So as I already mentioned in the previous post I had to take a cab in London at 3am, in order to get the train to Gatwick, to get the 6.20am flight to Munich, take the S-Bahn from the airport, run into my place and grab everything for the workshop, rush after the next S-Bahn to Pullach to get to the workshop on time :) 

Set in a beautiful castle, my maKey maKey workshop was part of the New Media conference for  Kreisjugendring employees (a huge pedagogical organisation in Munich) on 21 February.
























To get started after an introduction to technical maKey maKey details, we constructed a playground on the floor for a simple colour game in Scratch, in which participants were making one of the electrical connections by stepping with their bare feet on a piece of foil, and the other by touching their team partner. We had lots of fun!

The next task for the young teachers was to design an interactive environment, which would involve the objects in the room. It was inspired by this amazing HacKIDemia musical room project in Austin. One of the teams wired up the whole buffet Alice-in-Wonderland-style, making touch-sensitive giggling fruits, musical coffee cups and other drinks, etc. The second team adjusted some of the audience's chairs, but adding buttons and foil to it, so that the chairs would laugh out loud when touched. These creations caused a big confusion, once everybody gathered in the hall, coming back from all the other workshops to share their experiences.



In the end every workshop group presented their results to each other. So my group decided to let everybody play the bare-feet colour game once again ))

It was a very joyful workshop with inspiring participants, and despite a sleepless night I did not feel tired at all. Great fun! Thank you so much Alice for organising the whole day, for inviting me and for taking part yourself as well!





@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, Geekery, Media Art

So as I already mentioned in the previous post I had to take a cab in London at 3am, in order to get the train to Gatwick, to get the 6.20am flight to Munich, take the S-Bahn from the airport, run into my place and grab everything for the workshop, rush after the next S-Bahn to Pullach to get to the workshop on time :) 

Set in a beautiful castle, my maKey maKey workshop was part of the New Media conference for  Kreisjugendring employees (a huge pedagogical organisation in Munich) on 21 February.
























To get started after an introduction to technical maKey maKey details, we constructed a playground on the floor for a simple colour game in Scratch, in which participants were making one of the electrical connections by stepping with their bare feet on a piece of foil, and the other by touching their team partner. We had lots of fun!

The next task for the young teachers was to design an interactive environment, which would involve the objects in the room. It was inspired by this amazing HacKIDemia musical room project in Austin. One of the teams wired up the whole buffet Alice-in-Wonderland-style, making touch-sensitive giggling fruits, musical coffee cups and other drinks, etc. The second team adjusted some of the audience's chairs, but adding buttons and foil to it, so that the chairs would laugh out loud when touched. These creations caused a big confusion, once everybody gathered in the hall, coming back from all the other workshops to share their experiences.



In the end every workshop group presented their results to each other. So my group decided to let everybody play the bare-feet colour game once again ))

It was a very joyful workshop with inspiring participants, and despite a sleepless night I did not feel tired at all. Great fun! Thank you so much Alice for organising the whole day, for inviting me and for taking part yourself as well!





@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, Geekery, Media Art

So as I already mentioned in the previous post I had to take a cab in London at 3am, in order to get the train to Gatwick, to get the 6.20am flight to Munich, take the S-Bahn from the airport, run into my place and grab everything for the workshop, rush after the next S-Bahn to Pullach to get to the workshop on time :) 

Set in a beautiful castle, my maKey maKey workshop was part of the New Media conference for  Kreisjugendring employees (a huge pedagogical organisation in Munich) on 21 February.
























To get started after an introduction to technical maKey maKey details, we constructed a playground on the floor for a simple colour game in Scratch, in which participants were making one of the electrical connections by stepping with their bare feet on a piece of foil, and the other by touching their team partner. We had lots of fun!

The next task for the young teachers was to design an interactive environment, which would involve the objects in the room. It was inspired by this amazing HacKIDemia musical room project in Austin. One of the teams wired up the whole buffet Alice-in-Wonderland-style, making touch-sensitive giggling fruits, musical coffee cups and other drinks, etc. The second team adjusted some of the audience's chairs, but adding buttons and foil to it, so that the chairs would laugh out loud when touched. These creations caused a big confusion, once everybody gathered in the hall, coming back from all the other workshops to share their experiences.



