients got circulated around over the course of the day. We certainly filled the space!

Marie and Helen blink like mad

fizzPOP regular GB did a sterling job of compiling and delivering beginners’ workshops introducing people to the basics of the Arduino platform.

This led to messages such as “Woo Hoo! I’ve downloaded a program onto the board & successfully have an LED winking @ me! :) Thanks 2 the wonderfully patient Howduino team” [@IonaMakiola] and “My first ardunio (technically a freeduino) http://twitpic.com/qct4g Never been so proud of turning on a light on before” [@TigersHungry] being posted on Twitter. TigersHungry has also written a fuller account of her learning experience on her blog.

At the other end of the skills spectrum, we also had two proficient hackers teaming up to work on projects together. Arvydas and Stewart could be seen running around the gallery space testing the autonomous robot car they’d programmed to recognise and avoid obstacles in its path. Check it out in this video avoiding even a pencil-sized object!

Arvydas has written up the project on his website, and there’s also another video from the show and tell session at the end of the event.

Whilst that was going on kids were making lego robots, Antonio was making wailing noises, Bubblino was doing its thing and, in return for a bit of soldering instruction, Helen helped me patch up my sinister glowy-eyed teddy.

Evil Ted gets patched up after having LEDs inserted behind his eyes and an Arduino implanted in his head

Nicky Getgood and her mum popped in for a bit and were moderately baffled by the whole thing. When, whilst being interviewed by 6-year-olds the following Monday I described the “inventors’ club” my friends and I had set up, their eyes sparkled with excitement!

I’ve indicated as much before, but it’s worth saying again: I love fizzPOP as a space where I can go to learn things, to teach things, to be exposed to new ideas and to just try things out without risk of ridicule if it all goes horribly wrong.

Evidently other people feel the same way: several people clocked up round journeys of about 200 miles to attend the Howduino event (Bath, London, Milton Keynes, Hertfordshire and, of course, Adrian and Thom coming from Liverpool). Others came from Leamington and near Banbury, as well as a more local Birmingham contingent being present.

Despite going from strength to strength at the moment, fizzPOP will be going a bit quiet over the coming months due to the combined effects of heating costs for the warehouse space we hold our hack sessions in and a Christmas break. We’re looking to hold at least one more hack session before we go – add your name and preferred day to this poll.

Though we may become quiet in practical terms, behind the scenes we’re also beginning to think about how we can develop fizzPOP’s activities and give it a more stable base from which it can operate. We’ve seen that the demand for this sort of a space exists, and we know we won’t be able to hold our hack sessions at The Edge indefinitely, because at some stage it will need to be reclaimed as a studio and exhibition space.

If you know of anything you think we should be aware of – be it a potential advocate, source of funding to help us get started up, or some bricks and mortar that are available, please get in touch.

Also, if you have any spare web servers or rapid prototyping machines…

Huffing Duck

A few weeks ago, one @kitlarks (who I don’t know) appeared on Twitter, apparently having been blackmailed to sign up in order to receive a huffing duck from, I believe, @EmmaGx (who I don’t know either).

I don’t really know what the deal was, but it appeared to involve signing up, a certain number of posts and an uploaded avatar in exchange for a drawing of a huffing duck. This seemed to me to not be a Twitter-like way of approaching things.

Anyway, one thing led to another (not exactly crowd-sourcing, I know, but an interesting exercise nonetheless) and a collaborative huffing duck was incrementally produced in a vaguely exquisite corpse-esque manner. Ok, not exactly exquisite corpse either…

You can see the animations of the cumulative contributions here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

As you can see, the internet badgers ate the huffing duck during the process of adding the head at stage 8. Unfortunate, but if you look carefully there’s a nice after-image huffing duck in glorious Technicolor burned onto your retina, and that’s perhaps as it should be.

I’m not sure what happens to the huffing duck next: whether it fades to white, or whether it will be resurrected to continue its evolution. In the meantime however, this post is by way of setting aside a small slice of cyberspace to say that a huffing duck happened and it happened because of these people (alphabetical order):

@alexhughes, @benjibrum, @graphiquillan, @haling, @lauraehall, @mookstudios, @soba_girl.

A very big thank you to all involved!

project space

I just wanted to say that the fizzPOP hackerspace is increasingly becoming the communal, collaborative production space for unpredictable creative things that I was hoping for when I left art school.

Actually, come to think about it, in many ways it’s quite like what I hoped art school would be.

I want: Signtific Lab

I want to tell you about last night’s Signtific Lab game thing developed by the Institute For The Future futures research group.

Why?

