Tinker it now!

++ A ‘dance performance’ using real-time technology making great use of dynamic movement, shape, art and interactive techology. A collaboration between MTA SZTAKI Media Technology Group and The Symptoms dance troupe that brings technology and human creativity together in a truly memorable video.

Nothing There from gabor papp on Vimeo.
Another good example Echo by UnitedVisualArtists.

++ Good design is all about looking into detail. A cute Milamp project by Kitchen Budapest highlights utilizing minimal intelligence into daily life. Watch video of the interaction between MiLamps and human gestures.

++ Joe Langevin at Hanckmod.com, sent us this link about HacknMod’s round-up of the Top 40 Arduino Projects online. Yah, a lot of interesting stuff! It’s always pleasing to see Arduino is getting so popular and people are implementing it into diverse creative projects…

++ Emotional expression is always an important part of communication, even in machines. Check out this two-day Computation of Emotions in Man and Machines meeting at The Royal Society on 20 and 21 April. They will present how advanced computer technology/emotion expression recognition can improve human-computer and human-human communications. Registration for this event is now opened.

++ Have a look of Play-Create Gallery, a refreshing collection of interactive media from Daniel Brown. Playing a piano, creating a painting, or exploring a coffee shop… lovely computer generated graphics and music.

++ TouchCase featuring Animaltek, an impressive angled multi-touch surface table, from Sebastian Heinz. Sebastian was kind enough to share his experiences in building a multitouch table, pointing out the challenges of IR light illumination, as well as choosing the right software and IR camera.

Many thanks to Sebastian!

++ Hacking is a buzz phrase in the tech-world — software hacking, hardware hacking, account hacking… but Spacehack sounds quite fresh and ambitious. It’s time for us to look bigger and further. The Spacehack community collects various ongoing space exploration activities. If you have ideas to create a new project, want to share your thoughts, get involved or just check what’s going on, read more about Spacehack here!

++ A nice project, SpinVox WishingWell, produced by Freestate for the Covent Garden Christmas festival. Powered by SpinVox’s Speech-to-Text technology, you call a number (free of charge) to make a wish. Your words are converted to text and projected onto the walls inside the Wishing Well installation. Your words also appear online. It reminds me of Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar’s We Feel Fine, visualising and sharing your mood, but WishingWell is more tangible. I love to see street installation combing tech and art in such a clever way and also encouraging people to get involved. I was out of town, a real pity I missed it.

++ More from Freestate: Hall of Mirrors, a lovely installation for the Sony Europe building in Berlin. Think tactile trees and mirrors all over the place.

++ Here’s another group of Tinkerers. The UKC Tinkering Society is a group of like-minded students who are into experimenting with new things at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Headed by Omer Kilic, this is an official society where robotics, computing and installations are just part of their interests. It’s great to see interest rising from the ground up. Follow their creations on their blog.

Some of your might have received an Arduino for Christmas, so instead of letting it get covered with dust in a drawer, put it to good use and sign up for our next Beginners Arduino workshop!

Taking place in London on February 28th and 1st of March, this is a classic and you’ll have a great time figuring out all the basics of Arduino. Check out all our previous workshop pictures on Flickr!

Tickets are £120 for professionals and £95 for students. Sign up quick!

Update: Sorry this workshop is now sold out!

We had a dry run last night at our offices and Matt Biddulph was kind enough to make a little video of this 3 hour hacking session at our offices.

The real thing is taking place this weekend in London and there are a few places still left! Sign up now! No knowledge of electronics required at all!

For the winter season 2008-9, Tinker.it! decided to put its office window to good use and build an interactive display called “Snowflake”. Based on an original concept by John Nussey, Jon Hewitt & Andras Szalai, we decided to build a movement and RFID-enabled snowflake generator.

Placed in our London office, alongside a busy corridor, passer-bys are invited to use their Oystercard to discover what kind of snowflake they are. As they move past the windows, the snowfall in the background is gently swayed by their movement, and the last person’s snowflake rotates in the foreground.

This will be up in our offices until early February, come and see it!

We’re at the point where we’ll have completed a number of really nice projects and what more appropriate than to open up our studio and show off! People also always ask us what we do, so this is really the best way to find out. On February 3rd 2009, you’ll be able to play with some of the technologies we’ve developed, examples we’ve made and see some great videos of the work we’ve done, while having a drink and some nibbles.

If you’d like to come, please RSVP at info (c/o) tinker (doot) it with the subject line: Open Studio

See you there!

UPDATE: Due to the generally terrible weather that has hit London, we are moving this event to Tuesday 10th 2009 same time same place! If you were planning on joining the pubmeet, meet us here instead!

- Join us at our monthly hardware hackers pubmeet this Tuesday at the Windmill (17th edition!). We might go roam around the CSM in progress show after.

- Say hi to Daniel Soltis, our Interaction Designer at BETTr this Wednesday. We’ll be roaming around BETT that day too and seeing the nice work of students at the RCA’s work in progress show later that evening.

- I’ll be speaking at O’Reilly’s Ignite UK- North in Leeds on the 22nd of January, most probably about some of the exciting prospects behind connecting the real world and the digital world through technologies like Xbee, Pachube and others.

- Massimo will be at Transmediale in Berlin speaking at the Re-hacking your world: Fair trade hardware event on Thursday 29th.

Things are happening quickly at Tinker.it! this week and we’re very happy to announce our second edition of the Interactive Lighting workshop, hosted and supported by Arup. Taking place at Arup’s HQ in London on February 7th-8th, this advanced workshop aims at teaching you how to control various types of lights using the DMX protocol. Lead by our CTO Massimo Banzi and Nick Weldin, this is sure to be a brilliant workshop with some fun guest speakers.

Hope you’ll join us!.

++ OpenSoundControl hack by Matti Niinmaki using the Arduino and Pure Data with Animata a nice open source animation package.

++ Speaking of tangible music, Psychosynth is a nice project, composing music by moving physical objects on a table. Check out the 3D music interface virtual version.

++ Graffiti project is a Gesture Recognition Management Framework for Interactive Tabletop Interfaces, by Alessandro De Nardi from NUI Groups showing you seamless natural interaction between the TUI and GUI with source.

++ Whether Keytar, a keyboard/guitar controlled by Arduino, is the world’s sexist instrument or not, it’s certainly worth checking out…

++ Have any ideas to create a more environmentally friendly vehicle? The Toyota Technology Challenge 2008-09 invites UK school student teams to attend the Design & Build an Environmentally Friendly Model Vehicle competition. A wonderful chance to mess around with a free* kit supplied by Rapid, containing all the components necessary to build a vehicle, and possibly win up to £1,000 for your school as well!

++ Manchester’s yearly Futuresonic conference is offering a 6 month internship for anyone interested in digital art, live music, and events logistics.

++ Is Augmented Reality this year’s hot trend? Suddenly it’s everywhere. Mikkoh’s lovely tutorial shows you how to get started with FlarToolKit playing with Augmented Reality in Flash. Another free library, yay!

++ Speaking of which, check out VixML platform for iPhone development. The approval system is a bit of a pain, but it makes dev work much more accessible.