Category: Livecoding
-
Penelopean robotics theory and the woven cosmos (part 1)
The Penelope project is concerned with many things, pattern structures in ancient poetry, comparisons of Andean and Greek mathematics, and the role of liveness in thought processes – to name just a few. We can also add robotics to this list. A weaver in action is often mistaken for a robot – perhaps it’s the…
-
How to design a tangible programming language – Pattern Matrix at Algomech (part 2)
Once we acknowledge that weaving and programming are part of the same technological timeline, we can begin to look at the history of weaving as a eight thousand year long tale of human relationship with digital technologies – and use this long view to research new approaches to software engineering, a field with a much…
-
Pattern Matrix at Algomech (part 1)
I’m writing this on the train with a slightly sleep deprived brain fizzing and popping from thoughts, ideas and conversations from this year’s Algomech festival in Sheffield. The Penelope project took a significant role in the festival, with the group’s participation in the Unmaking Symposium, the exhibition and also testing our latest weavecoding technology at…
-
Red King: Host/Parasite co-evolution citizen science
A new project begins, on the subject of ecology and evolution of infectious disease. This one is a little different from a lot of Foam Kernow’s citizen science projects in that the subject is theoretical research – and involves mathematical simulations of populations of co-evolving organisms, rather than the direct study of real ones in…
-
The UAV toolkit & appropriate technology
The UAV toolkit’s second project phase is now complete, the first development sprint at the start of the year was a bit of research into what we could use an average phone’s sensors for, resulting in a proof of concept remote sensing android app that allowed you to visually program different scripts which we then…
-
Weavecoding performance experiments in Cornwall
Last week the weavecoding group met at Foam Kernow for our Cornish research gathering. As we approach the final stages of the project our discussions turn to publications, and which ideas from the start need revisiting. While they were here, I wanted to give local artists and researchers working with code and textiles a chance…
-
Airborne drag-drop programming, the next steps
This autumn we are continuing work on the UAV toolkit with Karen Anderson and her research group at the Environment and Sustainability Institute. This time we have a mission to help the Westcountry Rivers Trust by coming up with fast and cheap ways they can build maps of farms to determine water run-off problems, which…
-
Picademy Exeter and Future Thinking for Social Living
Last week I had the chance to help out the Raspberry Pi foundation at their Picademy in Exeter. It was good to meet up with Sam Aaron again to talk livecoding on Pis, and also see how they run these events. They are designed for local teachers to get more confident with computers, programming and…
-
Weavecoding Munich
Ellen’s exhibition in Munich was always going to be a pivotal event in the weavecoding project – one of the first opportunities to expose our work to a large audience. The Museum of casts of classical sculptures was the perfect context for the mythical aspects of weaving, overlooked by Penelope and friends with her subversive…
-
Loose threads from weavecoding
Midway through the weavecoding project and our researches have thrown up a whole load of topics that either don’t quite fit into our framework, or we simply won’t have time to pursue properly. Here are some of the tangents I’ve collected so far. Coding with knots: Khipu One of the cultures I’m increasingly interested in…