In the end every workshop group presented their results to each other. So my group decided to let everybody play the bare-feet colour game once again ))

It was a very joyful workshop with inspiring participants, and despite a sleepless night I did not feel tired at all. Great fun! Thank you so much Alice for organising the whole day, for inviting me and for taking part yourself as well!





@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, Geekery, Media Art

My life has been so crazy during the last several months, with one workshop after another every week, sometimes several workshops a week, each and every one completely different, at various places and with various people. I hardly looked back at what I've been actually doing all this time, constantly racing towards the next project. But I am always happy about such intense periods of work, and also happy when they are over. 

I am going to start with the very beginning of this winter marathon, which was a workshop with my beloved Beddow n Battini collective, and another good reason to go to London! We organised a series of workshops, aimed at encouraging young people to pursue a creative career. Thus we decided to share the various skills and techniques crucial to Beddow n Battini. We conducted four workshops within two days, which included story telling by Fay, character development by Wumi, self expression by Adeeb and creative technology led by myself.








Unfortunately, our workshops were not very well promoted, and thus we ended up having only few participants, despite the fact that they were during the school holidays and free of charge. Nevertheless, it was fun and we had very interesting participants of different backgrounds who had individual stories to tell.


I was conducting a maKey maKey workshop, which is always exciting with people who haven't heard of it before. The aim was to enhance the pictures and stories created in previous workshops and add layers of interaction.



My workshop ended Thursday evening, and I had to leave my friend's flat at 3am to take the very first flight to Munich, as I was booked for another workshop there for Friday... but let that be a different story ))












Have a lovely sunny weekend everyone!



@темы: Workshop, Teaching, Exploring London, Geekery, Beddow n Battini, physical computing

A couple of months ago I submitted my Rotherhithe illustration and animation (which was part of the 100 Word Pilgrimage by Beddow n Battini collective) to the Serco Prize for Illustration at London Transport Museum... and then completely forgot about it. A month later I got an e-mail saying that my animation was accepted. And somehow everything went so suspiciously smoothly, that I wasn't sure if my illustration was really going to be there. Last week I was over in London for work, and went to the Transport Museum just to check if it was all true at all!

I was relieved to find my animation on display in deed, with both sound and picture in working order. The description seemed to be an extremely shortened version of what I submitted, but that's not the end of the world. 

I was sure there will be loads and loads of animations on display, but they only had 5 in total! All in all, there were 1.200 submissions and only 50 artworks got accepted. And seeing so many illustrations of such a great quality on the show made me feel even more honored to be part of it than I already was! Thanks for the brilliant organisation Holly, Sabine and everyone else involved!

Here is a brief description of the exhibition:

"Across the ages, London has produced and inspired countless stories. Fictitious and real characters and events in this amazing city have always held fascination, from anecdotal urban myths to grand tales of historic legend.

London Stories, an exhibition featuring the best of the entries for The Serco Prize for Illustration 2014 features 50 works of art. Entrants were asked to create an illustration which visually captures a well-known or obscure London narrative; stories that are contemporary or historical, real or imagined."

I  absolutely loved this illustration below by Erica Sturla, The Menagerie in the Tower.
This illustration depicts an urban legend that the Queen has her own secret tube line.
This illustration below won the first prize. It's Gill Bradley's Monkey Band at Large in Notting Hill, 1927 – a raucous depiction of an "escaped monkey jazz band".

The exhibition will be on until 6 April! So all ye London friends, you've got enough time to see it!
Have a look at the Creative Review article on the exhibition. If you'd like to purchase a poster (sadly
but obviously only for illustrations, not for animations), here is the online poster shop.

Source




@темы: Exhibition, Illustration, Exploring London, Arts

I am finally paying off my last December debt by sharing these bathed-in-the-beauty-of-the-winter-sunlight pictures and very engaged faces during my last workshop at the FabLab Munich.

