Art + Arduino = Artuino
If you haven’t yet played with Arduino, the low-cost open source hardware that’s captured the imagination of geeks and artboys alike, then you should really try one out (Berlin retailers: Tinkersoup and Fritzing). The chip is incredibly versatile and easy to use, and you can customize it will a million different components and do tons of cool hacks. If you’re a n00b like me, then just getting the LED light to blick is satisfaction enough.
On June 20 – 21, Anton (Tinkersoup) and Arnon (Artuino) organized an Arduino workshop at IMA Design Village in Berlin. Over 100 musicians, designers, and hardware hackers came to play with wires and circuit boards. Each group was given some design goals, and from an assemblage of old electronics and nimble Arduinos, we built mini games and toys. Our group ended up gluing together an inverted pinball game made out of CPU cooling fans and a retro switch controller. The goal of the game was to blow a balloon into a wire hoop, which triggered a digital camera to take a goofy picture of you.
There were a lot more sophisticated projects at the workshop, including two musicians exploring how to tear away from the hunched over, laptop-bound harddisc jockey era. Instead, they wanted to build instruments that allow musicians to move around and perform, while having all the electronic techniques available like looping and filters. Onyx Ashanti (video) wowed the crowd with his “beat jazz”, a blend of dance music looped live from a MIDI clarinet. The instrument is hooked to a mixter and laptop steered by a Playstation controller and iPhone — incredibly complex but wonderful to listen to. Marco showed us his “Ast / Tree Branch”, a handmade free-standing instrument that the musician controls by sliding his fingers along the branch’s neck. Very cool sound and a real chance for artists to compose electronic music while having analog interaction.
Hopefully there will be more opportunities for all these creative folks to get together again. I know I certainly had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Thanks so much to the organizers and to the participants!
Artvertiser: Augmented Reality Replaces Ads With Art
Wanna combine adbusting with bleeding edge gadgetry?
Check out this toy, the Artvertiser. It’s a netbook hacked with a video camera so it can recognize billboard advertising and overlay it with art images. Talk about product re-placement!
The project uses Free and open source software, and hand held devices are expected to roll out soon, particularly the Android. Judging by the demo video, these Spanish tinkerers live in Berlin. Anyone know them? I want to play too! ^_^
From their website:
The Artvertiser software is trained to recognise individual advertisements, each of which become a virtual ‘canvas’ on which an artist can exhibit images or video when viewed through the hand-held device.
After training, wherever the advertisement appears, the chosen art will appear instead when viewed live through the hand-held device. It doesn’t matter whether the advertisement is on a building, in a magazine or on the side of a vehicle.
Governing Openness
Openness is a philosophy that is being used as the basis of how various groups and organizations operate. It is a relatively new term to describe a general way of doing things. — “Openness.” Wikipedia. Accessed 01.06.09.
Over the span of four hours, Dr. Christine Kolbe led us, the participants of last week’s Thinking Openeverything salon, along the many strands of “openness” collected over the past months. Together, we were trying to advance answers to core questions. Where does the term openness come from? What does it really mean? Is it unique to the digital age? What are the shortcomings and counter arguments to opening up everything? Are these processes viable models for society?
We first took a stab at these topics using a mediation technique called a spectogram, where we lined up according to our personal responses to the question How open are you? The majority of the room clustered around “above average” and “completely”, but a few outliers sparked comment when standing firmly at “not very”. One participant, finding himself hovering near “not at all”, explained that he sensed a generational gap between his traditional “keep your cards close” behavior and the more share-happy, digital native approach.
From these initial thoughts, we pieced together some conditions of openness. Most definitions included transparency, participation, and access. Feedback loops were also key, as they ensure communication channels between users and service providers — be they software companies, fashion labels, or governments.
Of course, no conversation about openness would be complete without recognition of the free vs. open debate. There is a critical distinction between the two terms, although they are often (wrongly) used interchangeably. Free describes an ideology and social movement bound by four unwavering freedoms guaranteeing access, distribution, modification, and even commercialization. Open is more about methodology, and as a term, it is by far less disciplined in usage. An open platform, for example, may grant gratis access to everyone but run proprietorially and prevent users from governing themselves. In such instances, you end up with cases like Facebook’s controversial Terms of Service, which allow the social networking company to data-mine its users’ personal information and sell it to marketers.
The ambiguities of the term “openness”, or its general lack of ideology, prompted one of the most intriguing questions at openeverything Berlin: Is openness a model for society? Certainly there are characteristics of openness that are and should be the aspirations of governments and communities, no-brainers such as transparency and participation. But how can these traits be implemented or maintained if there is not a rigid definition of openness or mechanisms to guarantee them? Unlike “free as in speech”, there are not systematized hacks and uncompromising rules to ensure something is open, and that it will stay that way. This fundamental shortcoming leads to deeper questions regarding the role of commons governance in general — a thoroughly under-theorized field, as commons researcher David Bollier rightly points out.
