Workshops » Summer Workshops

InterAccess Summer Workshop Series

To register for any of these workshops, please call (416 599 7206), email (workshops@interaccess.org) or pay online at: http://interaccess.org/workshops/register.php. Please enter the name of the workshop in your paypal payment description.

Second Life: Foundations, Sites of Engagement, and Remediations of History

Instructors: Patrick Lichty (a.k.a. Man Michinaga), Scott Kildall (a.k.a. Great Escape), Second Front Collective
Dates: Monday July 16 and Monday, July 23, 7pm-10pm both days

NEW RATES
Cost: $75 (non members) $50 (members)

Day 1, Monday, July 16: In person with Patrick Lichty (a.k.a. Man Michinaga) and Scott Kildall (a.k.a. Great Escape) from Second Front
Second Life is an online simulated world which has recently been in the spotlight. It has been a point of discussion at the Davos World Economic Summit and institutions such as Ars Virtua and Turblence are awarding residencies and commissions involving Second Life. Artists including Eva and Franco Mattes, Marisa Olson, and Cory Arcangel, Gaz Babeli, John Freeman and Second Front are creating works for this social space. In this introductory seminar, Scott Kildall and Patrick Lichty will give an overview of Second Life, explore details of building and scripting and comment upon the current trend towards remediation of historical works. We will ask: how does Second Life figure within New Media art praxis, and what is interesting about it as a medium?

Day 2, Monday, July 23: Online with Second Front
Mini workshops in Second Life

The Avatars Way: A self-help workshop for creative avatars
Doug Jarvis (a.k.a. Tran Spire)

Tran Spire (a.k.a. Doug Jarvis) will discuss some of the insecurities and identity issues he is experiencing as an avatar in Second Life and how they are investigated through the use of narcotics, overt fashion statements, and the deferral of responsibility. This workshop will be an opportunity for Tran Spire to open up and share some of the challenges he faces when dealing with nay-sayers of multiple, fractured identities and the cozy feeling of being grouped under the umbrella of the 'self'. Self-help strategies for avatar expression will be explored and encouraged.

Collisions between Artifice and the Real
Penny Leong Browne (a.k.a. AliseIborg Zhaoying)

When it comes down to the rules of social conduct and ethics, there is an initial expectation in Second Life for them to function as they would in the real world. It's when they don't (which is most often the case) that we are taken by surprise, producing feelings of ambiguity, awkwardness, uncertainty, even shock and leaving us to question how our avatars should respond, behave and interact.

In this workshop, Penny Leong Browne (a.k.a. AliseIborg Zhaoying) will talk about the remediation of ethical and social codes within SL and how, when these codes fail to inform or explain our avatar interactions and behavior, collisions between artifice and the real occur. She will select performances to illustrate how, through its interventionist and Situationist strategies, Second Front challenges avatar ethics and social codes of conduct. Performances such as "Spawn of the Surreal" that tested protocols over creative agency and ownership over avatar identity and "Hazardous" that challenged social tolerance for protest politics will be discussed. In both performances, audience participants were unaware that they were part of the performance and often were uncertain as to how to react to Second Front's interventions.

Frontiers of the Virtual Playground
Liz Solo

Liz Solo is intrigued with the evolution of human relationships in cyberspace and with how communities develop in virtual worlds. Virtual Environments like Second Life provide almost limitless possibilities for presentation and for collaboration in a performance context. Preparing virtual performance, especially in collaboration with others, is an exciting multi-dimensional adventure that often produces unexpected and never before seen results. The virtual playground also lends itself to hybrid presentation (ie: merging RL and VR) and artists working in bridging these realms find themselves pioneering unknown frontiers.

Wirxli FlimFLam's 15 Minutes!
Jeremy Owen Turner (a.k.a. Wirxli FlimFlam)

Wirxli FlimFlam (aka. Jeremy O. Turner) will discuss the evolution of his avatar from nOObie to SLebrity in Second Life. FlimFlam will also recollect Second Front's days of formation and the group's ambitions to cross over into RL/SL media outlets.

Second Front Bio:
Second Front is the pioneering performance art group in the online avatar-based VR world, Second Life. Founded in 2006, Second Front quickly grew to its current 8 member troupe that includes Jeremy Owen Turner (Vancouver), Doug Jarvis (Victoria), Tanya Skuce (Vancouver), Gazira Babeli (Italy), Penny Leong Browne (Vancouver), Patrick Lichty (Chicago), Liz Solo (St. Johns) and Scott Kildall (San Francisco). Taking their influences from numerous sources, including Dada, Fluxus, Futurist Syntesi, the Situationist International and contemporary performance artists like Laurie Anderson and Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Second Front creates theatres of the absurd that challenge notions of virtual embodiment, online performance and the formation of virtual narrative. Created in 2006, they have already performed extensively, including in Vancouver, Chicago, New York, and has been featured in publications including SLate, Eikon, Realtime Arts (Australia), The Avastar (published by Axel-Springer, Germany) and most recently in Exibart (Italy). For our individual bios, please go to: http://bp1.blogger.com/_CovosU3EHQ8/Rhvlp5IxmjI/AAAAAAAAAg4/BGmaKRR4lVo/s1600-h/SFProfilesSPark.jpg.

Intro to Arduino

Instructor:Gordon Hicks
Dates: Thursday, July 19, 7pm-10pm
Cost: $75 (non members) $60 (members)

What is Arduino?

Arduino is a microcontroller, similar to BASIC Stamp and PIC that is designed to control physical computing projects. It can sense the outside world through switches and sensors. It can also control displays, LEDs, lights, motors or just anything you can dream up. The Arduino can communicate with others devices and computers over MIDI, RS-232, USB and ethernet (internet) channels- and it can interface to programs like PureData (Pd), Max/MSP and Flash. It is endlessly versatile.

Is it a Stamp Killer? There are some good reasons to think it might be. The hardware is less expensive and arguably more versatile than Stamp. Arduino executes instructions much faster and provides interrupt capability- both valuable in control applications.

Arduino is more than just a microcontroller, it is also a community. Within the community are a large number of like-minded people working with the Arduino technology to create physical computing projects. It is likely that you can find out 'how-to' for your particular project by exploring the projects and tutorials on the Arduino website. Or, if you've figured out how to do something new, you can contribute it back into the ever growing pool of know-how. It is this aspect that especially recommends the Arduino to the artmaking community.

About the Workshop

The workshop will introduce you to the Arduino and give you a hands-on experience of programming for simple physical computing applications. You will learn what hardware and software you need, where to get it, and how it all together into a baseline Arduino platform.

The technical features, capabilities and limitations of the Arduino platform will be introduced - plus information about where you can learn more.

There will be a discussion/tour of arduino.cc and related websites so that you can become familiar with the terrific resources available there.

In the hands-on lab you will have the opportunity to program an Arduino for simple physical computing applications. Also, you will have the opportunity to experiment with the Arduino in the direction of your own interests.

Prerequisites

This course is aimed at students who have some familiarity with either the Basic Stamp or the PIC and have constructed physical computing projects, however simple. You should have at least a rudimentary familiarity with programming - the language doesn't matter, as long as you have written some code. You should be able to breadboard a simple circuit from a schematic. If you are a little shaky in some aspect, you will probably still benefit - the instructor or fellow students can help you along.

Bring with You

You will probably want to bring a notebook. If you have a laptop computer that you would like to use (MacOS, Windows), then bring it with you - we will set it up to program the Arduino. There will be Arduinos to play with and other materials will be supplied.

About the Instructor

Gordon Hicks is a Toronto artist and educator. He teaches at OCAD in topics related to physical computing and has lead a number of workshops at InterAccess including Introduction to Microcontrollers. His art practice uses new media, often involving electronics and kinetic elements. Currently he is developing an Arduino based project that provides a physical connection between remote objects over the channel of the internet.

References

Arduino website: http://arduino.cc/.

Arduino boards can be purchased here: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=666 or http://store.makezine.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKARDNGUSB. Delivery takes about a week. You will get dinged for brokerage fees and GST. The minimum brokerage (~$5) is with US Postal Service regular mail. With UPS it can be $40.

JAWA video vulture culture workshop

Instructor: Tasman Richardson

Thursday June 7, 7-10pm, $20

"So vjs and djs and no other style shall mix eh? Seems like some people still don't know that video IS audio. There are competitions that say they're AV but there's no AV... only A with V accompaniment. no no no. what you see IS what you hear = fucking exciting! I'll offer a workshop to share everything I know about how to edit video clips into actual music. most of you can probably do this in theory but not practice. I will share whatever I know in the hopes that the jawa style will grow. Don't let the rare and fragile jawa be driven into extinction." - Tasman Richardson



Workshop participants will learn about:



- A brief history of cut-ups and jawa technique

- Methods for appropriating video

- Composition and Compositing

- Creating beats using musical edits of video clips

- Creating melodies using video editing tools

- Methods for performing and mixing finished tracks



Please bring a laptop with editing software like Premier or Final Cut preloaded. If you don't have a laptop or editing software, we'll try and pair you up with someone who does.