I was holding this pre-Christmas session in the new space of the FabLab, who have finally moved from the cellar to this bright airy room. The participants had the choice of either making a Christmas card or a Christmas tree decoration, and everyone went for the second option (probably a bit late for cards just two days prior to the holiday).

It was the first time I had a mixed-age workshop for both kids and adults (ok, one adult, to be honest), and I was pleased to see that it worked very well. Hurray to new formats and inspiring participants! And a big thank you to Birgit & Andreas from the FabLab for the all-around support!





@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, Geekery, Media Art, soft circuit, wearables

On December 15 I took part in the Kafe Kunstfest organised by lovely people at Kafe Kult. I have never been there before, and it turned out to be a little bit hard to reach, but very bohemian and Berlin-style venue with sprayed walls and vintage furniture. Kafe Kunstfest is a self-organised non-profit arts DIY festivals with exhibitions, gigs, design items, etc.

I was showing my current project The Strait-tablecloth (Die Zwanstischdecke), in which I explored new ways of food sharing as an essential part of social life, challenged by constant virtual presence and communication. A dining table is traditionally at the heart of daily information exchange within every family. Every Friday my sister celebrates Sabbath and this is the time when the whole family comes together to exchange news, discuss books and films and make plans. However, as two of her children already possess smart phones, they tend to take this opportunity as a mental escape, while actually still being physically present. This was my initial motivation to investigate into the influence of new technologies and new media on social and cultural aspects of of meal sharing. So, as a first step of my inquiry I created a tablecloth which makes interaction between the people around the table more exciting, but at the same time very restricting and rather uncomfortable. A tablecloth which dictates its own social rules, refraining people from using touchscreens and forcing to focus on those who are physically present. Dining at this table you either collaborate or starve.

After setting everything up, I could finally take a look at my neighbours' stands.

This is lovely Paula who makes amazing jewelry from electronic garbage. (I mentioned her in my previous post on XMake Fair).

Steffi and Klaus were also selling their artwork and clothes.

Back to my bananas. 

This was my tiny workshop lab

And here is me explaining the project

And here is a visitor explaining the project to his friends :)
Thanks to the organisers for such a lovely event! I met so many young creatives and enthusiastic visitors! And thanks to Severin for taking some of the above pictures.

And here is a bonus: a picture of my London-based OSA colleagues Emilie and Gareth, who were the very first people to test the very first prototype of the project.





@темы: Exhibition, Workshop, Munich, Geekery, Media Art, physical computing, Arts


Initiated by the founders of Make Munich, XMake was a fairly spontaneous affair with little publicity. Nevertheless, the place was very crowded, and the location itself very central and bright, with fantastic panoramic views on the city and the Alps. This time I had an army of supporters, as I dragged along Ilja, Emilie and Gareth, so it was a very relaxing workshop experience for me. There were many other fun things to do, geeky and less geeky ones. You could print in 3D, bake Pl



@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, Geekery, Media Art


Wow, seems like I've been silent since October . It's time to catch up with all the exciting December things.

First of all, my lovely London friends and OSA-colleagues Emilie and Gareth were over to give my students an introduction to physical computing and a rough idea of critical thinking and methodologies. This full-weekend-workshop was a compulsory part of my current seminar "Interactive Media for Children" for art pedagogy and art & multimedia students at the LMU.

In the beginning Emilie and Gareth were telling about their background and giving insights into OSA projects and critical methods in creative practice. After half an hour it was time to unpack the newly-arrived arduinos and get everybody's hands on them! We started with the basic examples like LED blink and light-sensitive resistors (if you are about to learn arduino yourself, there are very nice examples and tutorials on the arduino webpage). We proceeded with building a bio-sensory device from OSA's previous workshop Rebooting Computing (check out the super detailed wiki-page of the project with all tutorials and background information).



By the end of the day we were introducing our personal little projects to the students, created specifically for this workshop. Unfortunately, there are no pictures, as all of us were simultaneously busy. But you can look into the code of each project here (yes, we are the open systems association!), and hopefully we'll put up some pictures soon!

