dorkbot anglia two
The second meeting of dorkbot anglia, took place on Thursday 16th September 2010, and we were the guests of Aldeburgh Music and Faster Than Sound at Snape. An audience of over thirty people enjoyed an evening of talks and conversations with "people doing strange things with electricity" in the East Anglian area. The evening was introduced by David Chatting and Angela McLellan of the Curiosity Collective.
Joana Seguro founder of Lumin, described the evolution of Faster Than Sound festival from the beginnings at Bentwaters Airfield to the current Brainwaves performance and the forthcoming TEDx AldeburghMusic. Brainwaves is inspired by MRI brain scanners, with a new sculptural work by Loop.ph and compositions by Mira Calix and Anna Meredith.
Cefn Hoile presented the Enigmaker project, a model of public-domain invention inspired by open source hardware and software. Over two months travelling Europe in his camper van, he documented a new invention a week. Only one detail of each prototype was left out - what's it for? Visitors and twitter users were invited to make their guesses. Enigmaker's #project3 was a laser-cut, perpetual 4-week horizon wall planner. The Tacticalendar is now ready for production and Cefn showed the first prototype. The first batch will soon be mailed to customers, with the design simultaneously published under a creative commons license.
Peter Miller, CEO of ITO World is rewiring personal transport with open-data and social media. He described the many ways that communities are using art and other social interventions to make the roads safer and for pedestrians and cyclists. The ability to create free and open maps is an important part of this effort. Peter introduced the OpenStreetMap initiative, enabling mapping powerful visualisation to enact social change, most recently in Haiti.
Mike Challis lead us on a tour of his work in sound installations, often made along walks, capturing sounds as he goes. In a collaboration with Simon Limbrick, Seeper and flat-e Mike created Standing Wave an installation for Aldeburgh Music, where sound vibrated water in steel trays. In his most recent work, Lunula for the Curiosity Collective's Dark Show, Mike extends this with bioluminescence from millions of tiny algae in the water. This was a story of sound, light and algae husbandry!
Ryan Jordan open-dorked on the London Psychogeophysics Summit and his paranormal noise making - we're promised a full presentation on this at dorkbot anglia three.
dorkbot encourages grassroots meetings of artists, engineers, designers, scientists, inventors and anyone else working under the very broad umbrella of electronic art. Started by Douglas Repetto at Columbia University in 2000, dorkbot is now global in almost 100 cities.
Our intention is for dorkbot anglia to run every two or three months in a different town in the region. If you would like to participate or could offer a venue, please get in touch -
Please join the mailing-lists: the announce list for our monthly announcements and a blabber list for open discussion. Follow our tweets via twitter and find the event on facebook.