Overall, commons governance was a huge topic on the participants’ minds at openeverything Berlin. We took a look at how open projects are structured and how democracy plays out within them. It became clear that while many existing projects take steps in the right direction, a notable number are still reigned by benevolent dictators. Take for instance Wikipedia, which evokes a remarkable exception for its founder, Jimmy Wales. The rule, WP:JIMBO, stipulates that Wales may assert authority “on an ad-hoc basis: it is exercised when other decision-making structures are inadequate or have failed in a particular situation.”
Openwashing also poses a threat to the idyllic fields of openness. Openwashing, derived from greenwashing, is a marketing phenomenon that seeks to pitch a product as open, although it is not. Since “openness” doesn’t have a strict definition or ideology, the term can be abused all the easier. Coca-Cola, for example, recently launched its “Open Happiness” campaign, which is supposed to “inspire people to say yes to the opportunities that summer brings” through ad spots and posters. I’m not hold my breath that Coke’s campaign will do anything truly open at all. It is, just like many other companies, simply riding a wave of cool. Open is vogue, and since commodification inevitably follows cool, we’ll be seeing more and more openwashing down the line, which will unvariably dilute “open” as a meaningful nomenclature.
But who controls that “right” definition of open in the first place? This was a closing point at the salon. While I personally think there’s good reason to protest against openwashing, what sort of legitimacy does our little Berlin gathering have in dictating a functioning definition of openness for the world? The lack of governing competence for the term might be another thread in openness’ undoing. While the Free Software Definition is curated by the Free Software Foundation, there is no responsible body for “openness”. Would an institutional caretaker improve or advance the concept? Or would it be best to leave the term as is — a loose description of methodology and characteristics? Time will help answer this “open question”…but rest assured we’ll continue tackling it at next month’s openeverything! (^_^)
So, is opennes a model for society? What do you think?
Thinking Openeverything
Time to get philosophical. The next Openeverything Berlin is sinking it’s teeth into the core principles of openness — digesting what we’ve learned so far from the Fokus events on Open Knowledge, Open Design, and Open Workspaces.
The event, held auf deutsch, will be on 28.05.09 in newthinking store, Tucholskystraße 48, 10117 Berlin. Come join us!
openeverything focus #4 Thinking Openeverything [Geschichte + Philosophie]
Gäste:
- ihr -
Ablauf:
19:00 Tach sagen, Bier trinken
19:30 Creative Commons News
19:45 Thinking Openeverything – mit Hilfe verschiedener Tools kommen wir der Sache näher: zentrale Gedanken, Positionen, Beispiele, Definitionen …
21:15 Ausklang
Berlin Munchies: our new food blog
Hungry in Berlin? No more.
Inspired by a few friends writing about food in their neighborhoods, Peter and I thought we’d give it a try as well. Our site, Berlin Munchies, is a new blog about food in Berlin. We post (often blurry) photos and a brief description of food we liked. As the site says, the posts are totally subjective, but we’re having fun sharing our gastronomic experiences throughout Germany’s vibrant Hauptstadt.
Got any recommendations? (^_^)
My playful remix “Piggie with munchies”. Based on “a piggy in the middle” by Darwin Bell, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Unported license.
LOVE SWINE gets remixed
Lairaja also got infected by the creative spirit and tweeted me his swine remix. Love it!
Update Pig fever inspires two more remixes. Oink! http://twitpic.com/4l859 and http://twitpic.com/4l84r
LuvSwine by lairaja / CC BY 3.0 PH
LOVE SWINE? Get the T-Shirt.
Feeling under the weather? There’s no better remedy than a LOVE SWINE t-shirt. Check out more colors and cuts in the porky department of our European storefront.
Thanks to Bochito for the creative inspiration!
Coworking and Travorking
Coworking is a brilliant idea. You’re a nomadic professional, tired of schlepping your laptop and shelling out $2.50/hr in coffee at your local cafe. You’d like to be around interesting folks, learn about their work, and share contacts and experience. College was a luxury of the past; now you miss your 24-hour campus library and comfy dorm couch. So what to do when you’re young, employed, and on the search for the perfect modern office?
Enter coworking, an office-turned-community solution for the modern spirit. As I learned from last week’s Open Everything, coworking spaces are as diverse as the people the frequent them, but the main idea is the same: create a space where you can plug in, wire up, and get some work done — all with the camaraderie of fellow pixel pushers.
The newly opened Betahaus in Berlin is an example of a well-planned space. On the main floor, you have a cafe, lounge, and exhibition hall for events and art installations. One floor up you’ll find plenty of desks which can be rented on by the hour. Wifi is as ubiquitous as oxygen, plus printers, fax machines, and other office kramm abound. One level higher is home to the regular members, who pay by the month for a fixed desk and secure place to leave their stuff. They’re also given a key to come in during closed hours.