@genzaichi I think I need some serious mindmaps and trees to understand #signtific

@publichistorian I suspect it’s a self-writing mindmap… #signtificgenzaichi

The Background:

A scenario was released into the wild about a fortnight ago:

Starting last night, and only for a day or so, you can respond to this scenario.

From this central node you can branch off in either a positive or a negative direction. In Signtific Lab parlance, each node you add is a card. After the initial bifurcation (see, I know some Science!) you can respond to each card in 4 different flavours: “No way!” (antagonism); “Yes! And…” (momentum); “Yes! But…” (adaptation) and “Hmmm…” (investigation).

You can play as many different cards as you want as a response to any other card contributed by anyone in the lab and you’re encouraged to contribute any idea you can imagine that might be possible (more information about the game mechanism here if you’re interested).

Here’s the thing: it’s a really nice tool for riffing off and building on ideas.

You’re equipped with 140 characters to post any given idea. Is there a Twitter feed of ideas? I’m not sure, but the character limit is great at a) removing the barrier of feeling you have to construct beautiful prose b) makes you focus on the key idea and c) makes you focus on only one idea per card/node. And that’s what you need for a mind map, right?

You have a few other tools to help you:

• A favourite-ing button
• A naked RSS feed of ideas as they are generated
• A naked RSS feed of ideas the moderators have selected as being super-interesting
• A leaderboard, so you can see who is contributing how much. (though there’s no measure of quality!) :)
• And a dashboard so you can see what you have favourite-ed, what you have contributed and how this breaks down into the different flavours of thinking mentioned earlier.

Everything (cards, responses to cards, feed items, user profiles etc) is linked. In the hypertext sense, as well as all having been born from the same starting scenario.

Such a simplecomplex thing that fed my brain in a way that suited it perfectly! I always have been better at responding to things than I have been at just generating ideas out of the ether. Link. And. Shift.

My Wants:

1. After this thought experiment has played out, I want to be able to see the resulting mind-map.
2. I’ve recently started using mind-mapping tools to brainstorm ideas for projects. I want a tool like signtific lab to let me do this collaboratively.
3. After that all I need is the hive of lab assistants to react to/with/against!

Percussion for Hill and GPS

Here is a [completely non-representative] taster of what was coming out of the cardboard boxes:

Percussion for Hill and GPS from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

The drumming and breathing was commissioned from Adam Kinner (the saxophonist from this post). He’s recently started a blog and I definitely think it’s one to watch for the future. Go have a look-see.

17 ways…

A (silent) video accompaniment to the previous post:

17 Ways… from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

Manifesto for mediascapes

During the Almost Perfect residency, I had the chance to try out a few different types of thingies running off the mscape platform, but towards my 4th week in Banff I was starting to question the typical delivery format of iPaq and headphones. I couldn’t see how wandering around on your own, gingerly holding a foreign touch-screen device whilst plugged into headphones and being isolated from your surroundings related to my practice.

Nothing against those other mscapes I experienced, it just wasn’t a canon I wanted to contribute to.

Here’s what we were using to run the mscape player off:

A sight that might make some techies salivate, but kind of intimidating at the same time. These would generally be used in conjunction with some fairly substantial headphones. As a result you could very easily be worrying about if you’d pressed some of the wrong buttons, accidentally nudged the touch screen or whether you were easy prey for some street crime …rather than concentrating on whatever sounds were being delivered to via the headphones.

Things started to get interesting when people paraded down the street en masse but, for the most part, the experience stayed with the person wearing the headphones.

Cue my manifesto for mediascapes:

Be visible (i.e. make it obvious that something is happening, rather than skulking around wearing headphones and looking at a small screen); and be audible (inflict your happening onto innocent passers-by).

These starting points later opened out into further thinkings about how to make mediascape experiences shared experiences and how to make mediascape experiences playful experiences.

How these thoughts manifested themselves was through a quick prototype alternative housing for the iPaq.

First I hacked (in the non-tech sense) apart and rewired some mp3 player speakers and then I mounted them inside a cardboard tube.

I then had something big with a strong physical that you were very aware of carrying; something a bit shonky and made from very familiar, very non-intimidating materials; something that was loud; and something just a little bit ridiculous. A tool, a plaything, a conversation starter.

Actually, I had two.

With a diameter of influence of about 20 metres each.

With two of these ‘talking sticks’ I had a way of encouraging interaction between people using the mediascape. We also started up a few conversations with people who had no idea what was going on …but wanted to find out!

