in honor of Earth Day, Lichenia is a web-based game that sounds like sort of a post-climate collapse Sim City. it’s free to play and sounds like an interesting experience:
Playing Lichenia is all about trial and error, but that’s because Pedercini wanted there to be an unclear relationship between what you were doing and the effects you had on the world. “I wanted the player to observe the dynamics and not interpret the visuals in the most immediate and normative way,” he writes in the release notes, and this lack of immediate interpretation is helped by the use of Everst Pipkin’s Mushy tileset, which was produced by training a neural network on isometric art.
you can play it online here and can read more about the project in this article on Waypoint.
resource roundup!
Jean Rintoul’s Spectra open source biomedical imaging kit is now live on CrowdSupply! I got to demo it back in January and have been waiting for this launch! it’s safe and easy to use, and has some wild implications for a creative hacker. what kind of art could you make from imaging your own lungs? everyone and their grandmother is making VR art, but this is the real fringe of hackable technology. check it out and consider backing the project to receive a unit of your own!
here’s a great read on knitting technology. yep! Connie Huffa of Fabdesigns Inc. speaks about using knit-tech engineering to eliminate waste, improve recyclability, and bring the industry back to sustainability while still making profitable products.
here’s a cool interview with Rachel Uwa of School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe. I really admire her work and I enjoyed this peek into her background and process. you can learn more about their 2019 programs here.
h/t to Reed Spool for this hypnotic article on animating URLs with Javascript and emojis. I didn’t know this was a thing I needed but now I can’t imagine life without it.
and, a classic- I can never drift too far from JavaScript array methods. here’s a nice rundown on three pretty useful methods for getting what you need from an array.
opportunities!
POWRPLNT is seeking volunteers! help them support access to creative tools and technology in Brooklyn by helping in the lab or leading events. email them at volunteer@powrplnt.org to get started.
from March 18-22, 2020, the third edition of festival DIGITAL SPRING will take place in Salzburg, Germany. this year’s theme is STAND BY. there’s an open call for non-commercial media arts projects as well as a four-week residency from the end of February through the end of the festival. the deadline is June 30, 2019 so get on it if this sounds up your alley! more details here.
submissions are open for Write/Speak/Code 2019! they are looking for speakers from all marginalized gender backgrounds to share their experience, skills, and life story with our community. this year’s conference will be in San Francisco, and selected speakers will receive a ticket to the conference, an honorarium, and need-based travel and lodging. you can submit a proposal here. and if you’re feeling nervous about submitting a proposal, here’s a great article on how to get started.
📅 upcoming events!
Tuesday April 23! Supplyframe / Hackaday! San Francisco, CA, USA: Hardware Developers Didactic Galactic is back with Internetz For Your Next Project! this month features talks by Jonathan Beri and Patrick Franken, as well as demos, community announcements, and socializing. if you’re in the Bay Area, this is a rad community worth checking out! RSVP on Meetup.
Friday April 26! Pioneer Books! Brooklyn, NY, USA: what can cybernetics, the science of communications and automatic control systems in machines and living things, teach us about the ways we shape and are shaped by sex? this event hosted by Melanie Hoff sounds rad:
By delving into topics like sexual reproduction and the ways sex become gender, we will explore how social regulatory systems in technological platforms that produce social pressure and govern behavior. Through discussing examples from art, contemporary media, and hands on exercises, we will tease out social patterns and norms that emerge over time, through bodies, to form culture.
you can RSVP here.
Friday May 10! Eyebeam! Brooklyn, NY, USA: “Instead of focusing on compliance and doing the minimum, what if we approach access creatively and generously, centering disability culture?” asks Eyebeam resident Shannon Finnegan. Finnegan, along with Michael Mandiberg, hosts a workshop on Disability Artistry: Alt-Text as Poetry at Eyebeam next month. you can read more about her practice here, and you can RSVP for this free (and surely amazing) workshop on bringing artistry into accessibility here.
just for lulz!
here’s a lil game based around the work of textile artist and teacher Anni Albers. it’s inspired by this oral history interview with the artist herself!
*~housekeeping~*
as always, submit to the open artist call if you have anything in the works that you are excited about! I swear I’m actually going to read through them and start pinging people (lol). and if you have an event or opportunity to promote (anywhere), please send me all the details. the next newsletter will cover the week of April 29 to May 5, but I’m happy to promote events further in the future as well and keep them on the calendar.
we also now have a Discord channel! right now it’s just a few of us, but feel free to drop in and share a gif. I’m starting to experiment with new tools for building community and moving off of Facebook, and this is just one attempt! if you have recommendations for other tools and platforms that you enjoy, please let me know.