The Betahaus is already becoming a studio-of-choice in Germany’s creative captial. Anyone who waited an hour to get into the office’s opening party can attest to that. And as Christoph, one of the Betahaus’s founders, explained at Open Everything, desk contracts are going fast.
Travorking
But other than a hip home-office hybrid and new friends, what else comes with a coworking space? Well, here’s one idea that really caught my imagination. Patrick, co-founder of Station C in Montreal, introduced me to the concept of travorking — traveling and working.
If you need a change of scenery, pack your bags and head to another city to work remotely. Patrick and his girlfriend Marie are doing just that in Berlin. They found an apartment, a friendly coworking space in Kreuzberg, and set up shop. They explore the city in the evening after work, and during the day they’re at the office, working on projects and getting to know their office mates.
Also struck by wanderlust, Peter and Matze decided to do the travorking trip in reverse. My Berliner buddies have taken off to NYC, where they’re now camped out at The Change You Want To See coworking space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They seem pretty happy there, and from what I hear, there’s never a dull moment.
With travorking on the rise, it makes me think there’s a good future in developing a coworking visa. If you’re a paying member at a coworking space in your city, you could go and work at partner offices around the globe on your same contract. I think a visa system would encourage even more travel and strengthen coworking’s network and vibe. It’s definitely a cool mode of work, and I’m happy to see it picking up!
Monkeys on a Banana by furryscaly / CC BY ND
Computer Monkeys by ChrisL_AK / CC BY
Wanna Learn Arabic? Some Cool Tools and Sites
One thing I appreciate about the net is that people are always compiling lists to share their experiences and help others find (or avoid!) certain tools and sites. With that spirit in mind, I thought I’d jot down some services I’ve come across so far on my journey to learning Arabic (and wow, it is such a long road).
With no further ado, here’s my must-have list:
- Arabic Pod: This excellent and gratis podcast, run by Mohamed Moshaya and Ehab Saleh out of London, offers regular audio lessons for beginner, lower-, and upper-intermediate speakers. It has been my favorite language companion so far because Mohamed and Ehab have a wonderful delivery and knack for explaining tricky grammar and phrases. They alternate lessons between classical Arabic and colloquial, and their website features transcripts of their lessons, videos, and more at a reasonable price. I really appreciate these guys — shukran!
- Alkitaab Podcasts: Jeremy’s an American grad student who’s put together a series of podcasts to accompany the ubiquitous Al-Kitaab textbooks (which btw is also a great site, for those advanced enough to decipher the syllabi). In Jeremy’s Alkitaab podcasts, he walks through each page and exercise in the famous textbook and explains the questions and provides example answers. It’s a really helpful homework complement.
- Alkitaab Audio: Speaking of the glorious textbook Al-Kitaab, San Francisco State University offers the audio, re-recorded by their own native speakers, so you don’t have to buy/burn the Al-Kitaab DVD. The sound quality isn’t as good, and having the original DVD is actually really beneficial, but in a crunch, or for data exportability, use SFSU’s audio as a solid fix.
- Al Jazeera’s Children Channel: You can watch and read plenty of things in Arabic on this channel’s website. The content is geared towards kids, so it’s colorful and interactive, and therefore good for people wanting to learn the language.
- Arabic Internet Radio: Plenty of the links are broken, but you can still find some streams from radio stations in Lebanon, Tunisia, the UAE, and elsewhere.
- Yamli.com: Arabic transliteration can be hard, especially when you’re new to the language. This search engine suggests Arabic spellings as you type and brings you results usings several orthographic variations.
- Nice Translator: This service builds upon Google Translate, but gives it a much better interface and immediate as-you-type translations. You can also set it up to translate into several different languages at once.
Update: An absolute gem for free Arabic tutorials can be found at Learn Arabic Online. It contains a real wealth of material, including audio lectures, conjugation charts, grammar study sheets, writing guides, history, and heaps more. I’m also very impressed by their vocab lists and poetry tutorials. I’ll definitely have to spend more study time here! (Thank you to the Shariah Program for sharing this link with me!)
we love arabic .. نحب لغتنا العربية by place light – flying not physically / CC BY
Open Workspace @ Openeverything Berlin
This month we’ll be talking about new forms of co-working, collaboration, and office sharing.
Joining us:
- Hallenprojekt (Berlin) – Sebastian Sooth (Twitter: sebaso)
- Station C (Montreal) – Patrick Tanguay (Identica: patrick, Twitter: inevernu)
- Betahaus (Berlin) – Jan Tanner (Twitter: betahaus)
Where: newthinking store, Tucholskystr. 48, 10117 Berlin Mitte
When: Thurs, 23.04.09, 19:30
Read more about our other Openeverything events & ideas:
