MzTEK will be running two workshops at this years Digital Design Weekend at the V&A: Soft Circuit Robots & Introduction to Arduino…

Come and find us in the in the Seminar Room 1, Sackler Centre.

Saturday 22 & Sunday 23 September 2012

Soft Circuit Robots

Saturday 22 September
10.30 – 13.30 or 14.30 – 17.30
Celebrate the Alan Turing Year by creating your own cute soft-circuit chatbot with light-up eyes! Learn how to make crochet chains and buttons with conductive materials.

Sign up here for the Soft Circuit workshop.

Introduction to Arduino

Sunday 23 September
11.00 – 13.00 or 14.30 – 16.30

Learn the basics of interaction design with Arduino, how to use it, applications for creating interactive objects or environments and how to use a simple sensor for basic interaction.

Sign up here for the Intro to Arduino workshop.

Last Saturday we hosted with Guerilla Science the first installment of the Hacked Human Orchestra workshops at our lovely home, The Centre for Creative Collaboration. We’ve been very lucky to work with Shauna Concannon, who is studying for her PhD at Queen Mary, and Kobakant (Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson) both of whom have been working with us on developing the workshop.

Our wonderful participants stitched an elaborate soft circuit which will power a wearable piano and also made sensors including soft circuit pompoms, french chains, buttons (or keys) for the piano and even dino-style spikes!

Soft circuit for a wearable piano

Dino spike which closes a circuit when squeezed!

Soft circuit pompom, made with conductive and non conductive yarn, good to use as a tilt switch.

Learning about the circuit for the wearable piano.

Testing the circuit with a button/piano key made from conductive fabric, felt and foam.

The Hacked Human Orchestra workshop space.

The next stage is to take the project to Shambala and Wilderness festivals where festival-goers will add to the circuits made in last weeks workshop, creating a wearable piano, and also work on more instruments as well. The result will be a walking, soft circuit orchestra which will be lead by composer Florian Lunaire.

Our presentation and the learning materials from the workshop can  downloaded here and you can find more images from the day on Flickr. A great video of the day, created by Debbie Davies is below:

This project is generously being supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Electronic instruments, sonic soft-circuits, mechanical melodies… our take on ‘live music performance’!

MzTEK is joining forces with Guerilla Science to produce the most amazing Hacked Human Orchestra EVER!

We have teamed up with PhD Media Arts and Technology Engineer Shauna Concannon and artists Kobakant to design the wearable instruments and workshops.

Join in the fun in our soft-circuit synth workshop.

Learn some basic electronics and how to make a soft-circuit synthesiser you can wear. You will be lead through the process of creating different types of sound circuits, which will then be integrated into festival goers clothing at Shambala and Wilderness in August. You will be given workshop instructions and gain the knowhow for making them at home.

If you attend the festivals in August, you can sign up to complete your wearable instrument there, and join in the orchestrated evening performance.

Where

Centre for Creative Collaboration
16 Acton Street London Greater London WC1X 9NG

When

June 30 2012
10am – 5pm

Only £8! Sign Up NOW!

This is a women only workshop. Sign up HERE

Interaction designer Katrin Baumgarten will guide you through the steps to making a simple interactive bubble machine using an Arduino, sensors, electronics and some programming.

This workshop will give you enough knowledge to get you started creating all kninds of interactive crazyness… such as Katrin’s tea pot Raging Roger!, commissioned by MzTEK for Chi-TEK.

Katrin Baumgarten holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and an MSc from Imperial College London in Innovation Design Engineering. Her projects revolve around human-technology interaction and explore future possibilities within technology and art. She loves to see the magic that appears when an inanimate object suddenly starts to move and respond to external stimuli in ways normally attributed to humans.

This workshop is suitable for beginners, so just come and have a try, and most of all, fun!

WHERE

Access Space
3-7 Sidney Street
Sheffield
S1 4RG

WHEN

Saturday 9 June, 2012
10am – 5pm

Sign up! it’s FREE!!!!!!!

This workshop is a women only workshop… and it’s FREE! – so you’ve got nothing to lose!
To book a place contact Access Space on 44 (0)114 2495522 

This workshop is supported by

Beginners guide to the LilyPad Arduino for wearable technology.

Join our one day introduction to the LilyPad Arduino and get your garments interactive!

During the course of the day you will be introduced to the basics of soft circuitry, some basic electronics, Arduino software, programming, and reading a sensor.
At the end of the day you will have a functioning interactive patch, which you can sew onto a garment, bag or cushion cover.

PLEASE BRING WITH YOU:

• A piece of fancy fabric of your choice –  it is best to use something non-stretchy and stiff, something like cotton or canvas.
• If you want to bring your own laptop, please make sure you have installed the latest Arduino Software on it.
• A USB to mini-USB  (you are bound to have one somewhere, we thought best not to buy more ;)

Fee:

£75 +  booking fee – Includes discounted LilyPad Arduino 
This includes the LilyPad Arduino, LilyPad Battery Holder and FTDI board.

or

£35 +  booking fee – Not including LilyPad Arduino 
This is for those who do not require a LilyPad Arduino Kit as above – There will not be spares to borrow unfortunately, please make sure you have one for the workshop if you purchase this ticket.

When

April 14th 2012
10am – 5pm

Where

SPACE
129—131 MARE STREET
LONDON E8 3RH

Tutor

Sophie McDonald is a creative technology workshop developer and educator, delivering workshops for clients such as V&A, Barbican and Maker Faire. Sophie is an artist, developer, producer and co-founder of sketchPatch , an online computer-programming playground for coders, artists and designers – and newbies! :)

This is a women only workshop.

Sign up HERE

This workshop is kindly supported by