Reasons to be Creative 2015

September 11, 2015

Wednesday I returned from another great Reasons to be Creative conference. I'm full of inspiration and ideas of projects I want to get started on. A big thank you to everyone who was involved in setting up and running the conference, especially John Davey. I can't wait for the tickets to be released for next year, I'll be there queuing up to buy one. It's something I highly recommend going to, at least once.

These are my notes from the three days, with some added related links.
Please get in touch if you have questions.

Enjoy

DAY 1 - MONDAY

Mike Brondbjerg - How to use data in your creative process

http://www.brondbjerg.co.uk/
http://www.brondbjerg.co.uk/blog/2015/09/reasons-2015-code-notes/
"I can't draw – but I still want to draw things. I use the skills I have as a developer to create systems for drawing, and feed data into those systems. It's about using data as a creative material."
Use data that’s around you to create with other tools.
https://processing.org/ http://p5js.org/ https://www.arduino.cc/

Wouter Verweirder - Building Bridges

https://github.com/wouterverweirder
https://www.devine.be/
Using the Kinect to make games for children to play.

James Hall - Security is Everyone's Responsibility

https://parall.ax/
Highlighting what PRISM and the NSA are doing. http://www.wearealwayslistening.com/
Showing how insecure WiFi is. http://www.iwaxx.com/debookee/
Ways of cracking passwords using Cloud computing. https://www.cloudcracker.com/
Recommended using sentences as passwords as it’s harder for computers to crack.
Explained different types of computer cryptography.
http://www.contextis.com/documents/2/Browser_Timing_Attacks.pdf
He built an app that mirrors your phone’s browser onto his machine. Including gyroscopic data.

Noma Bar - Graphic storytelling

http://www.dutchuncle.co.uk/noma-bar/
He was greatly inspired by Charlie Chaplin, because he tells stories without words.
Distilling into graphic icon that tells a story.
http://www.chineasy.org/

Dominic Wilcox - Idea hunter

http://dominicwilcox.com/
"I'm on a constant creative journey to discover innovative ideas and possibilities through all sorts of mental tricks I play on myself to get my brain outside of it's everyday, humdrum thoughts."
To get a good idea of his brilliant work, just watch the documentary about him. http://dominicwilcox.com/portfolio/the-reinvention-of-normal/

DAY 2 - TUESDAY

Andrew Spooner - Welcome to 2017. This is the current level of human happiness. And this is the date and time you will die.

Writing music on tablet http://www.staffpad.net/
Microsoft’s research into Machine learning.

"Everyone needs a shed to get away to"
Use tools different to what you're used to. A tutor once asked his class to bring in anything the could make a mark.
Do something small everyday http://danielsmonster.tumblr.com/
http://oo00.eu/
Code Pen is one of his sheds http://codepen.io/
A podcast he makes, when he has time http://hicksdesign.co.uk/tag/troika/

Ways Jon rates his ideas
Fluency - quality of ideas
Originality - Unusualness of ideas
Flexibility - crossover of ideas

Jane ni Dhulchaointigh - Power to the (handy) people

http://sugru.com/
It was created by messing about with wood dust and bathroom silicone.
She started fixing problems round her student flat with the new substance.
https://sugru.com/story
"You don't need to be an expert in something, just learn it" "Start small, make it good"

The Sugru top ten findings
10 - Make sure it works
9 - Good things take time
8 - You don't have to stay in your box
7 - Business = Community
6 - "The market for something to believe in is infinite"
5 - Start small, decide how you want people to feel using your product
4 - Inspire people
3 - Launch and learn
2 - Design for impact
1 - People are amazing
Project to connect fixers and people in need http://fixperts.org/
Give someone the confidence to make something small

Yuko Shimizu - You are never too old to achieve your dream

http://yukoart.com/
She worked in a "corporate world" until the age of 33, then quit and moved to NYC to study art.
With every new piece she tries out a new style, colour way or technique.

1 - Take at least one small risk everyday
2 - If you don't like your old work, you're on the right track
3 - Clients love photography way more than illustration - so make the illustration something that photography can't
4 - Don't take a project if it takes a goodnights sleep away from you
5 - It's ok to turn down a job
6 - Helping others, especially new comers, is good karma
7 - A project is not successful unless the client thinks so
8 - Once I say yes to a job, I put 100% effort in
9 - Never work for free and don't undercut others
10 - Sometimes there are things more rewarding than money

DAY 3 - WEDNESDAY

Elevator Pitches - 20 speakers - 3 mins each

Martin Hollywood
thathollywood.com
Photo frame you touch to send a message to his wife.

