When I first arrived in boston, I was so excited to find Sprout by Davis Square.  A place where people could go and make things, learn from each other, a place to cultivate a community.  That was two years ago, and a lot has happened- that spirit has grown and spread to several other places- to the extent that it almost feels like the most effective use of space in a city is just that- something between a coworking space, performance venue, and community  center.

I was at the Artisan’s Asylum earlier today and folks from Popular Mechanics were there snapping photos and interviewing.    What’s happening there is pretty game changing.  Check out a couple interviews from the space.  There are not only artists and makers there, there are businesses that are growing.  The city of Somerville is pretty excited about the impact the Asylum has- it has brought a lot of jobs to the city.  It’s probably the biggest maker/hackerspace in the world- with tons of affordable spaces and tools, setting an example many can get inspired by.  I find myself there a ton making art as New American Public Art, most recently preparing an interactive magnetic sculpture for Somerville Open Studios.

Last Saturday I swung by East Meets West Bookstore in Central for Make-It market.  I had never been in the space and was amazed to find it was so much more than a bookstore.  It is a performance space- and now is expanding to house several businesses upstairs, like Modk.it, and also a fab lab- a place with tools like lazer cutters or CNC machines that people can come in and use.  It occurred to me that a place like this is so well utilized- both in the day and night it is active.

Later in the day I found myself in [] x [] , a co-working space housing Zeega and goodgood, currently featuring work by a longtime collaborator Joey Asal.  This is one of the newest coworking creative spaces.

Friday I made it to Industry Lab for the first time. I had been looking forward to it for a while, a new coworking space in Inman housing companies including Leaf Labs.  There was an art reception and screening of a couple short films.  The path to the reception in the artist studios led through several rooms of smaller companies- impressive to see how many were there.  From the turnout and energy at the event, there will definitely be more to come.

And beyond that, there is the p.irateship in somerville, blocks away from the Artisan’s Asylum, where the public lab in cambridge is based.  I’ve gone there for synth nights- exploring electronic music and synth building- and every few months there is a synth-in yielding tons of awesome projects.

There is Fringe Union, a co-working space for creative professionals.  I don’t find myself there too often (they throw an awesome winter party) but it is inspiring to hear of products like the cuppow which were created by a collaboration of in house talents.

An energy exists in these places- people who are really creating new things, from artistic to business pursuits.  There is so much I learn from just being in these places- being around these conversations- to knowing who to ask about electronics, or synth building, or understanding interaction design- and then talking about building products, manufacturing and the business side of things.  The learning is all intertwined- its not like reading articles or a book- its something between conversation, and play, it can come in bits or extended sessions.

The growth of these co working creative spaces- it is one of the things I love most about being here.

Rapid Prototyping, Creativity, and Open Hardware Workshop from which light on Vimeo.

I led a workshop exploring ideas of rapid prototyping and physical ideation with the Arduino platform, using the Experimenter kits. This was at a festival+conference of entrepreneurship at MIT.

The workshop began with a short presentation.  You can find the images corresponding to the ideas here. This framed the workshop by showing participants some of the implications of the technology they were learning.

The open hardware model has gained in popularity just recently, in the last few years, propelled in part by the rise of the Arduino, but also events like the Open Hardware Summit. People are expressing new ways to do business, and engage with customers, using open hardware.

WIRED came out with an article called ‘The Next Industrial Revolution‘ outlining the simple idea of ‘giving away the bits, and selling the atoms’- meaning that you give away the information, but sell the actual thing. Giving away the information can be amenable to building a community and ecosystem of add-ons around your product.

For the Arduino this led to the development of Arduino clones, as well as tons of shields to do different things, like handle TV input, or Ethernet connections. The Arduino itself can be best introduced by seeing a gallery of projects people have completed with it- you get an idea of its unexpected potential.

Finally I outlined a few tutorials to go through, and we went over the basics. Those are also posted on the workshop page. What actually happened was that after the initial description of parts, people jumped in immediately. Instead of commanding the group at once, I went around and answered questions individually or with smaller groups.

I encouraged the question “What would you do with this?”, which was inspired by Giovanni’s workshops in Burkina Faso. He would give a tutorial of how to work with a web tool, like Flickr or Google Maps, then there would be a experimentation/play session framed by that question.  This would create a local community incubator- all sorts of ideas came out- some with business potential.  This made me think of D-Lab and creative capacity building.  Then it occurred to me, perhaps this question could refocus the workshop not on what I could teach others, but on awakening/strengthening their creative potential.  That’s exciting.

For this workshop the learning and experimentation merged. Several cool projects came about, taking ideas of the first tutorials and changing them in ways to produce something original, and meaningful for the participant. People were very gracious and excited to have completed these initial steps- a whole new set of possibilities emerged in their mind- of introducing sensors in the world, and programming physical interactions.

PC/MM (Joey and I) will be rockin out tonight at the Lilypad in Inman square, at a show produced in collaboration by Golden Arrows (Alex Hage and Nerissa Cooney) and Pajaritos (Sara Skolnick and Ernesto Morales).  This will be great.  Last time Pajaritos and PC/MM performed together, Alex Hage of Golden Arrows was there and totally upped the excitement/immersion of the event with dancefloor facepainting.  I can’t even imaging whats in store for tonight.

So on the lineup alongside PC//MM and Pajaritos will be DJing by Oxycontinental (Ricardo De Lima) and live visuals by Arthur (Nickolas Chelyapov).   Ricardo is the force behind downtown’s DIY esque venue Spectacle- though I haven’t been there it, it was sister/brother/cousin venues with HMSPutnam when Putnam was around, so its mad cool in my books, and by transitivity Oxycontinental will throw down a good show.  I’m pumped Nick is VJing, I saw a clip a few weeks ago of his live visuals for the Beaux Arts Ball at Harvard and it was just incredible.