Participants that demonstrate a gift for this technique will be considered for competition in the Videodrome 3 event at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in August.



Basic understanding of editing suggested prerequisite, bring your own laptop with editing software, video clips to be provided, handouts provided.

to enroll or for more information about InterAccess workshops, email workshops@interaccess.org

Google Map Hacking Workshop

Instructor: Daniel Arcé
Wednesday June 13, 7-10pm, $75 (non members), $60 (IA members)

Google released its Mapping API (Application Programming Interface) for public use a couple of years ago. This means that we can use the functionality of Google Maps for our own creative purposes.

What you need to know:
Have some idea of how the internet works. This workshop is not for self-described techophobes, but you're welcome to come if the topic is foreign to you but are curious about it. I will go through some basics during the first half of the workshop, so if this is entirely new to you, come prepared to ask questions.

You do not need to know how to program or know how to do math. We will be doing some JavaScript programming, but there will be lots of hand-holding for those in need.

What you will learn:
There is no other way of doing this besides writing your own XHTML / CSS / JavaScript code. You will be given templates to start, so if you are a beginner, you can stick to these.

What you need to have:
A gmail account. Call if this is a problem.
A text editor suitable for coding. BBedit or Text Wrangler for Macs, or Notepad2, Notepad++ for peecees. Dreamweaver is okay, too.

Computers will be available to those without laptops. (first come first serve)

This workshop is directed at the kind of people who would be interested in psychogeography, web mashups, information architecture, visualizing data, and GPS drawing etc.

Gadget Hacking Workshop

Instructor: Mark Argo
Date: 2 evenings- Monday June 25, Tuessday, June 26, 7pm both days
Cost: $125 (non members) $100 (members) plus $50 materials fee

With the ever-increasing amount of new gadgets released into the marketplace, what will happen to the last-years technology? It should be used in art projects, of course! But how can I reuse my old PDA? What other technologies are available on the shelf whose potential I can tap into??

Gadget Hacking will look at all sorts of popular gadgets as platforms for creative repurposing. We will take a look inside several of these devices and look at example projects that make use of these gadgets for personalized means. We will look at a range of possibilities by modifying on-board software and/or hardware to create a whole new use for an object. Finally we will focus on Nintendo, and the two of the most frequently repurposed gadgets: the Nintendo DS and the WiiMote. Day Two will be a focused hands-on session where we dissect a WiiMote and make it do our bidding.

Pre-Requisites: Basic/Intermediate knowledge of circuits and sensors
Requirements: PC or Windows-capable Computer
Costs: Approx $50 CAD for Wii Remote controller, plus some sensors / buttons / etc.

Day 1: Overview. What gadgets are hackable? What has been done with them? How should I go about hacking a gadget? Software vs Hardware hacking. Look at various system that use Linux as a form of software hacking. Look at various cheap hackable hardware options. End up at Nintendo.

Day 2: Workshopping -- Hands-on Style. Look at the hackable gadget du jour -- the Nintendo WiiMote. Many people want to work with wireless, but it can be expensive. WiiMote is a cheap option for adding wireless support to a project. But how do I unleash its potential?

to enroll or for more information about InterAccess workshops, email workshops@interaccess.org

Wires and Wirelessness

Instructor: Mark Argo
Date: Thursday, July 5, 7pm
Cost: $75 (non members) $60 (members)

One of the main elements that defines an electronics project is in the usage of wires. When should I use wires? When should I try to make my project wireless?? How do I make something portable, but also powerful?

This workshop will explain and dive deep into a wide-variety of wired and wireless technologies and terminologies including: USB, PoE, Firewire, Bluetooth, WiFi, RFID, ZigBee, etc. Several example projects will be used to explore the advantages of each technology.

Bring your projects, ideas, case studies, questions and concerns about wires or wirelessness and we will tackles the problems/advantages of each in this informative workshop.

All workshops take place in the InterAccess Production Studio
9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M6J 2Y8
Tel 416 599 7206
Fax 416 599 7015
http://www.interaccess.org
General inquiries: helpme@interaccess.org