Like when Emergent Game’s egorbeaver made friends with the ticket inspector or when Paul and some other Digbeth Invigilators found themselves in the position of having to make sure an inebriated stranger got back to her hotel safely I find these instances of when a thing bleeds out of its original context and reaches another layer of participant very interesting.

It was also fascinating to see how changing the interface for the mediascape changed the way people conducted themselves. Admittedly I don’t have a huge amount of experience with mediascapes, and wandering around the corners of campus listening to piano strings being broken is probably going to foster a fairly light-hearted reaction, but there’s something different going on here, right?

[Update: And there's some video footage here too.]

In C for Open Road

I always knew I wouldn’t be able to realise my full-blown ideas for a locative media version of In C whilst I was in Banff this November: there just wasn’t time to organise the tech, the musicians, the recording and the power issues.

Still, not one to be put off by technicalities, I set off for a walk and a low-tech version. In C for musicians, speakers, GPS and open road.

Armed with a map and some chalk I walked along a road that had been closed to vehicles for the Winter. Taking each of the motifs in turn, I walked until what felt like the appropriate moment to pause and draw the music onto the road’s surface.

I’m not sure how long I walked for or how far I travelled, only that I got up to the 17th motif before my chalk ran out. This, I decided, was the end point for the piece.

Only not quite.

My minor obsession with In C is tied up in with chance meetings, interactions and collaborations with various people outside the group directly involved with the residency I was on and, as such, somehow really underlines the true value of residencies such as these. I still had 4 more sticks of chalk (kindly donated by Laura, thankyou!) and decided that rather than continuing in a different colour, I should open things up to further collaboration from other people.

A kit containing instructions, the remaining chalk, the score for In C and a map was passed on to Dohi Moon – one of the In C musicians from the concert – for interpretation and, perhaps, adding another layer of chalk to the road.

I’m not sure what happens next, I just wanted to give it back.

update: Dohi Moon has posted a photo of her interpretation.

Twenty Jaffa Cakes

A 6 stanza themed renga form collaboratively written with Paul Conneally.

Form devised by poet Gary Gay.

Twenty Jaffa Cakes

a rengay

twenty jaffa cakes
a mistake to try and take
in her hand luggage

a slow and silent pat down
from the woman on gate one

stilettoes x-rayed
but her carbon footprint is
not for scrutiny

a hugely fat man
asks for the front port aisle seat
to rest his bad leg

smile and permanent jetlag
slept in uniform again

deep into morning
i finish my book somewhere
over africa

paul conneally and nikki pugh
July 12th 2007

My plane leaves at 8.30 tomorrow morning. I arrive at Narita on Saturday morning and from there I have to negotiate my way to Yokosuka. After a week or so in various locations around Kanagawa-ken I dive into Tokyo for about a fortnight.

intersection: talking about collaboration

Artquest is hosting a one-day conference to discuss collaboration between designers, applied and fine artists and professionals from other disciplines. The event is designed to appeal to established practitioners who want to hear first-hand from their peers about the critical, conceptual and practical challenges that arise when working as collaborators in a variety of settings.

http://www.artquest.org.uk/intersection/

I went to this and generally it was a good event – the first I have been to where the nature of collaborative practice was actually analysed. We need more of this!

Some collated thoughts follow…

• What is a collaboration?
• Why collaborate?
• Terminology
• Authorship and the moment of birth
• Conversations
• Creative communities or Organisations make you irrational
• Bad things can happen, and the importance of small print
• Conclusion

What is a collaboration?

Collaboration is when you can’t create/ can’t complete the project without the other person

A definition of collaboration was first given in this form by Rebecca Early, but it was repeatedly picked up and echoed by following speakers and in questions/comments from the audience throughout the rest of the event.

We needed a way of distinguishing between collaborators and people you just work with. Interdependency was a key feature in identifying collaborative relationships as opposed to working for, or working with, people. It was this idea that that when collaborators come together there is the creation of what was termed a “third space”; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Collaboration is not about one person servicing another: it is more than simply facilitation.

Why collaborate?

So, what is the value of collaborative working and why should we work this way?

Nipa Doshi acknowledged that her skills were severely lacking in certain areas (for example visualisation in 3 dimensions – something her design partner Jonathan Levien finds very easy). She and Early both seemed to view a benefit of collaborative working to be in its ability to allow you to build a custom team. For whatever project you are working on you can create your own chain of experts to allow you to go on and achieve your vision.

Doshi said that “you can’t always imagine all the things that you can do”. In addition to feeding creativity and invigorating individuals, working collaboratively can expand your awareness of what is possible.

For people working with few or no resources, it is simple: you need to collaborate to be able to produce.

