Three Pieces, an installation by Found Electronics, is a “composition for plants, yangqin, bamboo robot and robotic chimes”. A generative and responsive music piece involving arduinos, sensors, solenoids and traditional chinese instruments, it’s installed in the wonderful Palm House in Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens and runs 14-29th June until 13th July (run extended), 10am-5pm. Entry is free.

Three Pieces is designed as a collaboration between robots, traditional instruments, and living things, housed in Victorian Palm House of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. A traditional Chinese dulcimer is played by a robot with many bamboo fingers while the surrounding foliage hides an ensemble of robotic chimes. Despite being separate individuals, the robots communicate and perform together.

The robot performers are conducted by all the living things in the Palm House. The moisture content of the soil changes slowly as the plants absorb water, while on a much faster timescale, the temperature changes in the building as animals, including humans, move about. The installation detects this living presence in the Palm House and the music changes accordingly. The robots react to humans, but their mood alters with the plants.

There will also be a performance featuring other musicians, dancers and sculpture there on Saturday 21st June 7-9pm, plus a talk by the artists Ziggy Campbell and Simon Kirby the following Saturday 28th at 3pm.

Anyway, coming back after being away has made me realise just how much creative activity there is here. Apart from all the new media startups and digital agencies, there are also heavyweights like Navyblue and Rockstar Games. Plus more festivals than you can shake a stick at — including the excellent film festival, now in its 62nd (!) year and moved to June, and at the other end of the scale the fledgling Edinburgh Interactive Festival. We also have four universities and an art college. All of this in a city only a sixth the size of Berlin.

To get to the point, I was recently very excited to hear about the forthcoming symposium being organised by my Napier colleagues Paul Rodgers and Michael Smyth — not only because it includes some of the most talented and interesting hybrid design/art practitioners based in the UK, but also because it’s happening two minutes walk from my office.

The official website is currently down due to a hardware failure, so I may as well give the full details here. (There’s also a facebook page.)

Apparently there are a few places left although they’re going fast. Registration is a mere 20 pounds. Please contact P DOT Rodgers AT napier.ac.uk if you want to register, and I’ll see you there (here).

inter_multi_trans_actions
emerging trends in post-disciplinary creative practice

Thursday 26 June, 2008
Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Creative Industries
Napier University
Merchiston Campus
10 Colinton Road
Edinburgh EH10 5DT

This one day symposium will bring together a number of leading practitioners from the fields of architecture, art, and design who each share a common desire to exploit the latest computing technologies in their creative practice. The invited speakers will reveal their cutting edge work that blurs the traditional boundaries of the creative disciplines.

Emerging trends in post-disciplinary creative practice highlight the interplay of conventional boundaries.

“New hybrids of design are emerging. People don’t fit in neat categories; they’re a mixture of artists, engineers, designers, thinkers. They’re in that fuzzy space and might be finding it quite tough, but the results are really exciting.”
[Tony Dunne quoted in West, D., Digital Poets, Icon, 2007, 43 (January), pp. 56 – 64]

The aim of this event is to inspire and inform the symposium delegates of the significance of this trans-disciplinary research and its impact for creative practice in the UK. This event will appeal to a wide audience including practitioners, researchers, educators, industrialists and stakeholders involved in the creative industries.

[ Update: programme below is now updated, plus Paul sent me a PDF of the Flyer with biogs and stuff. Usman Haque was also mentioned in the initial announcement, but unfortunately he’s had to cancel. ]

Thursday 26 June, 2008
Programme (draft)

09.00 – 09.30 Registration, tea and coffee
09.30 – 09.40 Introduction
09.40 – 10:10 Bengt Sjölén www.automata.se
10:10 – 10:40 Greyworld www.greyworld.org
10:40 – 11:00 Tea and Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:30 Moritz Waldemeyer www.waldemeyer.com
11.30 – 12.00 Crispin Jones www.mr-jones.org
12.00 – 12.30 TROIKA www.troika.uk.com

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch

13.30 – 14.00 the POOCH www.thepooch.com
14.00 – 14.30 HeHe hehe.org.free.fr
14.30 – 14.50 Tea and Coffee break
14.50 – 15.20 Jason Bruges Studio www.jasonbruges.com
15.20 – 15.50 The Owl Project www.owlproject.com
15.50 – 16.30 Discussion Session (chaired by Lucy Bullivant) www.lucybullivant.net

17.00 – 18.30 Evening Reception

Tomorrow the exhibition of work by graduating design students opens, but being in the School of Creative Industries means that along with Design there will also be involvement from photography and film students (from Lens Media and Screen Academy Scotland) and the Ian Tomlin School of Music, as well as Culture, Literature and Publishing, and Journalism, Advertising and Communication.

This structure only came about recently, but I think it’s a strong cluster of disciplines with lots of potential for cross-pollination, and it will be interesting to see how the exhibition and associated events — known as the Creative Showcase — come together.

I’m finishing off the website just now (launches 4th June), but if you’re in Edinburgh between 5th and 12th June then check out the dates for the exhibition, film screenings and music performances. They’re online now.

Private view (by invitation only) is 4th June, with the official opening by Nick Talbot, director of Seymourpowell.

A couple of weeks ago I came across a bunch of blogs written by IBM folk at Hursley Park, in which they described how they’d been playing with the CurrentCost energy monitor so they could get the data out and send it to twitter feeds, produce comparative graphs of consumption (like those above), and other stuff.

I’ve been interested in this idea ever since I saw Wattson by DIY Kyoto being demonstrated at DesignersBlock a couple of years ago… the CurrentCost is pretty fugly compared to wattson, but then again it’s far cheaper. I just bought one for £28 from eco gadget shop.

The system comprises a clamp that you fit in your meter cupboard, which then measures the amount of electricity you’re using and transmits it via radio link to a small visual display that you can use to keep an eye on things.

There are other devices that do similar things, but the CurrentCost has a serial port through which it outputs its readings every 6 seconds or so, which means you can use the data for whatever you like. It’s even in XML.

The only downside is the connection — an undocumented RJ45 jack. There will eventually be a data cable available, but it looks like only IBM people have this at the moment. I spent some time today trying to fathom out the connection but the pinout doesn’t appear to match any of the conventions for RS232 over RJ45. I chopped up an ethernet cable since they use RJ45 connectors and I have loads.

Anyway after some experimentation and thanks to Roo Reynolds I now have the unit connected to my Mac. It turns out that the data cable has a converter chip in it, and that the signals are 3.3V. I already have a cable that does the same (made by FTDI up the road in Glasgow, and which I recently bought from Adafruit in NYC — oops), so I used that to make the connection and all was well.

My unit sends its data at a particularly underwhelming 2400 baud, but since the packet only arrives every 6 seconds or so it’s fast enough. (Just!)

The pic’s a bit fuzzy, so here’s the order of wires from the ethernet cable, Left to Right:

orange/white
orange
green/white (pin 7, data in to CurrentCost)
blue (pin 4, ground)
blue/white
green
brown/white
brown (pin 8, data out from CurrentCost)

I’m looking forward to connecting this up to an arduino. I have a couple of different ethernet shields to try it with: the adafruit one with an Xport that I’ve had for ages, plus the new supercheap one from nuelectronics (£12.99! they also sell freeduinos for the same price).

Both of these have code available to let them talk to pachube via EEML.

Right, easily enough gobbledygook for one posting.