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The final School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe showcase exhibition for Future Landscapes is next Friday! If you're in Galway, Ireland, 31. May, come and see what we've created! With Galway2020, NUIG Galway, and Moore Institute. https://mooreinstitute.ie/event/future-landscapes/ 

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Yining Shi on Approaching Technology Creatively, Accessible Tech and Educational Tools

This week we spoke to Yining Shi, one of our main instructors for the Bots & Machine Learning program taking place this July in Berlin. In this interview, Yining reflects on her trajectory, the importance of educational tools, <a hotpot interlude> and what we can expect this summer. 

Tell us a bit about yourself Yining, what brought you to where you are now?

Well, I did my undergrad in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and my Masters at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where I mostly focus on creative coding and machine learning. I like building tools to craft a better learning experience for people. I like solving complicated engineering problems to enable creative outputs. I also like the idea of making complex concepts and technology more approachable for beginners. Currently, I’m an adjunct professor at NYU where I teach a class called Machine Learning for the Web. I also work at Sourcemap as a senior software engineer.

“I also like the idea of making complex concepts and technology more approachable for beginners”.

Where are you currently based?

In Brooklyn, New York City.

I see some of your works are based on data, physical computing, and fabrication. What are some of the overarching themes in your work? What intrigues you?

Even though these projects use different technology, they are mostly based on the idea of visualizing data to express ourselves in a creative way. What intrigues me is exploring millions of different media to express our ideas. I’m always curious about new technologies and new experiences.

For example, Friendship.am is an expression of my digital persona that visualizes 10,000 of my messages. Every circle represents one message, and they are arranged around a clock. The size of each circle depends on the length of the message. I also color-coded keywords in every message. For example, ‘What are you doing?’ is blue, and ‘haha’ is green. This was an abstract visual portrait of my digital communication habits and by looking at what messages I sent, when I sent them, and how they change over time, I got a lot of insights about my digital persona that I was previously unaware of. And so I also became very interested in personal data and how can I make them more meaningful in people’s everyday lives.

In Friendship.am, each circle represents one messages arranged around the clock by the time it was sent.

Color-coded personal messages.

Puppy lamp is another example. It’s a playful experience that allows friends to express themselves in a new way. It is a digital interaction designed to work with a physical object. People can use the app to send color and text message to their friends and light up their friends’ Puppy Lamp. It is a way to express feelings to your friends with colors, lights and environmental ambience.

Puppy Lamp

Can you tell us a bit more about p5.playground, and your interest in building educational tools?

p5.playground is my thesis at ITP, NYU. It’s an interactive programming tool for designers and beginners to understand drawing functions in p5.js.

It has two modes, live coding mode (when you change the code, the sketch will be updated in real time) and the playground code, when you manipulate the shapes on the canvas like you do in photoshop or illustrator, the code will be automatically updated.

If you move and resize the shapes on the canvas, the code that generates the shapes will be automatically updated.

I remember at the first class of Intro to Computational Media(ICM) at ITP, we learned how to use Processing to draw shapes. I noticed that some people who were new to programming found it hard to draw complex shapes with code. After talking to them, I realized that it was because people might have difficulty understanding the coordinate systems: where is the origin, x,y axis.

p5 playground tries to use this WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) interface to reinforce a cognitive link between the code and the shapes on the canvas. Now, p5.playground is used as a learning tool in the ICM class at ITP to help students understand how to draw shapes with code.

I love building educational tools because I really like the idea of making complicated concepts and technology more approachable to everyone who is interested in learning it. Not everyone needs to become an engineer when they grow up, but if anyone who wants to learn about a kind of technology should be able to learn it easily without any struggle.

Technology is everywhere in our life, and problem-solving skills are important to us. I want to make the learning experience a little easier for people, especially students who don’t have access to a lot of educational resource. I also enjoy the moments when people have told me that the tool is helpful to them or they made some projects using this tool. That’s the biggest reward moment for me.

“Not everyone needs to become a engineer when they grow up, but if anyone who wants to learn about a kind of technology, they should be able to learn it easily without any struggle”.

You are currently teaching Machine Learning for the Web at NYU, what are the topics which you most enjoy teaching?

Machine Learning for the Web is a class about using ml5.js and tensorflow.js to create interactive web applications. It starts with running pre-trained models and re-training models in the browser using high-level APIs from ml5.js, as well as explore the Layer APIs from TensorFlow.js to create models from scratch using custom data.

I really like teaching week 3: Build your own CNN model with tf.js. We start with using a pre-trained DoodleNet model to classify 345 doodle classes, and use transfer learning to customize our own classes, then we use tensorflow.js’s layer API to build our own model and train it in the browser. I also like teaching Style transfer and Pix2pix.

Train a doodle classifier in the browser with tf.js

Now, a more human-oriented question! What is your all time favourite meal?

It has to be Sichuan chinese food. My favorite is a kind of dish called hotpot. This is the hotpot my mom made.

How do you express yourself creatively through code?

Most of my recent projects have been all about using Machine Learning models to make some creative and interactive applications in the browsers.

Style transfer with ml5 is an interactive demo of style transfer, where it can recast the content of one image in the style of another image. people can either use the webcam, or upload an image, and choose a style from the artwork, and it will generate a new image with the style they chose. See live demo here.

Pix2pix Edges2Pikachu is an interactive drawing tool that automatically colors your Pikachu drawings in real time. It’s built with tensorflow.js. You can play with the live demo here.

KNN Image Classifier with ml5 is a an interactive demo that can recognize customized classes through webcam. For example, it can recognize rock, paper and scissors from your webcam.

DoodleNet is one of my most recent project. It can recognize your drawings. It’s trained on all 345 categories from Quickdraw dataset, 50000 images per class. You can play with live demo here.

You published Jumpstarting the Arduino 101, what do you like about this tool?

My journey with machine learning started with this book. It’s a book that helps you create projects with Arduino 101 using pattern matching & neural networks via the Web Bluetooth API.

It includes 4 projects, each project builds upon the concepts of the previous one. The last project is a gesture recognition media controller.

