Then later on that evening was This Happened #6, where the audience learned all about the creative processes behind four unique tech art projects. These were Touched Echo by Markus Kison, Audience by rAndom International and Chris O’Shea, Troika‘s ‘Cloud‘ and the responsive installation at Covent Garden by United Visual Artists. One thing that was striking about all these was the ammount of time put into planning and pre-visualisation, leaving little or no room for error when the final product was delivered. Also they were made in very tight timeframes, Cloud for instance was nine months from initial idea to the final installation.

In the lobby of the BFI there was a project I really liked called Doodle Earth, which basically encourages people to draw. An animated map dotted with buildings and moving vehicles is projected onto a blank wall and people are encouraged to fill in the blanks with coloured markers. I drew this dragon head thing burning the building in the projection (someone added the ‘Cheese’ speech bubble and ‘JAFC rules…’ messages later on). All the art meets technology stuff is great but this really suceeds at creating a fun, collaborative user experience in a fairly lo-tech way. It’s good to draw!

Below is a work in progress shot from my ‘Alternative Displays’ project, it’s a 4 x 4 grid of square electromagnets. These are controlled by an Arduino and a Djuicer (a custom circuit designed especially for the workshop by 1scale1). A framed sheet of perspex goes on top of these and it contains a layer of industrial printer toner. When the magnets are switched on the the metal fibres stand up and you see a ‘pixel’ in the dust. Thanks to Mattias, Tony and David at 1scale1 for all their help making this. Next step is to have custom animations appear in the dust and have it respond to some external inputs.