On the second day the students were supposed to come up with an arduino-based project idea in groups, and prototype it within three hours. I was very impressed how quickly each group agreed upon an idea and how far all the groups got in the end! We had an anti-pollution project with a suffering planet if it was touched by the power station, or a happy planet if planted with a tree. Another project was a dating heart, used for comparing the answers of a couple. And the third one was a physical rock-paper-scissors game where you had to touch the object of your choice.


Two great days of physical computing,  British English and mostly happy faces :))) What a joy!
A big thank you to Gareth & Emilie, and also to Karin who made way for this collaboration despite the jungles of German bureaucracy.






@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, LMU, Goldsmiths, Geekery, Media Art, physical computing

02:12

Bits & Bobs

Next week is the start of the new term at the university and I'm gonna teach a newly established  seminar on Interactive Media for Children at the LMU, which involves many exciting cooperation partners! Also, I'm setting up a media theory reading group. Primarily for art & multimedia students, but basically all students and teachers you are welcome to join: computer scientists, future art educators, philosophers, sociologists and so on.
Also, me and Ilja have created a new blog called What's on in M



@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, LMU, Media Art

At last!
As some of you may know, last January I was commissioned to draw a Cabaret-inspired mural at 47/49 Tanner Street (a film set occasionally used by the BBC, a creative space for local artists and communities, and and and). The filmed material which was lying around ever since, is now being dug out from the dark dungeon of accumulated data, cut and polished! Working on this footage reminded me of how much fun those couple of days in London were. And after long pondering I've even found a soundtrack I really liked: it's one of Pollina's (also known as Pollyester) numerous music projects called Kamera Kino. Thanks again, Wumi, Rosie and Scarlett at 47/49 Tanner Street, Tania and Adeeb!


 
Recently, I've started spending more time on researching what our Bavarian capital has to offer, earmarking events and exhibitions I'd like to visit in Munich. I'm happily sharing it here, as there are actually cool things going on, but I find it really tough to find them. Nothing comparable to Time Out or Londonist over here.


THINGS TO DO IN MUNICH THIS WEEK (2-6 October):
Wednesday, 2 October:
MUSIC: Hauskonzerte - concerts organised in tiny cozy venues, you never know in advance where the next one is going to be... And you need to be quick to sign up for a concert once it's announced.

MUSIC: Rage Against Abschiebung Festival in Feierwerk dedicated to refugee relief, with various bands, etc.

Thursday, 3 October:
ARTS: My friends Steffi (rag treasure) and Klaus will be setting up an installation called "Zelle" at a pub called Fridas Kunstkammer, Steinheilstr.10, U2 Theresienstra



@темы: Illustration, Munich, Beddow n Battini, Arts

After a short summer break I am back to town and already jumped headlong into the studio work. It's not easy to embrace this gloomy chilly rain after several months of stunning weather, but I am trying hard.

My inspiration board for the past months: El Greco, Lora Zombie, Jessica Tremp, Tania Alisova, a photograph of Dustin Hoffman,
and a fox which doesn't want to work (it only wants to snarl фыр-фыр-фыр).

To share some more inspiration with you and get you into a tinkering mood, eliciting you out of your room / office space, I'd like to invite you to the Wearable Technology workshops at the beautiful Bayerisches Nationalmuseum on the 29 of September. Or alternatively, you could send your kids away to the workshop for youngsters and have a party in their absence! During this session you will learn the basics of soft circuits, hardware hacking, sewing and soldering from three media and textile artists, and walk out with your own Speaking Bag! Get your tickets now! Here for you and here for your kids.

Something you'll learn in this workshop. Can you guess what it is?
Other goodies this autumn include lots of teaching, submissions and collaborations with lovely people. Starting from October I'll be at the LMU again, however I'll be offering a completely different course than last winter, which will be more like a patchwork of different topics, experimental tasks and external partners feeding into the whole process. I'm very excited how everything is going to evolve around it, but can't tell you more right now.

Stay tuned and have a nice week!