For example, people can train a complex gesture to start the music, and then train another gesture to stop the music. This is designed to be a starter example, which people can extend and make their own versions of it.

Gesture recognition media controller, define any gestures to play/pause music.

Use Arduino 101 to control a heart in a webpage through bluetooth.

I really like Arduino 101 because for a board that cost $30, it offered a lot of features out of the box like Bluetooth LE and motion sensing, but my personal favorite feature was that the board had a dedicated machine learning chip and came with an open-source pattern matching library. Machine learning can be a classic example of a topic that sounds intimidating, but the ease with which beginners could do complex pattern matching and gesture recognition projects with this board demonstrated the effect accessibility has over learning.

Can we talk a bit about Bots & Machine Learning? What will you be teaching us here in Berlin and what do you hope students will get out of the program?

Yes! I’m very excited about teaching this course with Matthew Plummer Fernandez!

We will talk about common and popular machine learning models, how they work, how to train these models, and their use cases in creative projects. The output of the class will be interactive ML applications.

The topics that will be covered are Image/Sound/Doodle Classification, Face/Pose Recognition, Image Style Transfer, pix2pix Image Transformation, and Image Synthesis. The techniques and neural networks we will use and build are Transfer Learning, Convolutional Neural Network, Generative Adversarial Network and more. We will use tools and frameworks like Runway, tensorflow.js, ml5.js and tensorflow.

I really look forward to meeting you in Berlin, explore all the ML models and technique, and build creative projects together!

What is the change you want to see in the world?

One thing that I really want to see is more people getting having easier access to education. There are a lot of facets to make this change but what I like focusing on is to make the process of learning new things more enjoyable and fascinating. I’d love to create more educational content and help beginners to learn. I am hoping to make more video tutorials about programming that people from any part of the world could watch and build their own projects based on the examples from the video.

Yining teaches in Bots and ML program, 1. - 26. July. Apply here: http://schoolofma.org/bots/

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Saskia Freeke on Creative Practices around Code

This week we spoke to dutch artist Saskia Freeke, one of the main instructors in our upcoming intensive Coding for Beginners program running this August (5. - 30.) in Berlin. In this interview, Saskia reflects on her practice and what drives her to code while also giving us a preview of what we can expect later this summer!

Hi Saskia. Tell us a bit about yourself. What brought you to where you are now?

I was always creative and making things. In high school I was able to choose a specialization with extra courses in both art and technology. Later, I went on to do a course in advertising, presentation and communication, and focused on graphic design and design shop windows. I always liked to work between the digital and physical.

Afterwards, I went to do my BAT in Interaction Design at the University of the Arts Utrecht. I learned about user interaction, playful design, and designing with technology. With others I created a few interactive installations, for example Cardboard Mechanics and SWIM.  Back then, programming and electronics was not my forte, rather I used to focus on interaction and design.

After graduation I decided to start exploring making art through code, and was particularly interested in making patterns, slowly exploring this area more to incorporate into my work. I started the MA in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London a few years back where I could focus even more on learning about electronics and code to create art. During this time I also became more interested in looking in a more cultural way at how we interact with technology.

Cardboard Mechanics

Can you tell us more about your daily art project? What does it encompass and how many pieces are in your collection?

In September 2014, I challenged myself to create one artwork each day for a month. The first month was tough but I managed to stick to it. I still continued to make a lot afterwards, but not every day. When 2015 came around, I thought I would give the daily art project another go, thinking to do two or maybe six months. Now, four years later, it still continues. At this point, it equates to more than 1500+ artworks.

I still sometimes struggle with perfectionism, and showing my work to others, but it has helped me a lot in these areas. Creating something each day helps me to stay in a flow, making it easier to create work. Having daily time to be creative makes the process meditative, and I’m free to explore and play.

In 2014, out of a desire to create more artistic work alongside my freelance design work and teaching, I began exploring new ways of creating digital artworks, such as how to create geometric patterns with code, as well as animations with different software.

What I noticed, and actually what I always knew, was that I wanted to get everything perfect, especially before showing the artwork to someone else.

During that time I was teaching visual design. I always tried to emphasize to my students the importance of trying out different things without the aim of getting it perfect right away. The freedom of exploration is an important part in creating art and design. As I explored, the idea that my work wasn’t good enough was holding me back. On the other hand, as I was emphasizing it to my students, I found that I had to show it as well.

One of the focuses of your work are the cultural aspects of the interface. Can you elaborate a bit more on that?

I find interfaces really interesting not only in how they are designed, but also, even more so in the way in which we interact with them (beyond good user experience).

During my BAT in Interaction Design I learned how to create good interfaces for a specific user. During my MA in Computational Art, I started to explore more how we interact with interfaces, how they are situated culturally in the world, how we experience the world through these interfaces, how we relate and connect with technology and with others through these technologies and interfaces.

I want to create artworks that allow the viewer to reflect on his (or her) own interactions with technology. I called this project The Interface Playground.

The first installation around this theme is SCROLLLLLL. With this installation I wanted to highlight the gesture we make to scroll on screens through digital and physical interaction and output.

Important in this work is also to open up the machine, to show the technology and not to hide it, which is mostly done by interfaces. I hope in the future to build more installations around this theme, and also to explore creating digital experiences.

SCROLLLLLL

You are the Head of Education at CCU (Creative Coding Utrecht), and you help with Creative Coding Amsterdam. What are the function of coding meetups towards community forming?

End of 2014, the first Creative Coding Amsterdam meetup was held, organized by Lisa Rombout and Sabrina Verhage. It is really great to have a open event where people share their creativity with the use of technology. Creative Coding Utrecht started a few years ago and here we organise talks and workshops and other events. Both meetups are a great place to get inspired, share knowledge amongst each other, learn new things around creativity with technology. It is great to see a diverse public attending, students, artists and more tech people.

“Understanding what code is and how it works could give more insight into processes that are happening that you can’t see.”

I came across an article on algorithmic literacy, and the need for transparency. What is your take on this? Do you see a greater need for people to understand code?

What I want to do with my installations, as previously mentioned, is to show how the machine works, by making part of the machine transparent. I think understanding on a basic level how something works could already help you feel less annoyed when something doesn’t work out as you might expect. Understanding what code is and how it works could give more insight into processes that are happening that you can’t see.

