One of the major perks of being a 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi Creative Technologist is the chance to attend weekend workshops, where we get to go to a totally different city and meet with inspiring and knowledgeable individuals who can help us on our journey towards our final exhibition and showing off our digital projects! Last workshop we visited London to spend the weekend over with Joel Lewis at Hellicar & Lewis; a craft, design and technology studio that specialises in engagement. Here, Joel opened our minds to the wonder that is openFrameworks on Pi!

openFrameworks is ‘an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding’. Yes, creative coding, that’s a thing! At first glance oF can seem quite intimidating with countless amounts of libraries, add-ons and documentation attached to it. For us, taking a look through it all, we couldn’t help but get immediately excited about everything that oF had to offer us, from projection mapping and facial recognition to graphic rendering and animation as well as so much more! But without some guidance it’s easy to become overwhelmed by it all.

Luckily for us, Joel Lewis is an openFrameworks wizard and quickly squished any negative or fearful thoughts we may initially have had by showing us some of the inspiring work that he and his team at Hellicar & Lewis had produced using this framework. They have created work for nonprofit organisations such as an interactive arctic dome installation for Greenpeace, and commercial pieces for brands such as Nike with an interactive live broadcast for of Nike’s ‘Festival of Feel’.

However, what impressed me the most was how they had used what the framework had to offer to create pieces of technology to help make people’s lives better, one major piece of work being Somability. This is a series of technology applications that included interaction such as visual amplification and rhythmic interaction; these put together promoted expressive movement and collaboration among people with profound and multiple learning difficulties.

The Making of Somability from Cariad Interactive on Vimeo

Joel also emphasised his love for the open source community during the workshop. Gone are the days where people want to hide their work and keep their findings to themselves so as to become better than their peers; today’s world is all about being open and sharing with the community! Every library and add-on within oF has been created by somebody and shared freely, asking for nothing in return. That might sound crazy but in reality it’s actually very clever! Not only do you help others (such as myself) to learn how to code by looking at examples and tweaking bits that are already there to suit my own needs, you also get the benefits of the community building upon your initial piece of code, fixing bugs or even making it better than you could have done yourself. Heck, somebody might even see your open source code and offer you a job because of it!

An open source community is also a friendly one, one where people actually want to help others instead of simply focusing on their own projects, and therefore the openFrameworks forum is always full of people willing to pass on their knowledge to others and help wherever they can; which is great news for us newbies!

After the weekend at Hellicar & Lewis I’m left feeling very excited about what openFrameworks and the open source community surrounding it has to offer. I can’t wait to start piecing together my own puzzle!

The Creative Technologists are really ramping up production on their final projects and I can’t wait to see what they do with their new openFrameworks skills. Keep an eye on the blog for updates from CTs over the next six months!

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This year, for the first time, we are running the 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi Creative Technologists programme, mentoring a small group of young people aged 16-21 years as they explore using digital technology to enhance their creative pursuits. One of our creative technologists, 21-year-old writer Hannah Burdett, recently published today’s post on her own blog, and when we saw it we wanted to show it to our audience as well: it’s a wonderful and useful piece about what it’s like to enter the world of digital making as a beginner, and why she hopes you’ll want to.

Hannah Burdett, 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi Creative Technologist, by Sam Alder

It’s been six months since I started with 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi. To begin with, I was terrified and felt like I didn’t belong, but I’ve reached a point where I’m truly enjoying what I’m learning. People think of arts and science/technology as polar opposites, but I’ve always thought that the two can be merged in diverse and constructive ways. Thankfully, 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi think so too, and have let me mess around with ways to do this. My hope is that in the future more creative types will utilise technology in their work, and it will be beautiful. So today I’m sharing a few tips to help you get started. Of course, I’m nowhere near an expert, but I do know exactly what it’s like to enter the world of technology as an outsider and beginner.

Treat learning to code like learning a language

There is a good reason why it’s called a coding language. It has grammatical rules to structure what you’re inputting: for example, when to use brackets and quotation marks and full stops and capitals. Coding is just as vast as any other language, and there are dozens of different coding languages to choose from, each with their own idiosyncrasies. And it takes just as long to learn. You can’t expect to pick it up without using it frequently; practice is key. You need to devote time to learning the rules, but there’s plenty of opportunity to get help.

