Tinker it now!

In the “fun with science” category:

I found So SAKAI’s project at the designersblock exhibition last week and thought it had a lot of potential.

“It is a work that vibrates the surface of the water by interfering with two or more waves, and draws the new expression with water by using the sine wave.”

Check out the movie on Link design.

Spent the last few days in Amsterdam hanging out with people I hadn’t seen in months and I dropped in on the Hacker’s camp organised by Mediamatic for Picnic.

Timo Arnall was working with Jørn Knutsen on building the software for a photobooth that would use the RFID tags in the attendee’s badges to automatically tag the pictures taken and post them to flickr.

Check out the Flickr stream being created all throughout the conference

We’ve got the great privilege of sponsoring thishappened, an interaction design event in London happening on the 2nd of October.

Massimo will be speaking as well, so do sign up and join us on upcoming.

I went around 100% design in Earl’s Court and was amazed to see how many companies are offering LED display solutions in the UK. These were the ones that stood out for me on the more techy side of things:

+ Beadlight Limited, with Multi Modular System technology.

+ Element Labs, have a wide variety of modular and weatherproof systems for events and stadium-size type exhibitions.

+ Rako offers (among a bunch of domotic household solutions) neat wireless lighting control units.

+ Earlsmann offer a nice range of light tape.

+ Solar also have a nice range for the more architectural-inclined products.

+ In terms of applications Tranlogue from Japan had some nice ideas.

We have the great pleasure of having Janne Jalkanen from Nokia come and speak during our RFID workshop.

I had the pleasure of working with him at the Nearfield communications workshop last year in Oslo, so it’s a great pleasure to have him come and chat with us about his latest projects in NFC.

“Janne Jalkanen studied to be a physicist and rocket scientist, but steered off course and became an IT consultant (though his highest achievement is still in orbit around Earth). At night, he leads the development of the JSPWiki open source wiki engine, but by day he works at Nokia as a project manager. He has been working in the Near Field Communications area for several years, and currently participates in the standardization work at NFC Forum.”

Hidden in a small room, sandwiched between 2 floor of the exuberant work of Zaha Hadid, Chris O’Shea presents his latest project “Out of bounds”, part of the Design Museum’s exhibition: Artists in Residence.

Using a torch, visitors are invited to reveal on a dark wall, the different rooms in the museum that aren’t accessible to the public. As if you had x-ray vision, you can discover their archives, working areas, offices but only for the surface of the torch’s beam, forcing you to move it around to reveal more of the picture.

Developed with the yet to be released Open Frameworks, what I found interesting is people’s reaction to the “magic” of it. Visitors seemed more intrigued about the projected image being able to follow the movement of their hand holding the torch than what image they were revealing.

Clearly such wireless interactions embedded in objects we know very well are able to create wonder and enchantment and Chris has cleverly tapped into that.

Official pictures on Chris’s Flickr set and more on his site.

We had such a fun time in July at the first H3, that we’re organising another one! This one on Arduino + RFID.

Massimo will be leading this one again and Matt is taking time away from Dopplr to come and help out with software again!

We’ve got some great speakers potentially lined up as well (don’t want to spoil the surprise till it’s confirmed) and this will be the perfect opportunity to hack the Oyster card :)

So if you’re in London on October 27-28th, join us!

Tickets are £170

All details on the site.

One of tinker.it’s friend Chris O’Shea is presenting his piece “Out of bounds” at the Design Museum’s exhibition: Designers in Residence this wednesday. I’m lucky enough to have a ticket to the opening so will be taking pictures.

“There is a childlike quality about wanting the ability to see through walls with x-ray vision like a superhero character. This memory is something Chris O’Shea wants to capture in the interactive installation Out of Bounds.”.

See you there!

Do you have a good understanding and experience withArduino and it’s potential applications?
Are you a good communicator and able to transfer your knowledge to a group of people?

We want to hear from you!

tinker.it is expanding it’s activities to the UK and we’re looking for people in and around London to lead Arduino beginner’s workshops. This is a part time position and would involve a minimum of 1 weekend a month starting in October.

Interested? Contact me at alex (c/o) tinker (dot) it for more details.

tinker.it’s friend Usman Haque is organising an Open Burble release in Holland park on Sunday 16th of September at 8pm. Be there!

Update: Benjamin Tomlinson sent me a bunch of pictures of the event!