All the Daily Things 2018

Some of our applicants might be in doubt about what sort of things they would be able to do after taking Coding for Beginners. Can you offer any examples of what students have created in the past?

During the course, we are aiming to dive into a wide variety of topics, to generate a basic understanding in several areas, so that students have a solid foundation for future projects.

During the course, we’ll look into interactivity, how to use and draw data, make games, create generative drawings and draw them with machines, and in general make coding more tangible and playful.

Most importantly we aim to focus on how we can express ourselves through these new tools we are learning. I always love to see students merging their own creative practice with the new tools they have learned.

“I always tried to emphasize to my students the importance of exploring and trying out different things without the aim of getting it perfect right away. The freedom of exploration is an important part in creating art and design.”

Now some questions for us to get to know you as a human! What’s your all time favourite meal?

Too hard to say, if it has ginger I’m mostly sold :D

What is the change you want to see in the world?

I hope in the future that creating art with code is the same as painting, in terms of being a tool to express yourself artistically.

For those of us who would like to start coding, but don’t know where to start, can you share some tips on nice entry points, or how to begin?

There are some nice beginners MOOCs online. Or if you prefer books, “Getting Started with p5.js” or the Processing Handbook. Those are great starting points to creating things with code.

I would also suggest to take the time when something is working, to play with it, break it, add a small elements to it, change it slightly. This has helped me understand more of what's going on.

Interview by Louise Hisayasu.

To learn more about our 2019 Coding for Beginners program and to apply, visit: http://schoolofma.org/coding-for-beginners/

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Rachel Uwa on running an interdisciplinary school and being both an educator and a curious human

This week we interviewed the founder of School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe about what brought her to where she is now, what we can expect from the 2019 program and how she envisions the future of the School.

Hi Rachel! Can you tell us a little bit about your life before School of MA? What brought you to where you are now?

Having a complicated childhood always informs who we are as adults. I started doing volunteer work at homeless shelters, and the first AIDS hospice in my hometown in my early years of high school. Basically knowing struggle makes you realise how no one deserves it, and so you do what you can to help others. These things have informed everything I think and do from a young age. Later I worked in audio and visual effects (VFX) for a bit. VFX was initially exciting but eventually began to feel superficial. I realised a lot of the things we were seeing in the movies could already be created and used in the real world so I decided to focus on that instead. So I left that field, bought an iPad and started learning to code.

The School has existed since 2014. The workshops and programs change every year, and respond to topics and matters which are still very mystified. What is your process for brainstorming and sketching the programs?

Originally, I was inspired by people like Niklas Roy and wanted to focus on interactive, non-sensical uses of creative technology. But then I realised I could put who I am and what I care about into my work. I started to think about technology and activism and realised the most interesting and important part of both of these are the humans behind them.  I still love non-sensical work of course! But equally, I love work that has something more to say.

“I started to think about technology and activism and realised the most interesting and important part of both of these are the humans behind them”

How does education fit into your practice, mission, goals as a human?

I'm insanely curious about the world! What is going on with humans and psychology, behaviour, science, societies, politics, governments, money, technology. From our inherent humanness to the stories we've made up collectively and believed for centuries, what are we doing to ourselves and each other on this earth?

I want to understand just about everything including what it means to be a better human because I believe better humans will fight for and create better societies. Some people might think that's a broad scope but I believe it is possible to grasp. At least, I'm willing to try!  

This year, there are month-long programs happening in China and Ireland. Do you have more plans in the future to expand geographically?

Yes! I want to continue to run programs in Berlin in summer each year but in Spring and Fall I'd like to continue to travel with the school. More programs in China (Hong Kong, Beijing, a return to Shenzhen!), India, Chile, and eastern Europe are all places on my mind at the moment!

Students attend School of MA from all around the world and inevitably I'd like to visit the places they're from and help to create something with them.  I think creative technology is like a gateway drug, it makes people excited and curious, it gives hope. I want to help people in the world have something that triggers all these emotions in them. 'We all deserve to be happy' was a message written on a fortune cookie I once had. I kept that tiny slip of paper around for years! I absolutely believe it's true.

“Creative technology is like a gateway drug, it makes people excited and curious, it gives hope”

The 2019 programs are all relevant in their own way, but the Evidence and Waiting and Escaping are two programs which I never really thought about. Can you tell us a bit about why these additions are important?

When I discovered the work of Forensic Architecture (from a talk by founder Eyal Weizman at the CCC conference in Leipzig, late 2017) I literally shed some tears. The fact that they’re using the same kinds of tools that one would use to create visual effects for big budget commercial films, but instead of using them for entertainment purposes, they're using them to investigate crimes committed by governments against their citizens; I mean, what insanely important work! Hearing about it blew my mind.

My take-away: All it takes is concerned humans learning to look at the world with a different mindset, using the same tools they see and work with every day to envision a new world. These are the kinds of classes I want to see in the world. So we're doing all we can to make them happen!

Regarding Waiting and Escaping, that's also another class I'm super excited about! I went to see an exhibition at Martin Gropius Bau some years ago by Omer Fast. I had to ask the security person where to find it and she said, ‘It’s right there in front of you. This is it.’ It was a replica of an airport waiting room! The main artworks were actually the videos inside the waiting rooms as Omer is a video artist.

At the time, I was having a lot of conversations in which I realised that everyone is waiting for something. Waiting for permission, waiting for a raise, waiting for a break-up, waiting to meet someone and start a family. I wanted to create an opportunity for people to ask themselves what it is they’re waiting for and why they’re waiting for it.

VR was becoming more popular around this time and all these ideas came together. I thought: Waiting Room Design! The escape room design aspect of the class came about because we need an immersive experience to design a waiting room for, so I thought, let’s design both!

Omer Fast will in fact be a guest lecturer in the class as well as a couple of founders from Meow Wolf, an immersive art collective based in New Mexico doing breathtaking work. I feel pretty over-joyed!

“My take-away: All it takes is concerned humans learning to look at the world with a different mindset, using the same tools they see and work with every day to envision a new world.”