Boon Chew
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/word-tracer-learn-chinese/id430413408?mt=8
App to learn Chinese

Mike Almond
https://github.com/mikedotalmond/
We fear change

Mark Lambertz
https://twitter.com/mkyschnitzel
Cybernetics & complexity

Adam Butler
http://lab.io/
Hardware hacking, coffee machine, portal gun, dial-a-drone
https://youtu.be/Ofl_R_drJJ8?t=1m16s

Ade Mills
http://ademills.com/
Don't take opportunities for granted, say yes more than no.
5 mins to help someone out is worth a lifetime

Adam Stanton
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/0x0001
Artificial Evolution, abstractions & automation

Salva Domingo
noiselab.net
Machine to machine sound communication

Mister Phil
misterphil.co.uk
365 project to create a new image a day
Developer that became an Illustrator.

Matt Gibson
cyber-duck.co.uk
Clients can be the monster of our own making
1 - Surprises suck - be transparent
2 - Present your design work - focus on problems first hand
3 - Respect is a balancing act - honest and reliable

Mr Sugar
healthyvagina.com/

Tammie Lister
diaryofawebsite.com
Structure for creativity with pattern libraries

Richard Jon Guest
othermaterials.com/
AC to DC, trying to run his studio from solar power.
Homemade phone charger

David Paul Rosser
ivxvixviii.io/
hi-res.net
Talked through the VOID project ivxvixviii.io/work/void

Mark Robbins
The future of emails
rebelmail.com
Full interactivity in an email using CSS

Geri Reid
http://www.gerireid.com
Teaching kids to code, volunteer to teach code in schools https://www.codeclub.org.uk

/ Elevator Pitches

Lizzie Mary Cullen - Overcoming the Fame Game

www.lizziemarycullen.com
She told some lovely little stories, one about a tree and one about a man and a poo on a bus.
Having a near death, brown bear, experience changed the way she looks at life.
Her ego was a fear of failure. She likes to picture and treat fear as the No-Face character from Spirited Away.

Carla Diana - Exploring the Near Future through Hacking and Making

www.carladiana.com
Physical products & Digital behaviour
http://www.bloom.life
Social robotics, expressive machines
http://robotic.media.mit.edu/portfolio/leonardo-social-cognition/
http://carladiana.com/blog/projects/simon-robot-shell-design/
http://carladiana.com/blog/projects/simons-cousin/
Robotic reactions, inspiring design
A day in the near future (video) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/our-talking-walking-objects.html
https://vimeo.com/91746168
https://vimeo.com/smartixdlab
Getting children interested in future tech http://www.leothemakerprince.com/
https://www.thingiverse.com/

Danny Yount - Title Design

www.dannyyount.com/
He went through a lot of jobs before he got to Design.
https://vimeo.com/61765258

Evan Roth - The Art of Misuse

evan-roth.com
The presentation http://www.evan-roth.com/presentations/brighton-2015
Technological empowerment
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doomba
Graffiti laser tag
Fuck Google https://vimeo.com/9455140
Free speech https://vimeo.com/50162010
TSA Communication https://vimeo.com/87277792
Angry Birds All Levels https://vimeo.com/52680661
http://no-original-research.com/
http://www.evan-roth.com/work/multi-touch-finger-paintings/
Enabling graffiti writers and artists with paralysis to draw using only their eyes http://www.evan-roth.com/work/eyewriter
Peter Sunde at transmediale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DSGRYMbqjE
http://andrewblum.net/#tubes-book
The internet cabling map http://www.submarinecablemap.com
Infrared video of areas where the internet cable comes into NZ http://s36.787854e174.775049.com/
Alternative look at gestures when using a mobile http://www.evan-roth.com/work/dances-for-mobile-phones/

See you there next year.

Movember

December 1, 2014

Back in 2006 I took part in Tacheback, then last year I supported my girlfriend, Caz Lock, when she participated in Movember by illustrating animals with mo's. Feeling inspired to do something to help others, I decided to take part in this years Movember. It’s a charity I have a close affinity to, as my grandpa Alf died of prostate cancer on 4th January 2004. I wanted to do this for him and the awareness of mens health.

I think it’s always good to push yourself to take on new challenges, big and small. It’s easy to just talk about doing something, but it's harder when it comes to actually knuckling down and getting on with it.

I started the month off in style by going round to my local barbers for a haircut and a wet shave. Then had to go buy myself a razor. I decided taking a photo every day would work for me in two ways, keep others up-to-date on the growth, and add extra pressure to keep up the shaving every day.

