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18th - 24th March
\r\n
\r\nI went to Belgrade for Resonate.io, and wrote about it here.
Resonate, held between the 21st and 23rd of March in\r\nBelgrade, Serbia, is "...a platform for networking, information, knowledge\r\nsharing and education. It brings together distinguished, world class artists\r\nwith an opportunity of participating in a forward-looking debate on the\r\nposition of technology in art and culture." (from the website).
\r\nBefore I left, I suggested I might return with the following:
\r\nI largely failed on all three counts.
\r\nI was thrown from the outset by the apparent poor organisation of the event.\r\nNot to mention a complete lack of free food. But the main problem was that\r\nwell over one thousand people had tickets, but on the first day the main\r\nlecture room could hold a few hundred at best. Seating consisted of a handful\r\nof sofas and armchairs and valuable floor space was occupied by altogether too\r\nmany stylish coffee tables. For everyone not lucky enough to be among the\r\nfirst ten in the room it was aching backs and/or pins and needles all round.\r\nThis situation improved slightly after the first day, when two more tracks\r\nopened in slightly bigger rooms, but there was still nowhere near enough\r\nspace. People were bursting out all doors, so switching tracks ever wasn't an\r\noption. There were also several long delays or postponements. A few were\r\nweather related, but too many (ie more than none) were organisational; lack of\r\nprojector in main room, etc.
\r\nThat aside, I was aware that an event labelled 'festival' wasn't going to be\r\nright at the conference end of the party<->conference scale, but I was\r\nsurprised at just how much party it was. A party with thousands of people,\r\nwhere everybody knew someone else but me. This made it particularly difficult\r\nto interact. You might expect the opposite. Indeed, I suspect that for most\r\npeople this was the perfect environment to make new friends, start\r\ncollaborations etc. I'm (usually) great at networking. I'm never great at\r\nsocial situations involving large crowds, a bar and loud music. I tried. But I\r\ncouldn't catch anyone's eye, there was never a moment to start a conversation.\r\nThe most interaction I had over three days was being elbowed out of the way by\r\npeople who felt more entitled to see what was going on than me.
\r\nI might have fared better if...
\r\n...I had succeeded in getting a place at one of the workshops. Places were\r\nvery limited, but it was explained that all workshops were open for anyone to\r\nlisten in on even if you couldn't participate directly. Had I taken part in\r\none, it would have been a lot easier to talk to some specific people. I went\r\nalong to attempt to listen in, however, to find all of the workshops (twenty\r\nor so) consisted of people grouped around tables, together in the same giant\r\nhall. The actual participants were craning their necks, straining to hear\r\ntheir workshop instructor over the general clamour of the event, so it was\r\nimpossible for bystanders to be involved at all. Plus, only a couple of the\r\nworkshops had (handwritten) signs indicating which they were, so there was\r\nalso no way of tracking down the ones I was particularly interested in.
\r\n...I had been to any of the performances or night club tours that started\r\nabout about 9pm each day and ran until the early hours of the morning. The\r\nperformances, as far as I could tell, were electronic music sets, held in\r\nnight clubs or similar venues. I don't do night clubs, and I was knackered\r\nby 7pm anyway, so that was a no go. Having said that, it probably wouldn't\r\nhave been easier to meet new people over very loud music in a place where\r\neveryone was getting drunk, so maybe I didn't miss out.
\r\nNow I've explained that, I will write a bit about the talks I did manage to\r\nget in to, which were generally interesting and of good quality. (The\r\nitinerary I sketched out for myself beforehand differed greatly from what I\r\nactually achieved because of crowd/small room issues mentioned previously).
\r\nThese aren't the only things I went to, but the only ones I took notes or\r\ntweeted about.
\r\n
\r\n**Marcin Ignac**, talking about Data Art, showed some really cool things he's done with Plask and WebGL, including 3D data visualisations, hacking with fonts, and realtime installations like a 3D visualisation of global energy market transactions. Plask and WebGL are capable of a lot, just in the browser. He also mentioned basil.js, which is "a library that brings scripting and automation into layout and makes computational and generative design possible from within InDesign" (cite) which looks useful for artists wanting to get into coding.