How do you select instructors for the courses? Do you design the programs collectively?

Up until now, I've designed all the programs based on things that I'm interested in learning myself. I try to really pay attention constantly to what’s going on in the world and create programs based on that; what’s happening now. In that way, you might say, society is designing the programs!

Can you tell us what's in store for the (near, distant or speculative) future of the School?

Well, we’re in the process of becoming an official non-profit, so once that’s set, I’d love to partner with organisations in eastern europe and latin america, and other places where there aren’t a lot of jobs or prospects. An important aspect of that will be to find opportunities for former students to help train people in these areas; to help create something wonderful for others with them! I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and am super excited about this prospect. Let’s see what the future brings!

Interview by Louise Hisayasu.

To learn more about our 2019 programs and to apply, visit: http://schoolofma.org/programs/

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Every member of an ideal society needs to be free to play who they are, but they also need to care about contributing to something greater than themselves.

https://mailchi.mp/097503dd7a81/uploading?e=4d7e2f8b7a

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Scott Kildall on Data, Water, Territory and What it Means to Be Human

Scott Kildall is a new media artist who has been working at the intersections of art, technology, and education for the past 15 years. He works with datasets related to the natural sciences, questioning how they interact with human civilisations. We are very excited to welcome Scott, who joins us from San Francisco, for our four-week intensive course Data & Society. It will take place 3-28 June, 2019, at our home-base in Berlin. In this interview we talk about data as a medium, water, and being a human in today’s time. 

Tell me a bit about what brought you to the work you’re currently doing. Did you always have an interest in working with data? 

My dad was a famous computer pioneer and one of the gifts he gave me was the DNA of a math-scientist combined with a distinct curiosity about life. I taught myself to code in my 20s and ran a small software company during the early dot-com years. It was here that I begin to comprehend the structures of hidden data.

In the 90s, I quickly discovered the role of an engineer: solving technical problems and building things for the specifications of others, to be uninspiring. Also, because I have deep concerns about the economic inequality of capitalism, I never felt at ease in a corporate landscape, which is where this kind of work usually takes place.

I left that world and slowly got trained as an artist, embraced new methodologies for thinking, and built my life around creating artwork that repurposes technology in various ways. However, from my early years, that peek into the underbelly of code, the way things are stored, archived and who owns them, has stuck with me ever since.

Data used as a medium, how did this begin for you? 

In 2012, I took a full-time job at the the Exploratorium, a world-famous museum of art, science, and curiosity in San Francisco and worked there for about 18 months as a New Media Exhibit Developer. I felt like I needed a break from the art world because I was bottoming out psychologically and this job was an opportunity to work with scientists and create exhibits in a forward-thinking institution.

Much of my work there involved co-developing interactive kiosks that involved data in some way or another, both on the screen and off for the Life Sciences Gallery. It was specifically the physical data visualization work I did that inspired me. For example, I worked on an artwork called Tidal Memory, which was a series of 10-foot high columns of water, 24 in total. I wrote code and developed electronics that scraped tide buoy data and pumped water into each column to match the current tide level. Essentially, it acted as a life-sized tide table, which changed each day.

When I left the Exploratorium at the beginning of 2014, I returned to making artwork and began generally to work with data in some form or another. Beginning with an art residency at Pier 9, Autodesk, I began working with code and digital fabrication, specifically 3D printing. I was amazed because I finally could easily combined the two practices: writing code and building physical objects into various forms.

I left that world and slowly got trained as an artist, embraced a new methodologies for thinking and built my life around creating artwork that repurposes technology in various ways.

New media art is constantly changing in relation to new technologies. As a technologist and artist, do you have a specific practice for consolidating your technical choices and artistic concepts? 

For me, technology is like a material. I’m a generalist with tech and am very good at a lot of things: electronics, 3D modeling, code, fabrication, etc. but an expert in none. It’s relatively easy for me to quickly master an emerging technology and because I am self-taught, I pick up tools in a chaotic, unorthodox way. So, the technology itself is less important than how the technology expresses itself in current culture.

For example, this year I’m doing some new work in VR now because the tools are accessible but the field of artistic expression is still wide open. And, more importantly, VR creates a simulated physical space that feels like reality but it’s entirely like an interior psychological space, and so is rich in so many ways.

All my work involves the tension between territory and technology.  As new technologies get introduced but before they are co-opted, territory — physical, economic, political and so on — reconfigures itself. It’s at this point that I try to leverage relevant technologies to make new work.

I’m just trying to do my little part, which involves bringing art to a wider audience. This teaches imagination and creative critique, which I believe helps with the political problems in a way that give people hope and helps shape an alternative future.

I see that fluidity is a major theme in your work. Using liquids as a medium in Cybernetic Spirits (2018), in Sonaqua (2017), sonifying water quality and in Water Works (2014) you investigate the water infrastructure of S.F. Is fluidity something you think about in your life and practice? 

I’m more excited about water than fluidity. Water is the basis for all life and ecosystems. We tend to forget that waterways are interconnected. It’s an easy (free) material to work with but also so difficult because it leaks everywhere. The political issues are huge: ownership, containment, pollution and more. The aspects of water are so multi-faceted. So, it’s something that I’ve been returning to recently.

The Cybernetic Spirits artwork uses a similar technology with an entirely different conceptual framework. This work separates fluids from the body — using things like blood and breast milk — but also puts fluids like gasoline and kombucha into the same electronic organism, so it’s more about machines and the physical expression of fluids we worship than water issues. 

Another major theme in your work, which you mention, is territory and technology. In one of your most recent works, Flagscape (2018), you use United Nations data to construct a virtual world of economic exchanges. There are no geographic borders, rather, a world defined by trade. How else are concepts of territory, boundaries and nations applied in your work? 

The overarching theme for my work is around the interplay between territory and technology. Data is one part of this larger conversation. With Flagscape, I’m doing more explicit investigations around borders and national identity and looking at transnational trade in VR. As you fly around different pieces of data related to a particular nation, you hear that country’s national anthem. All of these sounds similar: puffed up grand gestures that utterly fail when you fly in VR free from military parades and border checkpoints.