For me, it’s not just about growing a moustache to give others a laugh on your behalf. For every shaving rash, ingrowing hair and laugh I got throughout the month, it forced me to reflect on how much harder someones life would be when living with cancer. With that in mind, it's easy to block out all those very minor pains.

It’s good to remind yourself of what you’ve got by taking something away, or pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Go and do something that’s not easy. Something you have to keep up. Something that takes effort. If what you’re doing can benefit other, then that’s even better.

What do you feel strongly about?
Who you could go out of your way to help?
How far will you push yourself for someone else’s gain?

Choose something, then do it.

If you want to see all the photos, or feel inclined to donate, you can do so here. mobro.co/hellojamesbooth

Making Things Club {JJLPR*}

October 28, 2014

Still excited by the great things we saw at Reasons to be Creative, a couple of friends and I got together to experiment and create something. We set a date and met up at Pete's shared studio space in Brighton.

We didn't yet know what to make, but between us we had a couple of Arduinos, and enough motors, servos, photoresistors, push buttons, potentiometers, piezos, LEDs and wires to make something interesting.

We just needed that good idea.

Saturday morning we started playing about with some of the basic Adruino tutorials. Having some Actionscript 2 knowledge from back in the day, and knowing a bit of JQuery, it was surprisingly easy to get something working from the little device. The hardest part was trying to remember what I had learned in school about circuits.

Within a couple of hours and with some help from Pete, thanks Pete, I had managed to setup a flashing LED, attached that to a push button, then connect a potentiometer (a rotary knob) to control the rate of flashing. I then attached a piezo (basically a little speaker) and replaced the potentiometer with a photoresistor. Now the more light you blocked from the sensor, the faster and higher pitched the tone was coming out of the piezo. It sounded somewhere between minimal techno and a Geiger counter.

Playing with Arduinos.

This was all the code it took. Which might be intimidating to a non-coder, but most of the structure was already in place from the tutorial. So it was more a case of adding little snippets.

// Setting variables for the button, LED and the dial/photoresistor.
int buttonInput = 0;
boolean wasOn = false;
int dial = 0;
//Setting which outputs and inputs are being used.
void setup() {
  pinMode(11, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(3, INPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}
// Everything else sits within this main repeating function.
void loop() {
// Reading the value of the dial/photoresistor.
  dial = analogRead(0);
  Serial.println(dial);
  if(dial > 500){
    // Setting a maximum time of 500ms
    dial = 500;
  } else if (dial < 15){
    // Setting a minimum time of 500ms
    dial = 15;
  }
// Activating the flashing LED when the button is pressed.
  buttonInput = digitalRead(3);
  if (buttonInput == HIGH){
    if(wasOn){
      digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    } else {
      digitalWrite(11, HIGH);
    }
    wasOn = !wasOn;
  } else {
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
  }
// Setting the tone relative to the dial/photoresistor.
  int pitch = dial;
  tone(8,pitch,20);
// Setting the delay relative to the dial/photoresistor.
  delay(dial);   
}

After lunch we sat down to form a plan. In the shared office space there is a hatch that everyone has to walk past when entering the building. We came up with a plan to create a small waving hand to welcome people as they walked past the room. Remi and Luke worked on using photoresistors to detect as someone walks past. Judit worked on taming the servo. Pete and I worked at getting little LED matrix displays to flash the word "HI".

Playing with Arduinos.

By the end of the day we had most of the parts working independently.

All we had to do on Sunday was to put the whole thing together. Easier said than done. The big problem we had, was getting enough change in light from the corridor as someone walked past. Ideally we would have had a different type of sensor to detect the movement. The light sensor would have worked better if there was a bright beam of light being cut. But with a little Energon and a lot of luck, and completely rebuilding the circuitry, we managed to get it working. Go team.

The first version of our welcoming hand. Playing with Arduinos. Read a post about the 2 day project on my blog. jamesbooth.net/blog

There are lots of tutorials online, so if you get stuck with what you're making, there's probably a post somewhere that can help. We plan on getting together again soon and attempting to make some more interesting things.

I'm considering getting myself a kit, and would highly recommend getting one. There's so much you can do with them.

Photos from the day on my Flickr

arduino.cc

JJLPR* Judit, James, Luke, Pete & Remi.

Reasons to be Creative

September 18, 2014

Staying inspired, up-to-date with latest technologies and work in the community is very important to me. Every year I try and go to at least one big conference, and as many small talks/exhibitions as I can. You can get a lot of out them, and also meet some nice people.

I've been going to the Reasons conference since it used to be Flash on the Beach, back in 2007. Every year I come away feeling refreshed, inspired and full of ideas. I always make notes on my favourite bits, and this it the first year I've actually typed them up, to share some of the wealth.