I would recommend the book Python for Kids by Jason Briggs. It is designed for children, but suck it up and it’ll prove it be a useful tool. I use it as a reference guide, dipping in and out, but not necessarily reading it from A to Z. There are also free online courses, and an infinite amount of documentation to learn from.

It’s more creative than you think

If the thought of learning a language makes you want to cry, then don’t despair. Just as creative writers use language to create complex and thought-provoking stories, so does code. When constructed correctly, code forms a kind of linear narrative, telling the computer what happens and when, just like how stories inform the reader. Something equally creative and varied happens too, whether that’s a video game or a dancing robot. It also requires a lot of editing.

Digital making with play dough: light-up models at an earlier Maker Faire UK, an extremely creative event | Photo by Mitch Altman / CC BY-SA 2.0

What’s more, the community of digital makers, hackers and programmers includes lots of people who are just as imaginative as writers in traditional media. When I was at Maker Faire UK, I was inspired by how creative the makers were. The exhibits were full of people who had started out with a question: ‘I wonder what happens when I do this?’ They put two things together (or five, or six), and if it explodes then it’s all the more fun (except when you have to buy another part to replace it; oh well). It’s an open, free way of exploring and creating. The key is to not limit your mind, not to set goals (although tempting) but to focus on experimenting with pushing the boundaries of the technology.

Prepare to change your mindset, and don’t be disappointed when it doesn’t work

I say when because, inevitably, it won’t work. Even if you’re following guidelines or instructions, eventually something is bound to go wrong. I struggled a lot in the beginning because I didn’t know how to make the tech do what I wanted it to, and thought I was a failure. I’ve got into the habit now of thinking, ‘Okay, why didn’t it do that?’ and ‘It’s interesting that it’s done x instead of y’. Let the technology surprise you.

This is not Hannah’s handwriting; hers is probably much nicer

Part of learning is accepting that maybe you won’t be good at it straight away, or you won’t pick it up naturally. A lot of people, especially young women, feel a pressure to be good straight away. Don’t worry about other people’s expectations, just have fun with it. You may learn more slowly than others (I certainly do!) and that is perfectly okay. This is why an open mind is so useful. I’ve had to completely change my mindset over the past few months, but I’m glad I did. Although writing is creative, I’ve been doing it so long that I have a process and routine. I know what I want to write when I begin; I have set intentions and goals, and I set time limits. When it comes to programming, this mindset does not work at all.

Things will not go as you planned. Things will break, or you’ll make mistakes, and the outcome is entirely different to what you expected. This can (as it did for me) lead you to feel like you’ve accomplished nothing. The best thing is to have no expectations of yourself other than to learn something, or try something new.

Steal from your heroes and ask for help

This is a statement that often crops up in the literary world, but it applies here too. I mean, don’t literally steal; always give credit when you’ve used someone else’s code, or a tutorial. But it’s often easier to adapt other people’s work rather than make something entirely original. It also integrates you into the community, and creators will often be really pleased to see their work put to use!

国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi have loads of online tutorials which are designed for kids, but suitable for all beginners. I have recently been creating mini projects with Scratch, a programming environment that lets you develop interactive narratives and games. It functions like code, but instead of typing, you drag and drop components to build the script. I even published a mini game which you can play yourself!

Balloon Popping, a game written by Hannah Burdett in Scratch

The best thing about Scratch is that for every project, you can look at the ‘code’ being used. I made my game by finding similar projects and seeing how they work. After doing this for days on end, I got used to the various functions, and now I enjoy throwing bits together and seeing what happens. I’ve spent so much time on Scratch I’ve actually started dreaming in Scratch code!

Hannah’s very playable balloon-popping game, mid-pop

Scratch also has a great community, and users will always be happy to reply to forum posts if you get stuck. This leads me on to asking for help. Do it. Websites like GitHub exist so you can share your code with others, not only so they can use it, but so people can suggest improvements or fix problems. The online community is vast and amazing, so use it!

Remember, if you don’t try you don’t succeed. And I’d always prefer to try and fail than never do anything at all. If you’d like to talk more about this tech world, please feel free to contact me.

At the end of the programme, the 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi Creative Technologists will be hosting an exhibition in order to showcase our projects: a culmination of a year’s work. If you would like to know more about my project, or would like to attend the exhibition, then keep following my blog for more information. You can also follow me on Twitter.

