Lockdown Forest
May 2020: escaping lockdown through the backdoor to the forest, listening to the birds.
Video commissioned by @imthinkingofyou_cymru
Thank you @beccaclareareartists
Vintage mind map
circa 2010
Talk about the Future
On Saturday 29th February at 16:00, the last day of the Superfreight exhibition in Campfa, I will host a conversation about the future set around the Future Conversation Table as seen in the exhibition.
then buzz into the night…..>>..>..••
Insect Buzz Workshop
On the last day of the Superfreight exhibition I ran an Insect Buzz Workshop.
As seen in the exhibition, the Insect Buzz are hand held placards that buzz quite loud when their button is pressed. They are to be used in ecological protests and other opportunities where the user wants to remind others that insects are disappearing rapidly and that we will be in big trouble when they are gone.
Participants made a cool variety of Insect Buzzes. I would like to get 50+ made to run a swarm during ecological protests. Contact me if you would like to make your own Insect Buzz and take it to the streets
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Promo video
Come and make your own Insect Buzz electronic placard to take to the streets in this 2 hours workshop. Only 10 spaces on the workshop, £3 recommended donation towards the cost of parts. Bring your own acrylic and emulsion paint leftovers, and paintbrushes if you have any.
Arcade Campfa, Saturday 29 February 2020, 13:30 to 15:30
The Insect Buzz Workshop benefits from funding by the EASTN-DC research project at Cardiff School of Art and Design
Mud machine Wrekshop
Experimental kinetic mess Mud Machine made with 90% materials recycled or found in nature. Made with a group of young people in Peak Cymru, Crickhowell UK in a 6 hours wrekshop on 19th February 2020.
Collecting mud and sticks
Working the e-waste
Mud Machine
Control panel
SUPERFREIGHT
“SUPERFREIGHT is an exhibition of work from four artists; Nadja Buttendorf, Paul Granjon, Dina Kelberman and Ian Watson, exploring how we live with, exchange and use technology in creating culture.”
Thus goes the blurb for a group show in Arcade Campfa, Cardiff UK where I have two new works: a set of 4 Insect Buzz electronic placards and The Future, an installation where people can air their views about the future by writing on the wall, talking at a special table, and listening to a strange talking flower thing.
Nadja Buttendorf and Sabrina Labis are showing 360º Nail, a slightly disturbing video featuring a fingernail-mounted action camera.
Ian Watson built a one-off stand out of self-made polystyrene pebbles where a vintage monitor plays a deep glitch text monologue with a groovy 80s video pixel vibe.
Dina Kelberman presents two artworks: I’m Google is a scrollable collection of found web images that deal with buildings, tech, domestic, DIY, and The Goal is to Live, a mesmerizing video collating segments of the well-known TV program How Things are Made.
Doodlebot Workshop Barbican
Busy weekend in Barbican Art Centre London. The classic Doodlebot, simple and open source, went down a treat with urban kids. 80 robots were released, many of which going for world domination.
Workshops Autumn 2019
Doodlebot workshop for kids in Barbican London, 23rd and 24th November, free! Just drop in between 10:00 and 16:00. Part of the Life Rewired season. Anybody aged 7+ can attend and take their Doodlebot home.
Next up in December, a 3 hours upcycling challenge for students in the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. 11 teams are each given a PC tower to cannibalise and an Arduino to make an interactive module for some corner of the buiding.
And the seasonal Disobedient Objects project running until Christmas in Cardiff School of Art and Design. Photo below of a 40 minutes task: make a wearable device to defeat face recognition algorithms.
Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler residency
I have had the pleasure of inviting artists duo Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler for a 3 weeks residency in the FabLab at Cardiff School of Art and Design, as part of the EASTN-DC European research project in digital creativity. Carolin and Nikolas have now returned to their hometown Offenbach, Germany, after 3 weeks in the FabLab and my studio. They have been busy, started experimenting with the Formlabs 3D printers and 3D scanners. They started by making charging pods for their Sibling robots and printed nature-inspired shapes.
They gradually realised that they were not interested so much in printing 3D sculptural forms as they were in inventing their own way of printing objects with plastic, preferably recycled from faulty prints or plastic bottles. They came up with the idea of making a mobile robot that would at times extrude rough plastic shapes in its environment. They started by removing the printhead from a discarded Makerbot Replicator, drilled new holes in the extrusion nozzle and designed a control circuit. After successful testing they put the assembly on a custom mobile chassis with vibrating legs.
In parallel they also made from scratch a prototype extruder, a precursor for the printing engine of their larger robot. They got inspiration from the great plastic recycling instructions provided by Precious Plastics. After a couple of days working in the metal shop at CSAD the extruder was ready to go. It is a heated tube inside which an endless screw rotates slowly, pushing melting plastic towards the extruding end. Early tests took place on the last evening of their residency, where the screw spun, the heaters heated and pieces of plastic bottles melted, a promising start!!
Image above: the first “print” from the extruder, made of recycled PET bottles.
Carolin and Nikolas will continue working on the plastic sculptor robot in their studio, ready for exhibition for the Cardiff EASTN-DC Festival in March 2021. We are really looking forward to see them back with their robot!
