Dorkbot into the future! We were meant to have this edition in February but it has just gone by so quickly! Dorkbot Sydney’s first edition for 2013 is a music spectacular! Come and join us with some diy karaoke, drumming and pi-balls! Lot’s of talk about the special raspberry pi!!! And the infamous Alon Ilsar kindly hosts this month in his very own stomping ground Hibernian House. Make sure you BY!

ALON ILSAR : ELECTRONIC PERCUSSION

Alon Ilsar is an instrument designer, electronic producer, experimental percussionist and composer. He is currently doing a practice-based research PhD at UTS in designing a new interface for electronic percussionists. With the help of software engineer and composer Mark Havryliv, this interface, called the AirSticks, allows the performer to trigger and manipulate sounds in a 3D virtual space, using various gestures based on that of an acoustic drummer.

OLIVER BOWN : REMOTE CONTROLLED AUDIO PI-BALLS

Multiple Raspberry Pi units are wired to little speakers, and armed with a wifi connection. A central computer can push audio-generating code (written in Java) to the individual units, making them a set of little controllable audio units that can be distributed around the space. The result is an immersive sound experience.

JAMES NICHOLS : RASPBERRY PI KARAOKE

Sometimes it seems like The Raspberry Pi was developed in a conspiracy to combat the discarding of old CRT televisions. Why? Because they come standard with a composite video output, that can plug straight in to any old television you can pick up on the side of the road. Combine this with the power of the Python scripting language, a nifty karaoke script, and gigabytes of internet karaoke files, you too can make your own little party machine! We will demonstrate how!

When: Tuesday October 30th, 7pm for a 7:30 speak off

Where: 107 Projects, 107 Redfern Street, Redfern

Third verse, same as the first… the October edition of Dorkbot has been curated by August’s Overlord Ben Lippmeier!

Presenters:

Glyph Graves

Glyph Graves coming from a background working in evolutionary genetics took up digital art in half a decade ago. Invited to take part in the inaugural Australian Centre for Virtual Art workshop in 2010 http://www.acva.net.au/.

He creates art that blurs the distinction between the physical and the virtual creating works that utilise real time feeds from one to the other or both and transforms their characteristics into sound, movement and colour within an aesthetic/conceptual framework.

Examples of which can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/user/GlyphGraves and http://www.flickr.com/photos/glyphgraves/page1/

Circle Path

http://circle-path.com/wp/

Circle Path is a realtime audio visual electronic performance duo that uses modular video synthesis (vvvv), vocoded voices, midi guitars and a kinect 3D camera. Essentially Circlepath ‘plays’ the environment that surrounds them. ‘Circlepath sounds like the last breath of the universe…’

Iikamo!

When: Tuesday September 25th, 7pm for a 7:30 speak off

Where: 107 Projects, 107 Redfern Street, Redfern

This months Dorkbot with guest curators Andrew Burrell and Warren Armstrong we will be exploring projects that sit across the virtual/augmented & physical spaces. People doing strange and wonderful things with seen and unseen spaces - connected via data, electronics, digital devices and more…

Presenters

Michela Ledwidge - http://michelaledwidge.com/

Josh Harle - http://joshharle.com/

Sander Veenhof - http://sndrv.nl/

Warren Armstrong - http://www.unseensculptures.com/

Andrew Burrell - http://miscellanea.com

You - the usual open mic / show & tell

Image credit : Warren Armstrong and Christopher Dodds

Be there and be square

What: People doing strange things with electricity

Where: Serial Space, 33 Wellington St Chippendale

When: Tuesday, 28th August, 7pm for a 7:30 speak off

Presenters:

Victor Zdanowicz-Muchlado & Laurence Davies

Victor Zdanowicz-Muchlado is a programmer and lover of collimated light. Laurence Davies is a technical enthusiast with an interest in artistic human-machine interaction. This talk will cover laser projection basics and include a hands-on look at the inside of a home-made RGB laser projector. Laurence will provide a demonstration of automation of the projector software using current music software.

Ben Lippmeier

Ben Lippmeier is a computer science researcher at UNSW, who works on programming languages and systems for parallel computing. In this talk he’ll discuss how he made his videos for the BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) event that was held at Serial Space in conjunction with the Time Machine festival. The videos are based around a hacked fluid flow simulator, and he’ll cover both the simulation and the hacks.