We’ll also be talking about the creative technologists’ final exhibition here, of course; Hannah is working on a project that lets players journey through a cooperative, interactive story that engages them in working together. We can’t wait to see what she and our other creative technologists make. Most of all, we’d love to see more people who are creative, but who might not usually consider digital technology as something they can use in their work, giving it a try. We think our Make resources are one good place to start.

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I have spent the last year talking with lots of artists who are making amazing things with 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pis. Every day my inbox is PINGing with exciting progress news. So I’m going to start showcasing some of these projects on the blog. I find them incredibly inspiring – I hope you do too!

I’m going to kick off with a piece from one of my favourite artists: Dominic Wilcox. I bet you’ve seen some of his work kicking around the internet – He made the GPS shoes which guided you home and did some narrative sculptures inside watch faces.

This time he’s partnered up with Creative Technologist James Rutherford to produce Binaudios; a device that enables the user to listen to the sounds of the city – at the moment it’s installed in the Sage Gateshead music discovery centre.

Taking tourist binoculars as inspiration, the Binaudios can be pointed at over 40 different locations, seen out of the Sage Gateshead windows. Turn the giant listening cones toward the football stadium to hear the crowd chanting or to the Tyne Bridge to hear King George V’s speech when he opened the bridge in 1928. Point it toward the park to listen to sounds such as skateboarders and local tennis players.

As the Binaudios are rotated the stereo sounds move from one ear to the other creating a real feeling of listening to the city across the river.

I’ve met loads of ‘Creative Technologists’ on my travels. They believe creativity and art are the driving forces behind the technology they make.

James describes his work as “somewhere between code and art”. He mainly creates software; developing visualisations, data tools or games.

Binaudios was his first 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi project AND first go with Python! Just for you guys, he has very kindly written up how Binaudio is put together:

How Binaudios works:

Although Binaudios was developed to look like an analogue device, there’s a small selection of electronics concealed within the central wooden box. A USB lead runs up the central column, powering a 国产国拍亚洲精品mv在线观看 Pi. This is connected to speakers within the metal cones and a USB hub. The hub adds some extra flash memory and has a couple of ports for attaching a keyboard and mouse for debugging.

Dominic recorded a selection of sounds from across Newcastle. I load these when the device boots. There are around 40 of them, spread across the 180 degree range of movement provided by the ear-cones.

The Pi has a PiBorg XLoBorg sensor attached to the GPIO port. The XLoBorg returns a 3-axis reading of the magnetic field at a point. The Python script very roughly converts this into a compass heading (to do this properly is extremely complicated- so this is a bit of a hack). I spread this heading into two angles a couple of degrees apart to fake some left/right ear separation, pick the sound clips within a small range of these and assign some volumes. The volume profile drops-off over a few degrees which produces a naturalistic ‘telescope’ focus effect. The left/right separation also enhances this as the unit is turned.

The rest is all about smoothing. I debounce the output of the XLoBorg (it has a slight natural waver), ensure volume levels are adjusted gently (audio buffering can cause the sound to chop otherwise, which is very unnatural) and keep the sounds playing even when they are a few degrees out of audio range (this means that sounds don’t necessarily need to restart from the beginning when they are back in ‘view’).

Gotchas

The XLoBorg is a sensitive bit of kit, and magnetic fields are complicated (who knew!?). I needed to spend some time calibrating and recalibrating. Slight vertical misalignment seems to shift the compass heading much more than I first anticipated. It’s a very intriguing bit of hardware and I look forward to playing with it some more!

My test set of samples worked wonderfully, but the program failed critically when I got the real clips- some of the sounds would work, but the rest would make a single pop, or a loud, painful high-pitched wave. I never fully figured out why, but I think I was maxing out Pygame’s audio channels. Originally I was playing all of the sounds simultaneously and just shifting the volumes around (so that all but a few were zero), but I switched this to just trigger those within a small angle range – so it now plays maybe four or five at the same time. There was no failure response from the code, so I spent a manic day trying to squash, re-encode and generally poke the samples about without error reports to work on. Thankfully, the fix seems reliable.

This was my first physical project, first Pi project, and first slice of Python charming!

You can see them in action in this video or you can go and visit in person!

Binaudios was commissioned by the awesome Suzy O’Hara at Thinking Digital Arts.

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