Sean Clark's Blog
Today a new video-installation went live at DeMontfort University on the front of the Vijay Patel building. The Pixel Wall comes with an editor that you open by scanning the on-screen QR code on your mobile phone. You can then draw your own video game sprite and add it to the screen for others to see.
It's a simple idea and intended to be a fun part of the One Giant Leap celebration of the moon-landings that's happening in Leicester this week. However, for me, it marks an important step in testing and finalising the release of my artThings technology.
artThings emerged from my PhD research as an infrastructure for enabling artworks running on micro-controllers, computers and web browsers to communicate with each other over mobile, WiFi and LoRa networks. I now want to establish it as an open standard for connecting digital artworks and this test will hopefully confirm that it's ready for public release.
Of course, it's not just about swapping video game sprites. In my artworks, I already use it to exchange artwork elements, colours, sounds, generative parameters and so on. I typically create networks of artworks for exhibitions and events, but I also have an interest in turning Leicester itself into a large "connected artwork" where diverse artworks placed around the city are able to communicate and respond to each other and to the data being produced by the multitude of sensors that are now around us.
I see this city-wide network of artworks being created by multiple artists and making use of the Internet of Things technologies that will soon become common-place as Leicester moves towards being a "smart city". This project might sound ambitious, but as the technology develops and more artists express an interest in it there is no reason why it can't be made to happen.
If you like the sound of what I'm looking to build please get in touch and I'll share more plans. For now, go to DMU (and, as of tomorrow, Curve) and have a play with the Pixel Wall. The video installation will be running all week between 12noon and 2pm.
Event Two at the Royal College of Art took place between 12th and 17th July 2019 and was a great success. Every evening event was fully booked and day visitors numbered many hundreds. We are still sorting for through the documentation gathered at the event but have managed to sort through the first set of photographs. You can find around 350 in an album on Flickr. Additionally, there are pictures of the install, plus videos, 3D photographs and 360 panoramas on the Event Two web page.
An updated version of The CAS50 Collection is currently in production. This will contain information about the 24 artists in the collection, plus a selection of photographs from the various exhibitions, including Event Two, that have happened so far as part of the CAS50 programme.
As part of my roles as an International Professor at Guangdong University of Technology (GDUT) and a member of the EVA London programme committee, I helped put together a number of China-related activities at the EVA London conference in July this year. This included chairing a panel of China-related papers at the conference, followed by an evening panel session and a small exhibition. I was joined at the conference by GDUT colleague Yi Ji (pictured) and four students from the University.
Pictures from the activities can be seen on the FE Art Lab web page. If you are interested in knowing more about the work I am doing at GDUT or want to talk about collaborative projects, please get in touch.
I'm back from my latest month (my fifth in total) of teaching at Guangdong University of Technology School of Art and Design in China. Since it was the last session in this contract (I'll probably sign up to do more). I thought it was time for some reflection.
When I did the first session in April 2017, I didn't know what to expect. I was asked to teach "creative programming" to people who had not programmed before. My initial concerns were not just with programming languages to use but also with the human ones. How would the workshop work with people who I didn't share a first language? I also had a practical concern that I would have problems being behind the "Great Firewall of China" since I use a lot of internet resources. Finally, I wondered about my approach to teaching technical subjects through artistic projects. Would this work in China?
In terms of human language, yes, the language difference has at times be problematic. However, English is widely taught in China, and the University provided student translators. Plus, translator apps are getting better and can help in some situations. Ultimately, while language differences can slow things down, it has not proven to be a problem. Eventually, the message gets through.
However, in terms of computer language, it is definitely harder for people to learn to program using English command-based language when their first language is Chinese! When teaching Arduino coding, I have struggled to get more than a few students beyond the copy-and-paste stage. Most of the problems are to do with typing and syntax, not the concepts. Luckily, visual programming environments such as Scratch and BBC Micro:bit Blocks can be easily toggled between English and Chinese and I have found that Chinese students can make good progress with both of these. I always remind the students that, despite appearances, both of these are real programming environments that are not just for children.
The Great Firewall of China is an interesting one. The fact is that some valuable teaching resources are on sites that you can't get to in China. The inability to directly access YouTube and other Google sites are particularly problematic at times. However, it is also the case that everyone knows how to use a VPN to overcome these restrictions! I thought this would be something of a hush-hush topic, but if something is not available, then the VPN goes on, and people access it through one of those.
I'm happy to say that the arts-led teaching approach seems to go down well. I have progressively brought in more and more creative topics over the five one-month workshops. This includes using examples of early computer art as inspiration for programming tasks, getting students to recreate my hardware-based digital artworks in Arduino, and basing all the tasks during one of the months around Guangcai porcelain.
The overall experience has been a positive one, with some excellent work being produced by Chinese students. As is the case anywhere, some students are more motivated than others, but when they are keen on the workshops, Chinese students work particularly hard and can be very productive.
Details of the workshops and exhibitions - with pictures and supporting documents - can be found at /interact2020/fe-artlab. Contact me if you have any questions about the workshop programme so far.
Saturday 9th March saw Leicester's regular Create-a-con event at the LCB Depot. Among the exhibitors were Leicester Hackspace, R10 Music Collective and Interact Digital Arts. I was showing off some work in progress made using artThings technology. There was the large "LOL" light piece in the LCD Depot window; the connected "Colloquy" 3D printed works I last showed at In The Dark; and some new work that uses artThings to allow you to use your mobile phone as a controller for a big-screen video game.