Mike Tucker ("Unity as a Tool for Non-Games") suggested that Unity fills the creative gap recently vacated by Flash. He started out as a Flash guy, but isn't sad or bitter about Flash's demise, and understands that it's time to move on. His current WIP is an app to explore an abstract visual and audio landscape using the device's gyroscope. The audio is 'physically' located in a virtual 3D world, and changes as you navigate around by moving the device in space.
\r\nJulia Laub told us about her Generative Design book, that she worked on as part of her thesis project. She defined (with a diagram) generative design as creating choices, then making choices, rather than controlling a visual output. She created a visualisation of Wikipedia pages that presents as a self-optimising network - as you interact with the diagram to expand the information you want to see, it rearranges itself for optimal viewing. Her book looks amazing, and getting my hands on a copy is on my things-to-do list.
\r\nDmitry Morozov ("An Autonomous Synthesis") showed some great circuit bent installations and sound projects; check out http://www.vtol.tk/.
\r\nSignal | Noise (oops, I didn't take down the names of the actual guys) ("Datatainment") talked about gamification of data collection. People like "digital navel gazing"; they derive satisfaction from their own data, and comparing themselves to others. They mentioned a "top secret" client project for which they're aiming to "quantify everything people do"... intriguing...
\r\nLucas Werthin ("Design, Tech and Architecture for Large Scale Projection Mapping") showed us the ins and outs of an incredible project he'd worked on.. Described here (with videos).
\r\nThe onedotzero\r\nscreening was a\r\ncompilation of digital animation work from a number of artists. It was weird\r\nand awesome, with some inspiring visuals and music I need to listen to more\r\n(inspiring for writing fiction, not for the PhD unfortunately). Notes I wrote\r\nduring that suggested I need to listen to the music in Warsnare, and the one\r\nwith the giant Catzilla in.
\r\nMarkus Heckmann and Barry Threw ("Building by Doing - Visually guided design in TouchDesigner") described another easy bridge for artists who want to code. I wrote down "TouchDesigner" in my notes during this talk, but I can't remember why now. Find out more here.
\r\nMy favourite talk was by Ivan Poupyrev ("Computing Reality"). I tweeted\r\nloads about it, but none of them got sent because the wifi and my phone\r\nweren't playing nice or something. Fortunately I also made a ton of notes.
\r\nIvan describes himself as an 'inventor'; he worked for Sony, and now works for\r\nWalt Disney, and he is inventing the future. He has a great ethic and vision\r\nfor the world; all about "giving people tools to make the world the way they\r\nwant it to be." He envisions a decentralisation of production; large\r\ncorporations only want to make their part of the world interactive, not the\r\nwhole world. So ordinary people must have the technology to use, develop,\r\nspread, build on.
\r\nIn 1999, his team created an augmented reality toolkit, before it's time. In\r\n2001, they developed a flexible display with is interacted with by bending it\r\nand sliding fingers around the back of the screen. A huge amount of\r\ninteractions are possible just by bending and flexing in different ways. In\r\n2004, Sony said "users will never accept a device with no buttons", and all\r\nearly touchscreen devices also had buttons because of this. He says the\r\niPhone was the "fall" of the button, proving everyone wrong. Last year (2012)\r\nthe Sony PS Vita has touchback interaction, and Samsung have released a\r\nflexible display this year (2013) but "nobody cares".
\r\nNow, he says, everything has been invented already, the market is saturated\r\nwith new gadgets. He sees the future of the technology curve as embedded in\r\npeople and surroundings: "no question... that it's coming to your body ...\r\ngoing to seep into the environment, disappear into the environment ...\r\nseamlessly, invisibly, efficiently" and describes a reality that computes\r\nitself, where "the computer doesn't have to exist at all."
\r\nIvan was very expressive about not being any kind of "tree-hugger", but is\r\nconvinced that we don't need to "make more junk". So many resources have been\r\nused, and the earth can't support another industrial revolution. Instead, he\r\nwants to turn everything that already exists into interactive objects,\r\nincluding humans, animals and plants. That may sound weird / scary / far-\r\nfuturistic but guess what... they've already done it.