With territory and technology, the artwork ranges from geographical processes to absurd gestures. For example, Strewn Fields, depicts how meteorite impacts data as etchings into stone. Asteroids don’t care about national boundaries and what this work does is to capture a one-time kinetic event — a rock descending from space and impacting the earth — as a static object that will last for centuries.

Other work such as Moon v Earth (2011, reprised 2018), is not at all a data-related work, but rather depicts a narrative of a moon colony run by billionaires which asserts its independence and then wages a war on Earth. As viewers, we see only fragments of the results (in the form of an analog-augmented reality artwork). 

It's sometimes hard to imagine how we can use and apply data to communicate certain issues and ideas. Do any previous student works which come to mind, which you can share with us? 

I teach data-visualization in San Francisco to design students and there, we take a more traditional approach of starting with Tufte and introduce them to marks as symbols for expression of data. These students are completely new to visualization and are looking for careers in design, so it is professional-based with a practical inquiry into effective design techniques as well as talking about eye-tracking, bias and a host of other relevant issues.

My personal passion in bringing data-visualizations into physical space and the the most exciting project I’ve done thus far is working at an American Arts Incubator in Bangkok in 2017. There I taught a month-long workshop and produced an exhibition for 20 Thai students along the theme of river health and physical data sculptures.

Much of the process was around ideating and thinking through forms, doing experiments, and then finally producing the final exhibition. One effective project by the students was called “River Voices”, which was created in collaboration with members of the Ladprao community, who are affected by the health of the Chao Phraya River.

They conducted two interconnected workshops during the project development period. For the first one, they collected data through a t-shirt exchange where community members dipped their shirts into local canal water. They then printed a map with data collected from the t-shirts. For the second workshop, they worked with children from the community to draw their stories of river life and health. Finally, they designed “healthy ingredients” onto a “River Detox” logo, which they printed on new t-shirts and gifted to all community workshop participants. 

Can you tell me about Xenoform Labs? How did this come about? 

In August 2018, I left my part-time job at Autodesk, where I was running their electronics lab in their Pier 9 maker environment and was trying to figure out next steps. After some soul-searching, I decided to open up my home in San Francisco to artists from other parts of the world to experiment and shape new work, rather than to refine and show it.

I was inspired by the idea of doing something on a smaller scale and have ample space in my house for my own studio and hosting others. To make it simple, it’s an invitation-only art residency program for new media artists — people who work with art + technology with criticality — from outside of the Bay Area.

It provides free housing and a studio space for one month for one artist/couple. The studio includes digital media, virtual reality hardware, media production and light fabrication. I host events for the artists to connect with local thinkers, artists, and curators in the San Francisco Bay Area. The website is: xenoformlabs.com/.

I think there are two things that I’ve learned: first, take care of yourself and second, be open to all new possibilities.

Ok, let’s bring the questions back down to yourself as a human. What are some of the plans you have for the future? Projects, trips, some films you want to see! 

There’s always so much to do! I am passionate about mountain biking, so wherever I go, I’ll be looking for that. I hear Teufelsberg in Berlin is a nice spot. For future projects, I’m putting a lot of time into working on audio synthesis with plants sensors, amplifying their electrical activity and creating outdoor concerts and synthesis. I’ll be collaborating on some of this with Michael Ang, an artist and close friend from Berlin in the coming months, and am super-excited to work with him.

This year, I have plans to work in Slovenia, Panama, and Thailand for this project and am particularly excited around engaging with the local people and natural environment. 

You’ve traveled quite a bit! Can you share with us some of the things you’ve learned by working with peoples of different cultures, in different settings and with distinct ways of working? 

I think there are two things that I’ve learned: first, take care of yourself and second, be open to all new possibilities. The first means that you do things like meditation or centering or having a comfortable pillow or whatever else you need to calm your inner self. I pay a lot of attention to my internal energy and check-in all the time. Then, you can go out and be a superstar with others.

When I mean open to new possibilities, what I’m getting at is that the reality of your experience will be completely different than what others tell you.

When I traveled to Thailand for the AAI project, I was told many things about Thai people, for example that they were always happy and that the culture was extremely patriarchal. Both of these things were not the case.

My Thai students were very close to American students in so many ways. I did discover other aspects that were distinct about my workshop, for example that if someone was stuck, that the others in the group who were faster would stop and help that person out. So, I later translated this into my workshops and teaching styles in more Western countries where this may not be the case since it helps keep the class going and is more rewarding for the group. 

What is the change you want to see in the world? 

That’s a tough one. There is so much. Right now, we’re in a very troubling set of times, with the rise of anti-immigration fears, climate change, economic inequality and so much more. I’m just trying to do my little part, which involves bringing art to a wider audience. This teaches imagination and creative critique, which I believe helps with the political problems in a way that give people hope and helps shape an alternative future. 

For those of us who are interested in data, but are just starting to get our head around it, do you have any further readings, tips or projects to share? 

Here are a few resources that are from several different angles: 

I like the Data Stories Podcast.

There is a great wiki here on physical data visualizations

The book that I teach in my data-visualization classes is The Functional Art, by Albert Cairo. 

For reading about Data and Society, the Bruce Schneier book, Data and Goliath is a must-read.

Data & Society, an intensive four-week program will take place between 3-28 June 2019, in Berlin, Germany. You can find more information on the program here, or apply directly over here. 

[schoolofmaaa]

Talking to Alice Stewart about vibrators, education and working between the physical and the digital

Creative technologist, designer and all-round amazing human Alice Stewart works between London and Amsterdam, as an educator, artist and researcher. In March 2019, as Touchy-Feely Tech she joins us in Berlin for the Build-Your-Own-Vibrator workshop, an introduction to electronics, hardware and customisable pleasure. We are pleased to also announce, that she will be joining us in the summer for the Physical Computing for Beginners program, between the 1-26 July 2019. We spoke to her about vibrators, education, tech and being a human which crosses over all these topics today.

Tell me a bit about Touchy-Feely Tech. How did that start out and what does it encompass? 