@темы: Workshop, Teaching, LMU, Geekery, Arts

While I was being kept busy in the summer my dear London friends haven't been sitting on their hands either. First of all, our illustrators & creative writers gang Beddow 'n Battini has been showcasing our 100 Word Pilgrimage all over London, dividing our pieces between four different locations. Apart from that, Tatiana submitted my Rotherhithe piece to the Aurasma competition, which made it to the final round! If you'd like to support me, you can vote for it here.

all above pictures by Josh
Additionally to these exhibitions, Tatiana and Wumi have produces three big-scale pieces of street art!
by Tania and Wumi

Meanwhile, the OSA collective, which I am also part of, has had a critical media exhibition in the spacious and light Hart Lane Studios. The Open Systems Association is an allotment society for the critically curious and the technologically disaffected. OSA's approach and methodology are quite unique, as we have both a practical and a theoretical background. While working on our projects, we conduct academic as well as practice-based research, which feeds into the critical substance of the artwork. Generally, we are very curious about the process of investigation itself, including its cultural, social and political notions, rather than in the finished and sealed representation of the accomplished work. The June exhibition is called Everything But the Kitchen, which is a cultural lab articulated as a radical kitchen space. Seven units house critical experiments where members of the public can plug into bodies and their processes, approaching critical thinking and technological tinkering from the perspective of physical engagement. shift once our nipples are connected through suction to another body? How does time materialise in a physical database of chopped, organised and washed vegetables? How can we re-politicise domestic media by grinding corn kernels? (Read more here.)
All pictures courtesy of OSA






@темы: Exhibition, Illustration, Exploring London, Goldsmiths, Media Art, street art, Arts

For the last two weeks I was working with Spielkultur again, this time at the KIKS Kinder Kultur Sommer - a festival for school children in their last week before the summer break. It was my first experience working with a whole school class and working for 9 hours almost non-stop. And I tried out many new things I have never done before: I was teaching how to programme Lego Mindstorm robots, how to create stop-motion cartoons, as well as how to draw and colour comics digitally. Have a look at the cute kids at work!

Kids working on a stop-motion film about Bavarian Simpsons in the circus. You can check out the results here.
Working on a super clever sci-fi comic
and bringing some digital colour into the hand drawn pictures
Inventing edible musical instruments with MaKey-MaKey
our venue: the Old Congress Hall







@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching

As some of you might know, from 5th until 7th of July I participated in the Aaber Award Exhibition which was set on the ground of an open-air circus, close to the Leonrodplatz. The tents, the hipsters and the good vibes reminded me of East London which, let's face it, is rather unusual for Munich. I was very happy to meet the impressively young organisers as well as other artists. Quite surprisingly to myself, I've met quite a few people I already knew from my BA course in Arts and Multimedia, and a bunch of people who graduated later than me, or were just about to do so.
by Xenia Fumbarev
While setting everything up in our tent, we worked really hard with Klaus and Steffi as the Knife and Needle collective. Some friends even came by to help us. In the end one part of our exhibition space filled with various obscure communication amplifiers: surreal textile devices combined with paintings and sonic media. And the other part was dedicated to our open lab, where Steffi was inventing and sewing various protheses aimed at solving communication problems of our visitors (e.g. one lady wished for a knee-bra), while I was soldering a sink-radio (which refused to work in the end, I suspect the antenna was causing the problems...) Spontaneously, I constructed a rather simplistic model of an analog data base, which comprised various algorithmic processes from the every-day life, e.g. recipes, morning exercises, hiking routes, knitting patterns, etc.  For me, the whole approach of setting up a lab space turned out to be a very valuable methodology. The audience became actively involved, and thus interested in the development of the artwork. This experimental space offered an appropriate framework for further discussions and exchange of ideas. And I can't express how thankful I am to Steffi and Klaus for this collaboration, they are amazing artists to be working with!

Steffi is wearing Fernweh which according to the dictionary is Wanderlust in English (Sounds like an initial point for an exciting
linguistic analysis of German dark-romanticism vs. a more light and positive term, apparently more appropriate for export)
An analog data base for algorithmic processes
A spying mechanism and a sleep mask for the whole face
A special guest from Graz hired for sweeping.
A knee-bra
Pictures below courtesy of Zeitjung


Here are some articles about the Aaber Award on mucbook and Zeitjung,






@темы: Exhibition, Munich, Geekery, Media Art, Arts

The clock is ticking like crazy, and so it is about time to catch up withso many news and past events. Keep coming back to this blog, as there will be several updates in the following days.

