A summary of the conference on friday.

Some quick websites and things mentioned before the conference started proper with regards to the theme of the conference, We Love Technology.

• Trexa Kit car
• Eric Dyer
• Beehive, open source forum software
• D Shape — Rapid prototyping of architectural buildings.

The conference started with a talk from Tuomo Tammenpaa, from Finland, who talked about the OHANDA (Open Hardware and Design Alliance).

Things mentioned in Tuomo’s talk were:

• Tiletoy a modular electronic game prototype.
• Playkka — RFID toys
• Mempot
• Nand Synth
• Osasto G
• Open Prosthetics

Related websites: Misusage | Yatta | Ohanda

Next up were Steve Symons and Simon Blackmore, who are two thirds of the Owl Project, who make sculpture, music and sound art. They started off by demonstrating their iLog, which is an electronic device built into a piece of wood. The device can be used to control music, computers (they demonstrated the iLog being used to control emails, although it didn’t seem to work very well). Apparently we’ll all be using it in the future (I doubt it).

They next spoke about a project called Flow, which is essentially a raft floating on a river in Newcastle. The raft will be a floating, interactive sound space, powered entirely by the motion of the water upon which it floats, by means of a rather large water wheel, which along with providing electricity, will provide water and mechanical energy. Flow will be made of wood, and will include interactive components, comprising of a bubble synthesiser, an underwater camera made to look like a rock and a salinity sequencer. The aim of Flow is to bridge the gap between technology and nature.

Related Websites: OwlProject

After that we had a talk from James Boardwell, who focused on social technologies. He wasn’t a great speaker, but some of the things he touched upon were incredibly interesting. Things mentioned were online etiquette (ie everyone calling everyone else a faggot on YouTube). Crucially, he mentioned the difference between online versus offline networks, and the fluidity within groups of peers.

Another thing touched upon was surrendering control, with regards to things like Secret Santas with online networks, where the gift you receive is entirely up to the person who’s sending it and getting lost in the real world, so that you have to approach new people. Offline networks tend to be very stagnant, with new people coming together only at key moments in a persons life (school, jobs, etc). Getting lost and being forced to interact with people is a good (if sometimes scary) way of getting to meet new people, if only very casually.

Queues were mentioned as a way of setting up temporal networks, with people often speaking to one another, but never going any further than that and forming any real form of bond. Something I found amusing that was mentioned was an experiment by halfmachine who put LED signs on the male and female toilets and frequently switched the sign, so that both men and women entered the same toilets (normal occurrence at BangFace) which created awkward social situations resulting in people interacting more with one another.

Related Links: Techno Goggles | Rattle Central

More to come later.