Touchy-Feely Tech came about because I thought it was a nice idea to sound more like an organisation when running workshops and doing commercial projects. It is the team of myself, and Dani Clode, who is an amazing product designer and researcher who has designed the cases for the DIY Vibrators. What it encompasses is in the name - tech that is a little softer, romantic, curious - but also I liked that we could play with the negative connotations of ‘Touchy-Feely’ and reclaim the phrase into something nice. I love hardware and think that it’s such a unique artistic expression, and want to share this sentiment with everyone - I guess it starts with the name! 

“Making your own stuff in general increases the intimacy we share with our possessions”

Why vibrators as a DIY project? 

Vibrators are really interesting objects to me, they are sort of neutral objects. They are very specific in their purpose, but can come in all shapes, sizes and colours. They are also so taboo, they aren’t meant to be handled in public - but interestingly if you make your own, in a group of people, this taboo disappears. If you make a ‘controversial’ object from scratch, it feels safer and less alienating. I think making your own stuff in general increases the intimacy we share with our possessions. What object is more intimate than a vibrator? I like the idea of DIY educational projects ending with an outcome you can actually use, rather than something you will throw away. I hope that after crafting such a personal item and engaging with it on a few different levels, people will cherish it a bit more than a radio or a blinking LED. 

What's attractive about using Arduino for this purpose? 

It’s a great way to introduce people to programming, and Arduino as a platform embodies similar values to the DIY Vibrator workshops - like access to information, demystification, and having a good time! 

What's your favourite aspect of these sorts of workshops? 

The fact that the workshops and the project in general resonate with people is so motivating. When people feel proud of themselves for making something it feels great to have helped enable that. Aside from this, I have really love art directing the workshops, like designing the worksheets and collaborating with friends to create the visual identity. 

Your practice encompasses design, art and tech very much in the context of education. What does this afford to your practice, and your own ambitions? 

Most of my work involves some type of education or demystification of a subject or theme. Usually I learn something and immediately want to share it - I try to put that special kind of positive energy that you feel when you understand something new (however small it might be) into the making of a new project and I hope that people feel that come across when they experience whatever it is. I think I enjoy learning the basics of a lot of different things, rather than sticking with something for longer and becoming a master. It keeps things moving forward! 

image credit: Alice Stewart, “Digital Cross Stitch”

Many of your works position themselves between the physical and the virtual. Digital Cross Stitch, for example, turns the hoop into the controller. Can you talk about how you perceive physicality / virtuality today? 

I like to sit on the fence between analog and digital, which explains why I am really into physical computing. I think there are so many analog analogies to explain digital things, which I suppose is how I perceive more complex virtual topics. I think there’s no point in taking a side, but it’s about how analog and digital can work together to create endless possibilities. 

Can we talk a bit about physical computing? Have you always been attracted to crossing over with technology? Do you find it a reflection of our times, and if so - how you see the future of its development? 

Physical computing doesn’t feel contemporary to me - the fact that it’s been made accessible is a really contemporary idea but aside from that, we’re working with pretty historic components. I have always been interested in making physical ‘stuff’, and to enhance that stuff with electronics and code is still really exciting to me. I am not sure of the future of it. I can see why people are still interested in hardware, in the way that people are still interested in hand-weaving and knitting. For the future, beyond things like implementing IoT and more complex software stuff, I am not sure know how the hardware will develop. Maybe the tech will get smaller, we will be able to make DIY-biohacking projects, and batteries will evolve to become even tinier. 

image credit: Dani Clode, “The Third Thumb”

“The fact that something a designer/artist created is now being used in medical research that will eventually become part of history is incredible.”

How can we begin to apply it in our practices, whether for the purpose of research, academic or artistic work? Can you think of any examples of how your students have applied it in the past? 

It can be applied pretty much everywhere! Physical computing is an amazing prototyping tool. I’d like to mention Dani’s Third Thumb project which she prototyped with Arduino and some code-less physical computing modules when she was studying at the RCA. Now she’s using the thumb in a research project about brain plasticity at the University of Oxford. The fact that something a designer/artist created is now being used in medical research that will eventually become part of history is incredible. 

For those of us who have been interested in physical computing, can you give us some tips on how to start? 

Of course it depends on what kind of person you are, but my #1 tip is to have a goal of what you want to make, and it should be something personal to you rather than a generic demo project. Then, learn the subtle art of Googling the heck out of something. It’s painful but it really works. If there are courses and workshops then definitely check them out, but don’t lean on them to be able to propel yourself forward - because the learning comes from you in the end. Ask lots of questions, and reach out to people whose work you like. I know a lot of people who think they’re being a nuisance if they reach out, and that makes me sad because it’s so wrong! 

In terms of conceptualising and producing, between working with the physical materials and computers. Do you have an artistic / research process or approach to your practice? 

My ethos is always to ‘keep it dumb’, because the beauty of something simple is hard to beat. Aside from that, I will do my best in any project to include LEDs somewhere no matter how irrelevant they are ☺️

Physical Computing for Beginners, an intensive four-week program will take place between 1-26 July 2019, in Berlin, Germany

Make-Your-Own-Vibrator with Touchy-Feely Tech, a workshop designed to introduce you to the basics of electronics, coding and customizable pleasure takes places on 23rd & 24th March 2019, in Berlin, Germany

[schoolofmaaa]

All The Little Pixels: Special Topics in OpenFrameworks, a four-week evening course

This course takes place in Berlin at School of Machines, Making / Make-Believe in Berlin Mitte.

Program dates and times:

Tues. Apr. 2, 7pm - 10pm

Tues. Apr. 9, 7pm - 10pm

Tues. Apr. 16, 7pm - 10pm

Tues. Apr. 23, 7pm - 10pm

For tickets and more info, visit:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/all-the-little-pixels-special-topics-in-openframeworks-tickets-58790736676

[schoolofmaaa]

Saturday’s workshop is sold out but there are still a few spots for Sunday, 24. March! Tickets available via Eventbrite!

