A year or so ago, I was in a museum in Gothenburg, Sweden. There happened to be an live exhibition of the group projects by Computer Science masters students from the local university. One group of students had rustled together a mobile photo-booth using a Raspberry Pi with camera extension, connected to a simple push button and a tiny wall-mounted sticker printer. There were a number of colourful props available to spice up any self portrait. I still have the crazy sticker that I took somewhere, and it often made me wonder how the Remixer Machine could be wired up in such a manner as to cross that physical-digital divide, outputting stickers, hot off the remix press.
Well, look no further.
Martin Hawksey, of ALT and Google Wizardry fame, will be at Domains19 this week facilitating a fantastical feast of remix, featuring his McFlyify facial recognition GIF generator amongst other things. As well as that, he’s hooked up a mobile booth to print out remixes in mini-sticker form:
Of course, you can jump in and remix your own hoverboard/skatedeck on the new addition to the Remixer Machine, specially added to celebrate Domains19 and all who park their URLs with her.
You can check out what others have remixed already on the Remix Wall, and of course jump in and continue to remix where someone else has left off. And of course, all remixes are available to use under a CC-BY-SA licence.
I’ve been a fan of Reclaim Hosting, since first meeting Jim Groom in Barcelona a few years ago. In fact, it was working with Jim that taught me the power of aesthetic; how a visual can invoke a subconscious emotional response long before you’ve processed it with your conscious mind. Over the last few years I’ve seen the Reclaim team grow, and I’m envious of their adventures, especially as they seem to involve arcade games, Raspberry Pi’s, retro movies and Scooby Doo mashups…
If you haven’t come across Reclaim Hosting, they aren’t really a hosting company – they’re a support company. They’ll help you take back control of your school/college/organisation’s multi-author creative web presence. Ask around – their support is legendary. Visual Thinkery has been hosting its web presence with Reclaim for years.
And so, there’s a new addition to the Remixer Machine: Reclaim your VHS
I’m just back from a few days in Lisbon where I was attending an excellent Creative Commons summit. When I explain Creative Commons (the organisation) to anyone, I usually find myself talking about two different elements of the organisation. Firstly, there’s the policy people, the legalites, the wordies. Then there’s the creatives, the just-makin-for-the-sake-of-it’s, the curious. But somehow a summit of all these folks together works very well, in fact – it’s makes for a very interesting mix indeed.
A remixed Lisbon skyline – Voronoi – by Bryan Mathers – CC-BY-SA
Postage Stamp Remixer Machine
My session at the summit focused on participatory artwork. It’s chief tool being the Fabulous Remixer Machine. I had created a Postage Stamp remix tool, and in the making of it had got quite distracted by paper textures, printing colours and the limitations of cross-browser SVG filters.
Sure enough, people attending the session got into the swing of it, and together we created a patchwork of stamps – or indeed a collection – from their different perspectives.
It being the first time I’d been in Lisbon, I thoroughly enjoyed wandering it’s streets, and in particular was very taken with the cobblestone texture that adorns many of the streets in the old town.
A CC postage stamp remixed in the style of a Lisbon street Voronoi by Bryan Mathers CC-BY-SA
And as I found out, it’s a bit of a boob-jiggler to ride an electric scooter over this sort of terrain – though a whole ton of fun!
An eclectic mix of keynotes
On the first evening of the conference, while we were all still hungry and paying attention, we switched venues to a theatre downtown. The six short keynotes were dynamite – each one very different from the last – gathering up a range of issues and insights. I thoroughly enjoyed it – and it wasn’t long before my ipad was out as my scribbling tried to keep pace with what was being shared.
A real highlight for me was the magnificent “Theft – a history of music” by James Boyle & Jennifer Jenkins – who were simply on fire on the stage with their interplay, cartoon visuals and audio clips. Their work comes in Graphic Novel form (CC licenced download don’t you know!) and is absolutely beautiful. I know my kids will be all over it too…
Even though it was great to catch up with a load of known faces, I come away from the summit with lots of new acquaintances, a bundle of thoughts still brewing in my head and due to meeting some CC folks from Tanzania and Kenya, even managed to revisit the wisdom of some Swahili proverbs. And one of these I will leave you with.
Haraka haraka haina baraka. (Hurry hurry has no blessing)