Harvard GSD Beaux Arts Ball from Nickolas Peter on Vimeo.

Some press coverage by the weekly dig:

There’s a new Tabasco-fiery nightlife series going on in Inman Square. The Lily Pad is pairing up with local graphic design collective, Golden Arrows, to pay homage to Latin American music via DJs stylings. This Saturday  Cambridge is getting down to DJ pair Pajaritos and El Oxycontinental with a performance by PC // MM. Best of all, it’s free and free things are the best things. And the name Pico Picante? It just sounds delicious. Like I want to be eating it accompanied by a margarita. Who doesn’t love to eat, drink, and be merry?

[link]

and the Globe as part of their ‘Nightlife: The Week Ahead’ section:

PICÓ PICANTE Organizer Sara Skolnick describes Pico Picante as the first of a series of nightlife events that pay homage to emerging genres that celebrate staples of Latin American music through electronic reworks, such as tropical bass, Moombahton and digital cumbia.’’ DJs Pajaritos and Oxycontinental, perform, along with live electro act PC//MM. July 2, 7 p.m. No cover. Lily Pad. 617-395-1393, www.lily-pad.net

[link]

Here is a link to the facebook event.

Rooftop Dance Party from Alex Dubya on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago plastic color // math magic performed a rooftop gig with the sick DJ see em , produced by EDP- experimental dance party. EDP has previously played machine rooms, and basement tunnels.

First Prototype

In Touch Optics, I am collaborating with Ian Wojtowicz to produce open source tools to convert visual information to tactile information.   We hope to create simple and inexpensive devices to extend our abilities to explore and understand our environment.  We will create clothes that can see.

Implications of this include devices to aid the visually impaired. This is the first time I have designed technology for accessibility.  Inherent in designing for someone else is the need to maintain a conversation with who you are designing for.  I  am continually conscious of the ‘I can help you’ thinking which can imply a false asymmetry and plague many design projects and development intentions.

I am excited of the potential to create an accessible technology which can potentially benefit everyone in some way.  Like the example of sidewalk ramps, they are essential or wheelchair accessibility, but they are a beautiful design decision which positively affects everyone.

The group is participating the MIT Global Challenge.

Here is the website for the project.

Some food and wine, conversations, and soon the organizers say its ready, we gather in the living room, in a circle sitting, and invited to share projects we’ve done, are thinking about, or sketches.

When I realized it was a bit low key, I shared repetevive just a seed of an idea- still few words to describe it- inspired by the recent Spirited fashion magazine release party.  Playing on surround speakers, everyone listened.  It was amazing because people were not shy to be critical- if anything, people moved beyond criticism, to how about try this, referencing patterns that worked, other artists, things the music reminded them of. With this cloud of ideas, I could reach in and pick out things that matched the direction I wanted to go.

The other projects generated a lot of buzz as well.  It didn’t feel like art school thought wandering everyone tries to get in a word- no- it was something else- it was people feeling each others enthusiasm and recognizing the potential in the work.

This salon happens once a month, one of the hidden gems of this city.

[from musica elettronica viva]

We are making the first steps now toward an actively revolutionary music, a music which will not be an instrument of ruling-class “culture”… but rather a force in the hands of the people, a special language belonging to everybody. When this happens, the “concert” will come to resemble other liberated forms such as the party or the day off.

WHIRL is a multimedia event to quench our desire for beautiful works of art in any medium and ecstatic electronic experiences produced by local artists.  Its something we can do together.  Contactwhichlight(take this out) at gmail(and this) dot com if you have any questions or would like to help out. thanks <3!

Past WHIRLing
at FIGMENT June 4-5, 2011

Collaboration with Dorkbot Boston

6-9 pm Tuesday, May 17th 2011, at Middlesex Lounge in Central Square, FREE

April 22nd at the Lilypad in Inman Square.

Tentative artists and performers:

INTERACTIVE ART by Russell McClellan, Ben Lacker, Eric Rosenbaum, Jay Silver, Paul Feitzinger, Michael Dewberry, Will Whelan

LIVE ELECTRO PERFORMANCES by PC//MM, Ming Ming

PL: Rut Roh

DJs: Sleepyhead, Pajaritos

Performances by Pancake, Crista Galli, and plastic color// math magic on Saturday, September the 11th at the   Lilypad in Inman Square after the art installation and opening by Bill Imbrogna.

A live set from the evening
Latest tracks by Crista Galli

Performance and DJing by PC//MM, with many others joining in later in the evening.  Projections from a variety of sources including deep sea documentaries and science-y crystal flowing stuff.

plastic color//math magic is Joey Asal and Kawandeep Virdee

plastic color // math magic WHIRL demo by plasticcolormathmagic

I love you and you love me, times infinity

I created a GIF animation for the show The GIF Economy by Weird Fiction .  You can click the above image to see the animation.

Here is an excerpt from Rhizome:

Denizens of the World Wide Web are implored to reanimate dead media and revive retrograde knowledge structures; deploying anomalous information and thereby accelerating GIF speciation. The GIF is your passport to the immortal realms of mythology mash-ups and off-modern memes. Remember: overexposure to cine-molecular glitch scapes (GIF animations and their kin) may lead to as of yet unknown climes of panopticonscious surrender.

The GIF Economy begins on December 3rd at 6pm at Tractor 328 NW Broadway #114 Portland, OR 97209 and is up until December 18th.

Update March, 19th 2010

The animation will be featured in the 8 Bits Per Pixel show at MEME gallery.  All of the fun GIF animations can be seen here.

8 Bits Per Pixel will show from March 25th – 27th at MEME gallery 55 Norfolk Street, Cambridge, MA 02139. The closing event will be on March 27th from 7 to 10pm.