[schoolofmaaa]

On mentoring and boldness with Rachel Uwa

Rachel Uwa is a creative educator, human, artist, and founder of the School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe. Her background lies in audio engineering and VFX compositing. Her biggest desire is to see people living the lives they dream of living rather than the one they feel they ought to. Rachel is also leading Be Bold(er): An Online Creative Mentorship in the month of January. We asked her about what it means to be bold, how we can cultivate boldness, and what it means to her and her creative practice.

The online mentorship deals with the idea of boldness. Why is this such an important topic in relationship to one's work and one's self?

At some point I remember reflecting on education and thinking half of what we’re learning when we take a class is confidence, and that it’s really one of the most important things in regard to one’s self and work. But then I realised, ‘Oh wait, I’m wrong! The most important thing isn’t actually confidence, it’s courage!’ Confidence is doing something we feel perfectly capable of doing. Courage is not feeling confident and yet doing something anyway! To me, being bold is about putting courage into action, and that’s exactly what I want to help people with!

I did it because I couldn’t not do it. That’s what being who you are feels like. Being bold is just a step in the process. But an important step.

One could say that we have a lot of conflicting signals about engaging with boldness: Be bold, but don't put yourself in "danger". Be bold, but don't be perceived as being egotistical. Do you think this has affected our relationship with and ideas about boldness? What's to be done? I don’t think being bold has to be drastic or necessarily have to draw on ego. But yes, I suppose it can be tricky. I think the idea is more that being bold leads you to being more comfortable being fully who you are (because you’ve tried things and you now know what those experiences feel like). I shared a story on Medium some time ago. In it, I’m talking about a really bad situation I saw someone in and how I made a decision to do what I could to help. I didn’t do what I did to be bold or purposely put myself in a dangerous situation. I did it because I couldn’t not do it. That’s what being who you are feels like. Being bold is just a step in the process. But an important step. I think we get there when we’re ready, when we (finally) feel comfortable with ourselves. How does mentorship come into play in this? How can mentorship foster boldness? I think mentorship is super underrated! Having someone we trust to talk through ideas with, to help us look at things from all angles, and really get to the bottom of something, is super invaluable! I think I’ve always had older people around me who’ve helped steer me in positive directions. I’ve just lived through a lot and learned things and I want to give back while I still can! I’m seeing too many brilliant creative humans doubt themselves. And I feel called to help change this.

If every human had five people in their lives they could turn to who believed in them and supported them fully, I think we would see a worldwide human revolution! 

What's an example of you engaging with boldness in your everyday life that affected your work? I think working in male-dominated industries (audio, VFX, technology in general) where I didn’t see people who looked like me, but chose to pursue careers in those areas anyway. Starting my own school might also be seen as a pretty bold move.  Following my own path rather than the ones parents and society typically try and lead us down has been my norm rather than an exception, so I’ve got many years of bold practice under my belt! Do you think boldness is catalysed from key moments, or is it something that grows through regular, intentional practice? Definitely like anything, it’s a practice! I think we often think if we hear something once and make some action, that’s enough. But it’s an ongoing process and we need to be reminded and take action often in order to keep our practice up! I encourage micro-dosing on being bold, being micro-bold, if you will. But it’s important to have reasons for doing it, just being “bold” for boldness sake isn’t really the point. It’s doing so with intention!

I know so many brilliant humans doing brilliant, even enviable, work. And yet, self-doubt and fear is alive and well in their minds and really holds them back. Well, enough of that!

What attracts you to the topics that this workshop is concerned with? Why do you think we as people and/or creators/technologists should be engaging with them? Creators and creative people often have gigantic crippling waves of self-doubt. It’s shocking! I know so many brilliant humans doing brilliant, even enviable, work. And yet, self-doubt and fear is alive and well in their minds and really holds them back. Well, enough of that! We’re capable of so much but we hold ourselves back way too often. I’ve been there before, I know how cruel we can be to ourselves. But luckily, I also know we can learn to appreciate who we are and our experiences of life and use that to be kinder to ourselves. Life can be better than what we let it be, so why not try! I also think there’s nothing like a supportive community. If every human had five people in their lives they could turn to who believed in them and supported them fully, I think we would see a worldwide human revolution! We need to know what good relationships feel like and seek more of them! So that’s the kind of atmosphere I’m going for!  Be Bold(er): An Online Creative Mentorship takes place online, Tuesdays, Jan. 22, 2019 - Feb. 12, 2019 7pm-10pm, CET.

[schoolofmaaa]

Aarón Montoya-Moraga on Randomness

Aarón Montoya-Moraga is an artist, electrical engineer, and educator who specializes in writing software for audiovisual interactive installations and real-time live performances. He is leading our January 2019 online workshop, Randomness Is All Around: An Online Multimedia Arts Class. We asked Aaron about how randomness manifests itself, the parameters of our contemporary relationship to it, and how randomness isn’t always what it seems. “I create software for audiovisual installations. I also perform live sets dealing with both sound and visuals. I use random artefacts in my practice in order to introduce both a warmer feeling to my digital art and to also create happy accidents and introduce variability and imperfections to my live practice, so that my art keeps me engaged and responsive. The audience gets to experience a dialogue between my performance and the algorithms and software I write which are governed by chance and randomness.

I love the fleetingness and uniqueness of experiencing an audiovisual piece governed by chance and randomness, every iteration becomes cherished and unexpected.

Randomness can be seen as trivial but it's not. There are nuances and parameters you can choose, it's not just strict mayhem and chaos. Take noise for example. Noise is random, but you have different flavours such as white noise, pink noise, brown noise, and Perlin noise. They all have different probability distributions and ways of being implemented, and are useful for simulating different natural phenomena, such as rain drops and the movement of flocks of birds. I think one of the most under-appreciated aspects of working with randomness and multimedia art is that even though we value and cherish our computers and digital machines, because they are cool and can crunch numbers and calculations, they are not able to create random numbers.

A simple act such as flipping a coin or rolling a die is something a computer can only fake, but can't be as random as reality.

Randomness is often overlooked as problematic. It turns out randomness is not trivial; computers are amazing at crunching numbers, but they can't really output true random numbers, — only pseudo-random numbers. This makes computers very detached from our analog experience of the physical world, which is full of randomness and noise.