Let's start with June then. I was running another session of Speaking Bag workshops: one for adults and one for kids, both in the FabLab M



@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, Geekery, Media Art

So, it's official now: I am very happy to announce that 29th September myself, Steffi and Klaus will be leading a soft circuit sound hacking workshop in Bayerisches Nationmalmuseum, as an addition to the current exhibition TASCHEN! A 3h workshop for youngsters and 5h for adults. And the workshop includes a guided tour through the exhibition! You will learn many new things and techniques, and it's going to be a lot of fun! Please purchase your ticket on eventbrite, there are not too many (for youngsters here and for adults here). Below is the information in German. Or have a look at it directly at the museum's website.
Source

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
29. September 2013, 10 - 13 Uhr

Workshop f



@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, Geekery


Two weeks ago I went to Rotterdam to help Matsuko install the Evil Media Distribution Centre, which was shown at The New Institute. Eight different works ranging from interior and product design to archaeology and critical art formed the exhibition called The Ruin. I was writing about the Evil Media Distribution Centre earlier in Februrary when we set it up at the Transmediale in Berlin, but here is a brand new brilliant article by Stephen Fortune, where you can find out more about the concept.


I was so happy to be working together with Matsuko again, and meeting all the incredibly friendly museum personnel: starting with the ever-joking cheerful museum director and ending with a russophile technician who would enthusiastically shout "Работа! Работа!" once he found out that I was from Ukraine. I grew to love the process of setting up exhibitions. It is such a beautiful psychotic time, when you run around from early morning until very late, get to know so many people by working side by side with them, experience the sparkling ups and the nervous downs, have adventurous tasks and unexpected problems to solve, and produce something very tangible in the end which makes you feel proud and part of something meaningful.



I especially loved the fact that there was a kitchen in the basement of the museum, which had supplies of food and most importantly coffee. You could just sit with everyone working for the museum at one table: technicians, information desk workers, cleaners, bookshop keepers, exhibition producers, etc.

For the first night I was staying in Leiden at my parents' friends, which was 30 min train ride from Rotterdam. It turns out that you can cross four important cities within half an hour, as you pass by Delft and den Haag on the way to Leiden. Holland, you seriously impressed me.

The opening night was fantastic, and the speech of the director must have been very enjoyable, but the only thing I could understand was something something Evil Media, and thanks to Graham Harwood, Matsuko Yokokoi, Tom Keene and Anna Blumenkranz. In the meantime my husband was occupied with tiny octopuses in his salad.


The exhibition will be on for the next three months, so if you are close to Rotterdam (which is basically everywhere in Holland, as I found out) you have the chance to see it!



@темы: Exhibition, Media Art, Arts

Dear everybody! Next weekend there will be an art exhibition called Aaber Award hosted by a spectacular open-air circus Wannda, close to Leonrodplatz. The organisers' mission is to support young artists and create space for artistic intervention. I will be collaborating with Klaus and Steffi from ragtreasure to transform a tent. Throughout the whole event visitors will be able to cast their votes for their favourite artwork and, on Saturday the winners will be announced. Come and support us! Bellow is the official invitation in German:

 
Freitag 5. Juli - Sonntag 7. Juli 2013
T



@темы: Exhibition, Munich, Geekery, Media Art, Arts

Attention attention! Still a couple of places left for tomorrow's Speaking Bag Workshop!
Come and hack a sound recording device, stitch with conductive thread and learn how to make soft buttons! In the end you will have your super-individual bag with your own design and your voice record. It's from 7pm to 22pm, 28? + 15? for supplies, and you can register here.

photo and bag by Olga Mirenska
There is this also a huge list of past events I wanted to share at this point.
First of all, a week ago I teamed up with beautiful artist friends Steffi and Klaus for a workshop / event for Siemens. We hacked T-Shirts, which would light up when the colleagues hugged each other, pressing a soft button on the back. (I like this pun in German, where participants "dr



@темы: Workshop, Munich, Teaching, Geekery, Media Art