A question from the audience went on to challenge exactly how you can prove that collaborative outputs are more valuable…

It was suggested that it is the thing that the collaboration produces, rather than the collaboration itself, that should be valued. I think the question has two aspects: value to the creative individuals and value to a wider community outside of the collaboration.

Terminology

Several people indicated that they found current terminology problematic and frequently inhibitive.

Dualistic concepts such as supply/demand, user/producer and professional/amateur were found to be particularly problematic.

The general feeling was that to view audiences as clients/users/consumers no longer adequately captures the relationship. Audiences no longer always want only to be audiences: people increasingly want to comment and contribute and this has implications for the priesthood of the knowledge hierarchy. The role of the professional won’t go away, but it will have to exist in a more complicated universe.

Is there a need for a new language?

Authorship and the moment of birth

The issue of authorship was one that the event specifically identified as one they wanted to address.

Leadbeater talked about how we traditionally associate creativity with a single moment of authorship: one second the idea is there but the previous second it was not. He contrasted this with the cumulative process of creativity within collaborations, suggesting that the role of collaborations was more architectural: the skill being in seeing how ideas that have been developed over a long period of time fit together.

Conversations

This is incorporated into the cumulative nature of collaborations, but was emphasised so often that I have given it its own section.

Conversations are critical to creativity.

again:

Conversations are critical to creativity.

Speakers indicated a need to just keep on talking. All the time.

Establish a policy for communication right from the outset.

It was recognised that a period of absorption is required before finalising the brief to be worked on.

Early described the process for one of the projects she worked on:

All the designers were given an initial brief and then went away to research this independently. They would then gather together for a period of brain-storming in the morning and then practical experimentation in the afternoon. This process was repeated for a period of 6 months before the final briefs were settled upon.

Doshi approached what I believe is the same issue, but from a slightly different angle. She stated that her best projects came from when you know what you want, rather than saying “Hey, let’s collaborate” and seeing what happens. Within a new collaboration you need this time to identify common aims and to find out about the mechanics of the working relationship.

As she went on to say later, “You need to spend time together. You can’t tell if the chemistry is there just from looking at their work”.

For collaborations no longer in the initial stages, regular scheduling of conversations can act to ease tensions because it provides a forum for airing grievances.

Leadbeater indicated that conversations take place in particular types of spaces and at particular types of times. I think there is more to this than policy-makers simply providing a “special place for special people to meet”. Probably something that needs to be worked out on a case-by-case basis.

Creative communities or Organisations make you irrational

Charles Leadbeater’s keynote speech was a great introduction to the nature of collaborations. He pointed out that organisations – these things that are supposed to epitomise the concept of collaboration – often make it difficult to work in partnership with others. His idea is that the competitive nature of working within an organisation generates a fear of sharing and kills off collaboration.

He points instead to examples of user-led collaboration: gamers generating extra items for The Sims; the collaboratively written wikipedia; and the development of the mountainbike by cycling enthusiasts. How can the huge power of user-led collaborations be harnessed? What would be the implications for Education or the Health Service if content was developed by the public?

Key features of creative communities were identified as being:

• Organised without having an organisation
• Distribution of cheap tools
• Easy entry into the community
• Strong element of peer review
• Guiding laws
• A critical kernel established by someone (kernels may be modular)

Two important issues that came out of this line of thinking were: just how big a threat this is to established corporations; and, wondering if societies who have not yet industrialised (for example, developing countries that function around villages and communities in the physical world) will be better at producing these creative communities.

Bad things can happen, and the importance of small print

Although collaborative relationships were generally presented in a positive manner, some references were made to the negative aspects and contractual side of things.

I don’t want anyone in my community to find fault with this book…

Does the need for the collaboration to be taken seriously from both sides force difficult compromises?

How do you split things such as power balance and workload? What happens when this doesn’t work out as agreed? Should both partners be accredited equally?

Most people said that contracts were a necessity and they should be agreed on right form the start. This is in part to ensure that collaboration does not turn into exploitation.

It was recommended that, at the beginning, both partners write statements of intent detailing what they want to achieve from the collaboration. Agree on the deal and know what you’re getting into.

This raises questions concerning how much you should define at the start, and how much you should leave open for development during the process of collaboration itself.

Conclusion

Although some of the presentations missed the target, others were spot-on! It was great to hear other people’s experiences (good and bad) of working collaboratively and several of the issues underlined trains of thought I’d already had in relation to the ISP residency. I guess I should address these directly in a follow-up post. Watch this space (but not for a day or two yet, eh?!)