You

In this regular final section of Dorkbot we invite the audience to participate in a show and tell. Show us what you are up to and be a part of the magic!

]]> http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?feed=rss2&p=257 http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=256 http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=256#comments Tue, 17 Jul 2012 06:06:58 +0000 admin http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=256 Bringing you an extra special Time Machine Festival Dorkbot-Syd. Curated by Serial Space, the inaugural TIME MACHINE festival presents time-based art forms including performance, installation, workshops, talks, and experimental music. Time Machine showcases work by more than 50 Australian and International artists, taking place across a series of venues in Sydney. Full program here

What: People doing strange things with electricity

Where: Serial 002 - 10-14 Kensington St, Chippendale

When: 6:30-9:30, Tuesday 24th July

Image: Creo Nova

Presenters:

Lachlan Anthony, Michael Candy & Andrew McLellan – Age of Ease

An open, participatory environment of auto-destructive architecture. Brisbane artists Andrew McLellan, Michael Candy and Lachlan Anthony will award several machinations to break the embedded restraints experienced under happy duress, creating an alternative ideal: an alternative Age of Ease. TVs, fluorescent light tubes and ceramic tiles will be brought under the affirmative freedom of mechanical hammers, mouths and turbines.

Michael Candy is a Brisbane-based new media/kinetic artist with a specific interest in mimesis, technological archetypes and the discourse that exists within these contemporary parallels.

Andrew McLellan is a Brisbane-based artist who spends his quality time on Cured Pink: a project that works within self-built instrumentation, ludic robotocism, crowd dissuasion, apolitical public intervention and audio engineering.

Lachlan Anthony is a Melbourne-based sculpture and installation artist. His practice maps the values of social culture in consumer lifestyles within zones such as the home, the office, the mall and most recently, the franchise gym.

Alex Cuffe and Benjamin Kolaitis - Creo Nova

Genesis of Biosynthiais an installation devised by the collaborative duo Creo Nova: Alex Cuffe and Benjamin Kolaitis. Genesis of Biosynthiaprovides an interactive platform for the audience to sonically engage with plant matter. Ideas surrounding cartesian duality between forms of nature and science are inherent to this work. Through melding artificial and organic materials and processes within the construction of the installation, the project hopes to shed light on how these two forms can, and do, interact with each other.

Benjamin Kolaitis is a Melbourne-based sound and sculptural artist. He currently works with electronics and programming in developing sound sculptures, invented instruments and improvised performances. Conceptually Ben’s focus is to engage the audience to interact with new forms of gestural control and interactive tools such as fruit, light, graphite drawings and touch controlling sound, light and video through handmade MIDI gestural controls.

Alex Cuffe is a Melbourne-based multi-disciplinary artist who works across sculpture, installation and experimental sound. In his practice, Cuffe approaches the materiality of objects in relation to convoluted theories drawn from science, geometry, astrology, kinetics and acoustics. His works utilise the aesthetics of the ‘backyard inventor’ where lo-fi materials and natural matter coalesce, transformed through new media technologies.

Erin Gee - Swarming Emotional Pianos Project

Discussions between Canadian sound artist Erin Gee, neurophysiologist Vaughan Macefield and roboticist Dr Damith Herath have led to the establishment of a collaboration aimed at developing a performance work that employs a new and experimentalset of musical instruments based on real-time processing of physiological markers of emotion. This project follows Gee’s successful residency at MARCS Institute (University of Western Sydney)in 2011 at the invitation of media artist Stelarc, where she realized Orpheux Larynx,a robotic opera-inspired performance, at the Powerhouse Museum.

The aim of this new collaboration is to couple neuroscientific research with robotics in order to develop a set of new musical instruments. Using invasive intraneural recordings of skin sympathetic nerve activity(SSNA) together with non-invasive physiological measures (such as heart rate, respiration, sweat release, skin blood flow, pupil diameter) – during emotional arousal and emotional state changes in human performers, these signals will be used to drivewireless, mobileinstrumentsduring performance.

You - Show and Tell

As per usual – Dorkbot concludes with a final open segment available to anyone for hijacking. Bring along your own project to share or just have a ramble about some ideas you are scheming!