We are immersed in a world where we are exposed to textures and noises which have random components and thus make them feel warm. It is the absence of randomness and noise which makes our digital experience so cold and sterile. If we can understand how randomness works and incorporate it to our digital practice, we can make our digital artistic output warmer and closer to the physical world.

Randomness and noise are part of the analog physical world, so introducing digital randomness is a way of bridging the gap between digital technology and the physical world.  In terms of generative art, randomness and chance are ways of dissolving one's ego or ownership of the art piece, the author becoming the creator of a system and the artwork being the result of the interplay between humans and technology.

Randomness is about letting go, it is about modelling and capturing the way rain works, the way a needle scratches vinyl, the way we walk, and how a grass field works.

When we introduce randomness into our art practice, we can iterate and explore more possibilities for our art, by trying out aleatoric sequences we can make more compelling dynamic art, where there is movement governed by chance, and we can also tame the randomness, and not make something totally chaotic, but playful and with variation governed by tiny doses of chance. Randomness is used for making digital art have a more organic flavour, since noise and imperfections are both an integral part of our physical reality and of our capture of it.

All the sensors we use to capture reality, cameras, thermometers, microphones, no matter if they are analog or digital, are subject to noise when measuring.

It is important that we understand how to both fight against and embrace noise and randomness for our analog and digital practice, so we can create beautiful representations and take nice measurements of our physical reality, without being sabotaged by noise and randomness.” Randomness Is All Around: An Online Multimedia Arts Class takes place online, Mondays, Jan. 14, 2019 - Feb. 4, 2019 7pm-10pm, CEST.

[schoolofmaaa]

Mario Mu on performative art practice, connection offscreen, and how we’re all Little Red Riding Hood

Artist and technologist Mario Mu is leading our January 2019 Berlin-based workshop, Real and Present: Performativity and Technology as Painting Practice. We asked him about how a performative art practice and help tech people learn to be more artistic and creative, and how engaging with digital mediums like 3D modelling can help artists working with more physical media more deeply explore ideas. “A lot of the frustration with technology comes from all the distractions embedded within. People now feel like a Little Red Riding hood lost in the forest, where every message and suggestion seems like a new opportunity, but it only takes you closer to the wolf. The right solution is to understand that the individual needs aren’t separated in any way from the social realm. The performative practice of doing something together in a physical space can produce a sense of solidarity which always accelerates the creative potential for the change of our personal perspective. In the workshop, people will learn how to make 3D models, and then share their own creative inventions with others to make paintings. In this process, the best results come whenever there’s some sense of play in what people are doing together, and then lateral thinking brings a whole other dimension to the creative act. As we all know very well, the social component of the digital era got corrupted with the corporate-driven algorithms that are doing their best to tailor all our paths according to a bigger picture which we cannot perceive. And there’s also the aspect of self-regulation, and how people struggle to fit into the scheme even if it doesn’t bring them any good in the long term. Most of the time, we feel stuck whenever our addictive behaviours become the main part of the game. Moreover, when our habits turn into addictions the process is highly affected by the fundamental need for social belonging. Behind the screens, our lives are intertwined with other lives; we share this form of togetherness with all other people that we do not even know. I believe there are many people out there who want to get off their screens as much as possible, but the question is, "What to do then?” That’s the exciting part of the creative process — time is created, rather than consumed. The time we give ourselves to live beyond the screen implies encountering all those aspects of our being which don’t work in the automated mode. Artistic practice in general can help a lot if we’re able to see art as a social tool. However, you don’t have to be a social justice warrior to be a contemporary artist. Whenever we’re able to overcome the notion of art being just a self-serving practice, the artistic need for self-expression becomes more explicit and unreserved. In this way, art involves a greater amount of dialogue that’s valuable to the all parties involved in the process. The workshop will help participants to learn the all-important skills of 3D modelling and painting. For example, a 3D model created in the workshop might be a game avatar or any other visual form that represents the idea which we’d like to explore. In the interaction with the models made by other participants, people will be able to see their own 3D creations transformed in the fourth dimension, which is time that we all share.I think the best way to go is to not make strong distinctions between the online and offline practice. My experience in gaming comes from the LARP games (live action role-playing) — as well as video games — and they influence my practice as a visual artist working with tangible materials. This approach gives more space for inclusivity and spontaneous decisions, unconstrained with the nature of every specific medium. Following the principles of collage, individual contributions will help the workshop’s group dynamics evolve through sharing creations in multiple ways. The constant exchange of the visible 3D forms will result in unexpected mutations and innovations, therefore personal perspectives will advance in a collaborative way. As a conclusion, the paintings that every participant will make in the second part of the workshop will again be their own personal argument in a dialogue created during the time spent together. The exchange of many different ideas and opinions should be a possibility for the creation of new connections after the workshop is finished. One starting idea can transform multiple times while travelling through different mediums, so it’s very important to know what we want to achieve, or where we want to go. All participants in the workshop will be encouraged to explore ideas which are important to themselves, and to see what could they do with this in a different context then the one where it is usually happening. With other people around who can help them communicate their ideas clearly, people always feel encouraged and unconstrained to do this in all other situations as well.” Real and Present: Performativity and Technology as Painting Practice runs on Saturdays from January 19-Feb 9 from noon-4pm at School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe, Veteranenstraße 21, Berlin.

[schoolofmaaa]

Join us for our Fall & Winter Workshops! Topics include: creative coding, Unity for VR experiences, artwork from neural nets, decentralised AI, learning electronics through making vibrators and more! Courses begin next week! http://schoolofma.org/fallWinter.pdf

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WORKSHOP TOMORRROW!

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Winners & Losers: An Experimental Games Showcase

Friday, 27. July, 8pm  - midnight

Liebig12, Liebigstrasse 12, 10247 Berlin

After a month together thinking through concepts of games and contemplating what it means to be winners and losers, we invite you to join us for our final showcase of experimental games! With work from: Anna Brynskov Dmitry Tikhomirov Elizabeth Prutz Jan Hopmans Lisa Passing Maryam Aghajani Sophia Kecir Camper Tartaruga Feliz Xavier Lambein Yuehan Liu