Tags: Interact Labs
Esther Rolinson: Melt, Splinter & Thread
Posted: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:58
Interact Labs' Sean Clark has been one of a number of people helping Esther Rolinson to realise her lighting installations Splinter, Thread and Melt this year. It's been an interesting journey and we're happy to see that the work will be going on display at the Phoenix Cube later in the month. Two exhibitions, one containing and Splinter and Thread and the other containing Melt, will be running between 23th October 2014 and 7th January 2015 at Phoenix.
The exhibition press release reads, "Over the past year, with the support of Arts Council England and De Montfort University, she has been developing this body of work through modelling and drawing. She has worked with Sean Clark, Dave Everitt, Luke Woodbury and Graeme Stuart who have assisted with research into the technology and materials and the development of complex lighting behaviours."
Find out more on her website.
Interact Exhibition @ LCB Depot
Posted: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 20:03
The Interact @ LCB exhibition of digital art opened on Thursday 25th September. A good-sized audience saw a wide range of digital artworks by local and national artists. The exhibition is open weekdays until 10th October, and ends with a live event on the Friday evening. See pictures from the opening here on Flickr. If the exhibition goes down well, we will try to make it an annual event.
Interactive Lighting with Arduino
Posted: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 00:57
Our introduction to Arduino workshops have proven to be very popular this year. For those who want to develop their Arduino skills further, however, we are now looking to run a new Interactive Lighting with Arduino workshop at Interact Labs. This will show you how to wire up and program LED 'pixels' in order to create lighting installations and similar projects. The first workshop is on the 4th October. It's going to be popular, so book now.
Robots, Virtual Reality and 3D Printing!
Posted: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 22:27
If there are three things that are sure to draw a crowd at Interact Labs then they are robots, Virtual Reality and 3d printing. These technologies remain very much 'of the moment' and can be a great way to introduce people to creative technology. We've featured them at a number of our events recently.
On July 8th the first of our regular 3D printer nights saw 11 people visit the Lab for an introduction to 3D printing and a safety induction for the FlashForge Creator II 3D printer we use. Given that we have been running sessions like this since we opened in October 2013, it's great to see that interest in these sessions is still high. The next one will be on the 12th August. We also have a more advanced workshop coming up in September.
On July 18th we ran our first 'Open Lab' drop-in afternoon where the device of most interest was the Oculus Rift and, to a lesser extent, the Google Cardboard. Interest in Virtual Reality is on the rise, largely thanks to the Oculus, which seems to impress most users. We might look to run Virtual Reality workshops in the future - perhaps focussed around the low-cost and self-constructured Google Cardboard device.
Finally, just last Friday, we ran the first of our 'Technology Explorer' sessions for young people. While the 3D printer went down well, the most popular devices were our computer-controlled robot arm and the Cubelet robot construction kits. Note to self, kids love robots.
Keep an eye on the www.interactlabs.co.uk website for details of future events and activities.
Interact Labs Bursaries
Posted: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 00:39
Phoenix Interact Labs is announcing a programme of support to help artists based in Leicester and Leicestershire be creative with digital technology.
If you're an artist, designer or technologist interested in experimenting with technology in your practice, we are offering bursaries of up to £500, plus a workspace and individual programmes of support to help you create innovative new work.
We're interested in supporting projects that engage with technology and digital culture in a significant and critical way.
Selected artists will have the freedom to develop their projects in the Phoenix Interact Labs space, and work with us to consider new ways of engaging the public beyond the traditional exhibition format.
Visit http://interactlabs.co.uk/interact-labs-bursaries.html for more information and an application form.
Making 3D Models for 3D Printing
Posted: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 21:14
We had an excellent talk by Deborah Robertson on Saturday as part of the Digital Makers Group about how to ensure that your 3D models will 3D print. Deborah took us through the common mistakes that you might make with your model and the things to look out for when trying to get the best possible print. She has made the slides available to download as a PDF, so those who couldn't make it can download them. Dale Robertson also gave us an introduction to 3D scanning using the Microsoft Kinect and other devices. We'll be sharing the results of this shortly. We'll definitely be running more sessions like this in the future.
Creative Computing with Minecraft
Posted: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 19:36
Interact Labs was involved with the 2nd Minecraft in Leicester event this weekend. Our goal was to demonstrate how Minecraft can interact with the "real world" in various ways. We did this by showing how you can 3D print Minecraft objects and how you can use the Raspberry Pi (and by extension its GPIO port) to control Minecraft running on the Pi. We also had a robot arm to show the sorts of things you could control with a GPIO-connected Minecraft world. This is a work in progress, but we hope to be able to demonstrate a direct connection between Minecraft on the Pi and the robot arm soon. There are pictures from the event here on Flickr and a video interview with Sean Clark about the even here on YouTube. If you are interested in Minecraft on the Raspberry Pi feel free to come along to the Digital Makers Group on the first Saturday of the month - it's certainly something that the group would be interested in developing further.
Busy Week at Interact Labs
Posted: Fri, 16 May 2014 22:57
It's been busy at Interact Labs this week. A number of projects have started to come together and we've been testing various prototypes. Our work with Esther Rolinson has resulted in a test LED lighting rig that will be used to try out lighting sequences for her exhibition in October. We've had Paul Brown up for a visit to look at a prototype of a recreation of an electronic artwork of his from the 1970s. Plus we helped him install a software piece on a Raspberry Pi computer. They we finalised the technology for the Movers performance at Embrace later in the month. See our photo stream for some pictures.
Minecraft Day at Phoenix
Posted: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:40
The 2014 Leicester Minecraft Event will be held at Phoenix on Saturday 31st May. This year's event is being run in partnership with De Montfort Video Gaming Society, Interact Labs, Phoenix and The Spark Arts for Children and will build on the success of last year's Minecraft Meetup event, which was attended by over 180 people. The keynote speaker will be Adam Clarke, a games based learning expert with a special focus on Minecraft in education, heritage and social settings. Adam will be talking about how Minecraft can be used to expand horizons and unlock opportunities. As well as talks, activities, games and interactive art, we will be announcing the winners of the Leicester in Minecraft competition.
International Arduino Day
Posted: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:38
If you know about Arduino then you might be surprised to hear that it is only ten years old this month. If you don't know about it then you really need to find out more! The Arduino is a low-cost, flexible, open and well-supported platform for creating custom electronic systems. Easy to program and develop for, the Arduino is used by artists, engineers and hobbyists to create everything from interactive artworks, to automatic plant watering systems and robots, and much more.
To mark International Arduino Day on Saturday 29th March we are initiating a number of Arduino activities. On the 29th itself Leicester Hackspace is running a workshop (primarily for members), this will be followed by similar workshops at Phoenix Interact Labs on 5th April and then 14th June. The regular Digital Makers Group will also be hosting some Arduino-themed sessions in the near future. Keep an eye on the diary for details.