This last piece is based around technology I have developed to allow people to interact with digital artworks via a mobile device. For a project to help celebrate 50 years since the first moon landing, it's being adapted to allow you to control video games on large public screens. The idea is that you scan a QR code, or enter a short web address, and then get to control old-school video games from your mobile.
It's still work-in-progress, but it was very useful to be able to test the technology out with live users. In general, it performed well. Even my simple game drew a crowd! I look forward to seeing what happens when we give the technology to *real* games developers!
See pictures from the event at https://www.flickr.com/photos/seancuttlefish/albums/72157703978179732
Over the last week, I've spent quite a bit of time in London at the In the Dark exhibition at the Cello Factory in London. The exhibition was curated by the arts group Genetic Moo and supported by The London Group and the Computer Arts Society. Genetic Moo's aim for the exhibition was to literally hold the exhibition 'in the dark', with the only light in the gallery coming from the artworks themselves.
My contribution to the show was a network of connected artworks in the form of screen-based and light works. The five individual pieces connected to each other via WiFi and exchanged colours as they ran. I gave a short talk about the work and found that there was quite a bit of interest.
A set of pictures from the exhibition can be found on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/seancuttlefish/albums/72157677885498078
With a video walkthrough on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABNS9d2GJWE
Last year I was asked to produce a lighting display for the main cafe window at the LCB Depot in Leicester to be installed throughout December. After working through a number of ideas, I settled on something that I call Lots of Lights, or "LOL". LOL consists of 20 internet-connected micro-controllers, each connected to a string of 50 bright LED lights. The resulting 1,000 LEDs can be made to play patterns, such as fades and chases, via an associated web application.
The lights were installed in the LCB cafe window to coincide with the Interact'18 exhibition and remained live for around six weeks.
As well as being an interesting work in its own right, the installation allowed me to test my latest artThings lighting technology. The controller I used for each light string contained a small device called a Wemos D1 - something I use quite a bit in my "connected" artworks. The D1 is small and cheap (as low as £1.50 each if you buy from China) and can be combined with a voltage regulator to create a small unit that can power and control the 50 LED "Neopixels" I often use.
While I knew this technology worked in the studio, what I didn't know for sure was how it would perform when used in large numbers and for an extended period. A previous experiment had shown me that not all WiFi routers let 20 devices connect to their WiFi network at the same time. I now use a TP-Link AC750 that can support up to 64 simultaneous devices (32 on each band). But would there be any additional problems?
The initial installation went well. The lights were bright, and the web app controller worked perfectly - scan a QR code, and the controller would pop up on the user's mobile phone and they could trigger patterns. However, after a couple of days, some of the LED strings would reset. Problems like this can be hard to diagnose, and it took many days to get to the root of the problem. It turned out that the Adafruit Neopixel and Adafruit MQTT software libraries I was using did not like working together. After a couple of days, they would cause the microcontroller to run out of memory and crash, leading to a device reset.
I found that by using a different lighting software library - in this case, FastLED rather than Neopixel - this problem went away and the micro-controllers would run for weeks without any issues. Luckily I only had to update the software on the D1s (albeit 20 of them) and not change the hardware. However, it did remind me of the importance of testing your code when installing a project like this. What works in the studio may not work the same way in a live environment.
Pictures of LOL, plus the workshop held on Saturday 12th January can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/seancuttlefish/albums/72157705953639835. Please contact me if you want to know more about the project.
The Interact'18 exhibition took place between 7th and 21st December 2018 at the LCB Depot Lightbox gallery. The show featured work by digital artists associated with Leicester - James Chantry, Andrew Johnston, Thierry Miquel, Joe Moran, Ernest Edmonds, Fabrizio Poltonieri, Anoushka Goodwin, Leila Houston, Michele Witthaus & Paul Rudman, Yi Ji, Alice Tuppen-Corps, Dave Everitt & Fania Raczinski, Peter Flint, Askokkumar Mistry and myself.
The aims of the exhibition were, first, show the full range of digital artwork produced in the city and, second, to introduce artists who may not have met before to each other. Leicester is a relatively small city, but it surprising how often I find people working in similar ways which have not met before. I think it achieved both of these goals.
The online catalogue for the exhibition can be found at /interact2020/interact18.html
Pictures from the event can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/seancuttlefish/albums/72157704389674814
An output from the exhibition is the Leicester Digital Artists Facebook group that will be promoting further opportunities for Leicester digital artists to show their work.
I've finally completed the documentation for the East Meets West: Innovation connections exhibition that I co-curated in Guangzhou, China, in November 2018. The updated web page contains information about the artworks shown together with a PDF of the exhibition catalogue and pictures of the workshops and the exhibition itself.
The catalogue for the Computer Arts Society 50th anniversary exhibition is now available for order from the Interact Digital Arts shop. The catalogue includes information about the artworks in the show, together with pictures of the Leicester and Brighton showings.
This is Interact's first "official" publication with an ISBN code. We think it looks great and we will be producing more catalogues and similar publications over the coming year if the self-publishing model works.
If you can, please support us by purchasing one of the limited edition print copies. The PDF will be made available for free download at some point in the future.
Purchase from here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/616573763/cas50-exhibition-catalogue.
