Rebuilding...

On WAMC's The Roundtable · Monday August 16, 2010

Marianne and I were interviewed live from the Solid Sound Festival at MASS MoCA on Friday by Joe Donahue, Alan Chartock and Sarah LaDuke on WAMC‘s The Roundtable about our work at Greylock Arts, Ephraim & Sadie Hatfield, Not For Sale, and DownStreet Art. Listen to us here.

› Matt

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Not For Sale Previewed In North Adams · Friday June 25, 2010

Marianne and I were on hand last night to preview Not For Sale, the upcoming interactive window installation by the mysterious Ephraim & Sadie Hatfield. The work is being produced by Greylock Arts, and is part of the summer-long city-wide art fair in North Adams, Massachusetts that is DownStreet Art. Not For Sale will allow participants to call in with their mobile phone to activate various objects within the space. Follow the Hatfields on Facebook, Twitter, or their very own blog as they work to create Not For Sale. The installation opens July 29 from 6 – 9pm at 65 Main Street in North Adams, and will be on display until October 31.

› Matt

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Android, Augmented Reality, Eclipse, & Dirty Hands at ITP Camp · Tuesday June 22, 2010

Monday I attended Hello Android by Shawn Van Every. I had attended Shawn’s Smartphone Studio earlier, where we played with PhoneGap and Appcelerator, but this session was devoted to getting started with the actual Android SDK. Shawn helped us get situated in Eclipse with all the Android tools, and then guided us through making our first “Hello Android” app. Above Shawn demonstrates the Android SDK.

With so many excellent camp sessions, it’s hard to pick a favorite, but Craig Kapp’s on Augmented Reality is at the top of my list for the moment. Augmented Reality is really magical stuff. It’s a live view of the physical world whose elements are augmented by virtual imagery. The work that Craig does with AR is fascinating. And the way he explains it all is just perfect. For the time being, this is the number one reason to still be involved in ActionScript development.

And I attended another couple of great sessions today. Matt Parker lead a session called Total Eclipse in which he got everyone up to speed on using the Eclipse IDE for Java development. I also attended Peter Menderson’s Get Your Hands Dirty! where he illustrated mold making with two-part rubber and plastic compounds as well as plaster. We also made a silicone rubber mold and cast with polyurethane plastic and foam.

› Matt

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Public Art & Conversation Starters at ITP Camp · Sunday June 20, 2010

Sunday I attended Public Art Overview by another one of my favorite people, Jody Culkin. I work with Jody at BMCC where I adjunct, and she is an Associate Professor. Jody started by showing some examples of some of her favorite public art works, which, and I didn’t pay her for this, included Lumens, a work of Ven Voisey, Sean Riley, and myself from 2008. Jody also covered many of the New York based organizations which fund public art projects, discussed their funding criteria, and showed some of their recently funded projects.

Then I taught my second ITP Camp session, Conversation Starters for Disparate Lovers, in which I covered the many components needed to get an Arduino micro-controller talking with Flash and vice versa. I also introduced Guiseppe, a freeware Graphical Serial / Socket Proxy Problem Eliminator designed specifically to facilitate communication between software developed with Flash and physical computing projects designed with the Arduino. I developed what would later become Guiseppe while working on Lumens, when I needed a better tool for connecting Flash and Arduino than what was available at the time. It’s still pretty basic, but it’s a lot easier to use than the alternatives. Try it out and let me know what you think.

› Matt

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