On wednesday of this week Sheffield's
Ideas Bazaar will spring into
action, mixing together a witch's brew of artists, scientists and engineers of
all shapes, sizes, and personal hygene statuses. A select group of the Pi.GATE
team (Bo, Fred and Hamish) have been bending their enormous collective
intellect towards finding their way to that end of the campus without a
satnav. If we make it, we'll let you know. (Want to join in? Hit the "contact"
button above.)
In the meantime, here are some of our notes for the event:
There is a new conjunction emerging around open hardware, maker culture, and
art. Parallels exist with the explosive change in pop culture pressaged by
punk in the late 1970s: from the Homebrew Computer Club trading circuits and
information; from Iain M. Banks' legacy of utopian technofutures, blending
electro-augmented humanity with benevolent AI; from the wearable electronics
kits (e.g. from Adafruit.com — echoing Lady Ada
Lovelace, inventor of the computer algorithm); to the latest rounds of
sampling and remix.
Open-source hardware allows people to make their own robots, cameras,
electrocardiagraph machines and even full computers by downloading schematics
and building — incorporating any changes they need — and, typically, free
open-source software is available to run these projects. 3D printers have
helped this adoption of the open-everything ethos.
As this site and many others testify, there are stacks of DIY projects based
on the Raspberry Pi, and the flood showns no sign of slowing. The Pi is a
small cheap computer which is very easy to cobble together with other devices.
It has a large community behind it and is one of the drivers behind proposed
changes in the schools ICT curriculum.
As part of a trend to open hardware and maker culture the Pi is also a vehicle
for localist responses to climate change and peak oil: the more we manufacture
locally the more secure we are (the Pi is made in Wales); the less energy we
use the less carbon we pump into the atmosphere (the Pi is low power).
Future Making will be a rolling event over two days with around a dozen
exhibits plus an hourly short stage show. The target audience is anyone
curious, with secondary schools invited to attend if the timing of the event
permits. The performers are expected to be engineers, musicians, social
scientists, dancers, hackers and visual artists.
Some more of the gorey details (from
our GitHub repository):
And to whet your appetite, a random selection of the artbites:
Google gave $1m to fund Pi hardware for schools. Eben Upton (of the Pi
foundation) is the Chesire Cat impersonator here:
That's all very well, but "At Boots science is for boys and pink princess toys
are for girls" —
Amy Mather (14-year-old Pi hacker) at
Wuthering Bytes, September 14th 2013.
What to do? Commission J.K. Rowling to write The Adventures of Princess Pi?
Seek venture capital for Pink Electronics Ltd.? Or order a large consignment
of Barbie-the-Programmer dolls?
(from the WISE
blog).
Perhaps games with a porpoise would interest girls? (Sorry.)
Enough frivolity. Amy also said we need:
Some organisations working in this direction (click through for details):
There are more; please ping us to add to
this list! And if you're in Sheffield this Wednesday, come say hi. Ciao.
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