If you like Dorkbot - You will like Time Machine Festival!!!
]]> http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?feed=rss2&p=256 http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=253 http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=253#comments Sat, 26 May 2012 04:36:27 +0000 admin http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=253 What: “People doing strange things with electricity“

Where: Serial Space, 33 Wellington St, Chippendale

When: Tuesday 29th May, 7pm for a 7:30 start

PRESENTERS

R.kobrynski : Hydrogen

Kobrynski will be presenting his first prototype of a system that converts water and electricity in a specific form of Hydrogen on demand. It can cut through steel, and melt all sorts of materials, including tungsten that is known to sublimate at 5000C. This technology can be a revolution for many industries as it is completely free of toxic exhaust gasses. He will also approach some other applications of this technology such as for cars, it can indeed reduce the emissions of CO2 80% and 100% of NOX. This technology could be an overnight solution to nearly 1/3rd of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Kobrynski would like to discuss the future of this technology at world scale, as a tactic to change our economy to run on a clean fuel as soon as possible.

Note: Bring some challanging materials to be melted for the demo!!!

Pia van Gelder : Technical Delusions

Pia will be presenting some research she has been doing on the psychological condition commonly called the ‘technical delusion’ first written about by Victor Tausk in a paper published in 1919 called On the Origin of the “Influencing Machine” in Schizophrenia. Pia will discuss a recent essay by media-archaeological theorist Jeffrey Sconce which reexamines Tausk’s theories in relation to television and media studies. Pia would like to discuss how this condition, which is now considered a first-rank symptom of schizophrenia, might apply to electronic arts practice and what she calls ‘machinic affinities’.

Image: Jakob Mohr, Beweisse [Proofs], ca. 1910. Courtesy Prinzhorn Collection, University of Heidelberg.

You : Show & Tell

As per usual there is an open session at the end of Dorkbot for very informal impromptu short show and tells. Anyone is invited to bring along something they are working on and show us your stuff!

Be there AND be square!

Where: Serial Space, 33 Wellington St, Chippendale

When: SATURDAY(!!!!) 28th April, 15:00 - 18:00

This month’s Dorkbot is at a special time at the tale end of the Moduluxxx, Mini Modular Synth Fest! Come along early to see the Petting Zoo (on from 10-3)

Moduluxxx is a 2 day thermo voltaic burn out celebrating and exploring modular synthesis. Somewhere between a museum, a LAN party and a pet show, Moduluxxx will be an space for vicarious enjoyment, learning, rubber necking, starting a dangerous new hobby (fiscally speaking), kicking tires or brushing shoulders with your peeps.

Around the world modular synthesis is experiencing a renaissance of interest and experimentation, with new developments from high bandwidth video synthesis systems through to reinventions of granular synthesis in an analog context. In a creative audio world that is dominated by software, saved files and presets, modular synthesis offers no recall, each patch is unique and perhaps unrepeatable. The equipment itself is constructed in small manufacturing runs, often by hand, designed by dedicated enthusiasts operating out of their lounge rooms.

So what is modular synthesis anyway? It is a style of synthesiser design where the architecture is left open. Each element, whether it be a sound generator, filter, controller, modulator or effect can be reconfigured in an infinite variety of arrangements.

PRESENTERS

ED LECKIE – LZX INDUSTRIES

LZX Industries is a Texan/Australian partnership drawn together by mutual obsession with early video art, and frustration with the lack of available hardware products for modular video synthesis and processing. The goal of LZX Industries is to provide highlyfunctional, professional tools for interacting with video signals in a hardware context at a price point within the grasp of the independent artist.

Ed Leckie is an Electronics Engineer with a professional background in image processing technologies, and a lifetime love for synthesizers and electronic music. He has been an active member of Clan Analogue, an electronic audiovisual collective, for the last 10 years and is part of the electronic duo Bleepin J. Squawkins.

THOMAS O’CONNOR – PITTSBURGH MODULAR

Thomas O’Connor (Port Adelaide, South Australia) An electro-entomologist & journeyman dilettante. When not planning for Year Zero or building towers of plastic skulls in his backyard he likes to unwind with a frank and open discourse on nothing with anyone who will stand still long enough & not press charges. A student of the Dérive, Trap Rap & Ghetto House he is currently searching for the philosophers stone in a unique mix of baking soda, 808 bass drums & metal film resistors, whilst admitting he is unlikely to succeed in this endevour, he maintains that this is “kinda the point”.

Some of the more usefull side effects of his experiments are avaliable as practical electronics from the good folks at Pittsburgh Modular.Thomas O’Connor – Pitsburgh Modular

DAVID BURRASTON

David Burraston is an artist/scientist involved in technology and electronic music since the late 1970s. He had an innovative role in the foremost UK telco’s R&D laboratory in diverse areas such as Artificial Life, Virtual Reality and Visualisation. Self taught in the areas of music composition/technology, chaos and complex systems, he is recognised as a leading practitioner/theorist in the field of generative music, producing both peer reviewed publications and musical compositions. He is also a peer-reviewer for the MIT Press journals Leonardo Journal, Leonardo Music Journal, Computer Music Journal and on the editorial board of Leonardo Transactions. In January 2008 David became a member of the Australia Research Council funded initiative COSNET (Complex Open Systems Research Network). David is a founding member of the Electronic Music Foundation Institute (www.emf.org). David was part of the team that designed and built The Wires installation at The WIRED Lab and is a member of the Board of Directors. He has been operating an independant art/science music studio called Noyzelab since 1981.

His PhD thesis developed and applied fundamental new concepts, arising out of generative music practice, to a key problem in complex systems. This has served as a foundation methodology for creative practice and complex systems research, an area David calls Creativity and Complexity. The outcomes of his research have been recognised by international peers, evidenced by the acceptance of papers into significant journals such as Leonardo and Digital Creativity. The international peer reviewed Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) voted his PhD top among all submitted abstracts in 1st half of 2007 because of its special relevance to art/science. His current work is aimed at tackling more key questions in complex systems from a creative practice perspective, drawing inspiration from natural and artificial complex systems. These key questions address the definition of randomness, structure and high level descriptions of information processing in complex systems.

Noyzelab Website

Go to Moduluxxx Website for more details

Moduluxxx is proudly supported by EquinoxOZ, Rhythm Active and Wired Lab and Serial Space, along with many Pozible crowdsters!.

CJ Conway , George Poonkhin Khut, MPU (Mobile Projection Unit): Lukasz Karluk,
Rene Christen, Nick Clark, Peter Blamey, Paul Greedy

SERIAL SPACE - 33 Wellington St, Chippendale, www.serialspace.org

Opening: 18:00-20:00 Tues 6th March
Open: 12:00-18:00 7th - 11th March
Artist Talk: 14:00 11th March

The annual Dorkbot Sydney Group Show is an exhibition of “people doing strange things with electricity”. The show presents a collection of interactive installations, generative art, sound art and electronic sculpture by artists from around Australia.

Dorkbot Sydney has been running regular events since 2006, establishing a community of curious people. Dorkbot aims to bring people together, presenting independent innovative work from all fields including artists, musicians, engineers, programmers and hobbyists.

Dorkbot Sydney is supported by Serial Space, an artist run initiative dedicated to the development and presentation of experimental, hybrid and interdisciplinary art.

Where: Serial Space, 33 Wellington St, Chippendale

When: Tuesday 28th February, 7pm for a 7:30 start

PRESENTERS

MANUEL BETANCURT

I would like to talk a little bit about physical computing and mobile devices, showing an application: measuring the response of the neurones in a cockroach leg as sound and visualising it in a mobile device.

JAHAN KALANTAR : GAMINGSYDNEY

Jahan Kalantar will be talking about GamingSydney which provides a broad community environment for gamers in Australia. Currently we run TF2, CSS and Minecraft servers and plan on launching a gaming media site soon. GamingSydney’s mission is to bring many attributes separate gaming communities offer and bring them together by involving a great degree of community involvement. GamingSydney aims to link players with their local community and promote value through engagement.

http://forums.gamingsydney.com/

YOU - SHOW + TELL

As per usual there is an open session at the end of Dorkbot for very informal impromptu short show and tells. Anyone is invited to bring along something they are working on and show us your stuff! Don’t be shy now…

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE : I HAZ MINES

COST: FREE - RSVP here

This month Sydney’s Dorkbot goes to Performance Space as a part of the Clubhouse Program, to present 4 incredible projects from a variety of super nerds including: Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders with their installation ‘Zwischenräume’ embeding curious robots into our architectural fabric, Michaela Davies who uses live percussion and sonified data to control motor function in performers via electric muscle stimulation (EMS), Aras Vaichas and his Micro Patch Synthesizer and Balint Seeber and Matt Robert who track planes in 3D by decoding RADAR using high-tech radio. Come along and experience a change in atmosphere and some amazing inventions!

PRESENTERS (in no specific order)

//// Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders - Zwischenräume \\\\

Zwischenräume (Interstitial Spaces) couples curious robotic agents with our built environment by embedding robots into the architectural skin. Each robot is equipped with a motorised hammer or a chisel, a camera, and a couple of pick-up mics to interact with its environment and network with the other machines. In this mingling of wall and machine, the wall’s anatomy becomes the milieu for the machines to develop and express their desires through knocking, producing cracks, and punching holes. Zwischenräume makes tangible our intimate and complicit relationships with the machinic ecologies we create. It is the first installation in a series of works that explore the performative potential of a machine-augmented architecture and its unfolding anatomical trauma.

The collaborative practice of Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders explores the materiality of digital processes, their agency and performativity, as well as the audiences’ aesthetic experience as they become bodily involved. Their pervasive, locative and robotic installations have been exhibited internationally, including at the Ars Electronica, Thessaloniki Biennale, MCA Chicago, ICC Tokyo, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz. Both live and work in Sydney. Petra Gemeinboeck is Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media Arts at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. Rob Saunders is Senior Lecturer in Design Computing at the Design Lab, University of Sydney.

Zwischenräume video docu: http://vimeo.com/15272452
Petra Gemeinboeck portfolio: http://www.impossiblegeographies.net/
Rob Saunders website: http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~rob/

//// Aras Vaichas - Micro Patch Synthesizer \\\\

Aiming to be the world’s smallest patching synthesizer, this dual-CPU beast will curl the hairs in the ears of even the most tone deaf musician. The Micro Patch Synth takes Lo-fi to even lower levels by sporting one of the world’s lowest sample rates and low bit depth yet this device still manages to move forward with an amazing array of features for its size:

Features:
* one octave keyboard
* arpeggiator
* two voltage controlled oscillators
* low frequency oscillator
* random and noise generators
* ring modulator
* sub oscillator
* two voltage controlled filters
* envelope generator
* voltage controlled amplifier
* analog joystick
* seven patchable potentiometers
* function key
* rotary encoder
* mono audio out
* USB powered

video documentation

//// Michaela Davies - Subsoma \\\\

Michaela Davies is a boxing instructor, doctor of psychology and artist. Michaela uses sound sources such as recordings of seismic activity as triggers to activate electrodes placed on the performers’ bodies. Their involuntary spasmodic movements make them look like puppets.” Like puppets! This lady is clearly mad as a brush. Where do we sign up?

Davies works with electric muscle stimulation and data audification to question metaphysical assumptions affirming the existence of an intentional inner self, and the physical realm as an expression and reflection of this. Using sonified seismic data to generate involuntary movement via a custom–built EMS device, Davies’ work, subsoma, explores the lack of agency humans have with respect to global systems. This project was supported by National Science Week and performed at the Powerhouse Museum (Sydney, 2010) and CSIRO Discovery Centre (Canberra, 2010).

//// Balint Seeber with Matt Robert - Aviation Mapper \\\\

Ever wanted to intercept RADAR signals from air traffic control and visualise your airspace in real-time on a 3D map? While you’re at it, check how many faults have been reported by the next plane you’ll be travelling on (e.g. do the toilets work?). How about figuring out who is transmitting from any registered antenna in the country? If you have ever wondered about the enormous amount of invisible data buzzing around you, come and learn how it all works!

Seeber and Robert will show how easy it is to analyse wireless communications systems using open source software and cheap radio hardware. The focus will be on how to use Software Defined Radio to create a souped-up Mode S aviation transponder/ACARS receiver with an Internet-enabled smooth-streaming Google Earth front-end.”

More details - http://spench.net/

//// YOU - Show & Tell \\\\

As per usual there is an open session at the end of Dorkbot for very informal and short show and tells. Anyone is invited to bring along something they are working on and show us your stuff! Don’t be shy now.

BTW - Last Dorkbot for 2011

FYI - PERFORMANCE SPACE AYBABTU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!