\r\nFlipping interaction on its head, they're all about not changing the\r\nenvironment, but changing you, or your perception of the environment.\r\nTouchৼ/em> is used for 'virtual tactile perception'... they can create a charged\r\nfield around the human hand so that you feel things differently. The objects\r\nthemselves are passive, simple, unchanged. The person just has to be in\r\ncontact with the device that creates the field, which can be embedded in an\r\nobject you're already touching like clothing, a shoe or an umbrella. Then,\r\nwith no wires or weird contraptions, the person can touch some object (like a\r\nteapot) and as the settings of the field are changed, so the texture of the\r\nobject appears changed.
\r\nWith this technology they can also tell who is touching something, or which\r\npart of your own body you are touching, because everything has a different\r\nelectronic resistance. An example they produced was a touchscreen drawing\r\napplication that changed the pen colour depending on who was drawing, with no\r\nadditional information than sensing the fingers on the screen.
\r\nDisney has the botannicus interacticus \\\\\\\\- an interactive plant. Electrodes\r\nin the soil transform any plant into a multi-touch controller! Gestures\r\naround the plant (à la theremin) or touching the plant in different ways, can\r\nbe mapped to things like sound. It's possible to have very high precision.\r\nAll plants are different, too! So the same tech applied to different plants\r\nwill cause different outcomes. Video.
\r\nThere's an open source version of Touchৼ/em> for Arduino.
\r\nIvan also played with 3D printing, and sees this as something that will become\r\nhugely accessible to the extent that people will start to manufacture most\r\nthings themselves; or at least, pop down to their local corner shop to get\r\nsomething printed from an existing design.
\r\nThey've done some experiments with 3D printing transparent objects, and 'light\r\npipes' which direct colours and sizes of light precisely. They can create\r\ninteractive displays by projecting light from below or behind objects and\r\npiping images onto them.
\r\nIt's possible now to 3D print a broad variety of sensors.
\r\nThese things result in interactive objects that respond to you, but all of the\r\nelectronics are outside of the object, so you can switch one object for\r\nanother one and have it work the same very easily.
\r\nHe concluded with:
\r\n1\\\\\\\\. Digitizing what we already have, not making more junk.
\r\n2\\\\\\\\. Sustainability requires augmenting humans and growing your electronics.
\r\n3\\\\\\\\. Distributed manufacturing vs. mass production.
Resulting thoughts and ideas
\r\n
\r\nI got a general feeling of disparity between 'art' and 'real-life', with strong suggestions that it doesn't matter if interactive, technology-powered art installations break, so long as people are compelled to play with them. That's something I absolutely loved and absolutely hated simultaneously during my MSc in the ECA last year, and still causes internal conflict. (Ie. I understand the value of play and experimentation, but I'm passionate about things being useful and empowering, and it's possible to do both, and it bothers me when people take the easy way out, slap the 'experimental art' label on it and move on to their next solid-outcome-less project).
Despite not actually talking to anyone about what I am doing and how it might\r\nin some way link to what they do, I suspect digital artists like these kinds\r\nof people might be good use cases for what I'm trying to make. They\r\ncollaborate, have varied processes. And are more likely than amateur\r\nYouTubers to be interested in engaging with a new experimental technology.\r\nThey could, for example, be incentivised to record their processes and actions\r\nover the course of a project, and be rewarded with visualisations of their\r\ndata, and comparisons with the data of others. (Actually making the\r\nvisualisations is out of my remit, but there will be someone who can..).
\r\nA thing I should do is analyse blogs, articles, reports, etc about creative\r\ndigital projects for the vocabulary about their processes. I thought about\r\nthis as one of the speakers was just describing step by step the process for\r\none project... but I wasn't listening properly; I only realised in time to\r\nhave this thought, too late to write it all down. But there will be loads of\r\ndocumentation already out there that can be harvested.
\r\nI always think of my project as something that helps a lot toward connecting\r\nwith others for collaborating, but a large part can be finding other art/media\r\nprojects for inspiration. That kind of pitch would sell it to this kind of\r\naudience, at least.
\r\nSo that's that. Photos from all the time I wasn't at Resonate are here.
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