So, here are the notes of my best bits.

Jon Howard - The Future of Digital Creativity

Nice touch of using PollEV to get audience feedback, http://www.polleverywhere.com/
Ai - Watson being used to look over science papers.
A future with no more work? Kodak (63,900 employees 2003) - Instagram (7 Employees)
Mentioned watching this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
He showed an HTML game builder aimed at kids, that's still in development. Looked great, worth keeping an eye out for.

Florian Schmitt - To hell with facts, we want stories!

Making up stories for his children using just 3 keywords
#MyWeekInScraps http://blog.instagram.com/post/68599110354/myweekinscraps
VIne film festival, 6 second films. http://mashable.com/2013/04/28/tribeca-film-festival-6secfilms-vine-winners/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wiseman (Books on Luck and chance) & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Gardner (The Pursuit of Happyness) in a car http://vimeo.com/8251184
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-Wiseman/e/B001IGSOSK

James White - The Journey, not the Destination

http://www.signalnoise.com/
Ira Glass - Creative taste Vs Skill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY http://vimeo.com/85040589
http://blog.signalnoise.com/2013/08/01/wwe-superstars/

Brendan Dawes - Everything Starts Out Ugly

Guardian Data blog http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog
http://brendandawes.com/projects/jamesbondkills
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Visualizing-Data-Explaining-Processing-Environment/dp/0596514557
http://kennedyapp.com/
Data Waffles - http://brendandawes.com/projects/dataasobject
Mail Chimp - Six monkeys project. Not released yet, looked great.

Kate Moross - Anti-Inspiration

http://www.studiomoross.com/
http://www.katemoross.com/

Elevator Pitch - 20 speakers - 3 minutes each

Mike Brondbjerg
http://www.brondbjerg.co.uk/demos/labs/generative-portraits/#.VA2WhWRdUo8
http://www.brondbjerg.co.uk/blog/2014/02/generative-portraits-with-processing-js/

Dan Hett
Cool. http://cyrilcode.com/

Chris Gannon
Mocha AE tracking data - live interactive video.

Gareth James
Smile detection, Skype photo frame & Not so Secret Squirrel https://twitter.com/xsecretsquirrel

Bertrand Carrara & Yi-wen lin (Separate talks about the same game)
Interactive poem game based on a Chinese myth.
http://kuafu-thegiant.com/

Abi Fawcus
Talked about why the industry should be hiring more mums. They have super powers.

Jolyon Russ
#istoleyouridea http://www.tipthismuch.in/

Michele Brigante
Touch screens with tactile response.
http://www.foolproof.co.uk/thinking/enhancing-the-touchscreen-experience/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo1n5CyCKr0

Ben Foxall
Finding images by colour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBpcNU-tBi0

</Elevator Pitch>

Mario Klingemann - Eigenartig

Code art is like music, but not like actual painting. Algorithms are similar to melodies.
Talked about the Dunning Kruger effect - This explains it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOHJa5Vj5Y
His joy of order. He wrote a algorithm that would scan through the images on the British Library's Flickr, then sort them into image categories. Crazy stuff. http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_uk/blog/i-became-an-algorithm-at-the-museum-of-modern-art

Sara Blake - Be A Snortvart: Process, Creativity, Business, and Being Yourself

http://hellozso.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt - http://www.klimt.com/
Document your work, to allow you to look back at your progress.
Try to get lost in life, this helps you find new things.
"Don't wait for someone to hire you"
http://patperry.net/

Yuri Suzuki - Sound Interjection

http://yurisuzuki.com/
http://yurisuzuki.com/soundchaser.html
Road Melody http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2008/09/car-musical-instrument-melody-roads-japan/
Sounds of the Earth http://yurisuzuki.com/works/the-sound-of-the-earth-2/
Sound Taxi http://yurisuzuki.com/works/sound-taxi-2/
White noise calms down crying babies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANgLcpO6tiI
http://www.teenageengineering.com/products/oplab
http://dentakulondon.com/

GMUNK - Come Take a Journey Through Time and Space

http://www.gmunk.com/
He made some of the original Flash titles.
OFFF titles http://vimeo.com/101587594
http://work.gmunk.com/Adobe-Logo-Remix
http://work.gmunk.com/OFFF-Cincinnati-2014
http://work.gmunk.com/Tycho-SEE
http://work.gmunk.com/Flash-On-The-Beach
You've probably seen this too. http://work.gmunk.com/BOX-DEMO

That's all.

The Milky way from Port Douglas, Australia

Hello Universe!

September 13, 2014

Hi.

Photo from my Flickr.
flickr.com/photos/jamesbooth