genzai·chi

fizzPOP enters its second year

Last night at our fizzPOP hack session we celebrated the group’s first birthday.

Chocolate brownies, jammie dodgers, humidity sensor LED candle.

fizzPOP (so named as a reference to the Lunar Society) came into being just as I returned form a residency at the Banff New Media Institute and was pondering how on earth I was going to develop my skills and practice in a city with an apparent lack of peer group.

I’ve been heavily involved in the organisation of the hackspace (working with Antonio Roberts and others) since the early days and seen it grow from laptop-orientated meetings in pubs through to regular practical sessions held at The Edge. I’m happy to be able to report that I’ve learned loads and am constantly meeting new people who provide skills and ideas that feed into my work (and play!).

There are big plans for our second year – look out for more in the way of events and workshops, as well as continuing to develop the hacksessions that form the core of what fizzPOP is about.

Cake.

LED matrix: GB contemplates colour mixing, simple graphics and very small numbers.

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…

hippo joy

hippo joy from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

I’m liking this circuit-bending stuff. It’s making me do things I don’t want to do.

The particular comfort zone edges I’ve noticed are:

• Restraining myself from immediately unscrewing the back and tinkering with the innards without having properly explored what the ‘normal’ behaviour is first. I must make more of an effort to document this too.
• Choosing the 3 or 4 bends from several that I’ll try and work with. This is usually a balance between the “awesome!” and the practicality of getting wires and soldering irons where they need to get to. I ‘lost’ a really nice bend in the hippo – the behaviour changed when I soldered the switch wires onto the board. I’m starting to get into the habit of making audio recordings of the initial noodling noises.
  hippo joy:

• Revising the previous decisions, based on what switches you can accommodate in the shell.
• Making the first incision. Usually my electric drill is hilariously large compared to the toy I’m working on: one of these days the toy’s just going to disintegrate. It’s also a very definite point of no return.
• I’m slowly getting better at drilling holes a few sizes too slow and then taking them up to size with a file. Neater results, but there’s still room for a lot more improvement. I’ve also started thinking a bit more about the feel of the switches – adding in rubber o-rings to cushion body contact points etc.
• Similarly for the first solder, but given extra edge by the memory of all the circuit boards I’ve managed to kill in the past.
• I’ve circuit-bent a few toys now, all with similar push-to-make switches and body contacts. An important edge is coming up where I’ll have to learn new stuff. With the hippo bend I made myself repurpose the existing switches. It’s a bit of a bodge, but it was worth the brain-wracking to come up with a (hopefully more than temporary) solution that a) works and b) is satisfying in the way that it looks and touches.

A Flickr set of images showing the hippo’s internal gubbins is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikki_pugh/sets/72157622183430094/detail/

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.

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