Robin Price's "Journey Through a Burning Brain"


The video above documents Robin Price's "Journey Through a Burning Brain" installation, as shown at the TWO thousand + NINE symposium held in SARC last week. The simple exterior appearance of an old TV and oversized remote control hides a complex two-laptop system that harvests YouTube video's based around a keyword, before segmenting the videos and rearranging them with a Euclidean rhythm generator, finally spitting out the visuals through a Rutt Etra video synth. Using the remote, you can select different videos which in turn influences which videos are being downloaded in real-time during the installation. For more info visit the original post by Robin.

video of first BeatBearing MAKE project



This is the first video I've seen of a completed MAKEzine BeatBearing. Many thanks to 'awolfe63' for putting this up. Another BeatBearing build is being documented in this blog: http://jsavaglio.wordpress.com/.If anyone has any other BeatBearing videos (including unfinished projects) please send me the link!
Also, if anyone is looking for tips, or has some of their own to share, then please have a look in the forum: www.beatbearing.co.uk/make.html

Calling all Makers!



The MAKE magazine article showing how to build your own BeatBearing is now out digitally and on the news racks. You can have a look at a digital preview here. Here's the blurb:

"MAKE Volume 17 goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene, makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects will include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine, an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts, a "Florentine Flask" siphon coffee brewer, and a tea cup-powered Stirling Engine. The section will also cover watchmaking, letterpress, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th century technologies."
If you or anyone you know ends up making a BeatBearing it would be great to see some photos of the results. I'm trying to gather together as many examples as possible to use as design cases for my PhD thesis. This is a chance for your project to immortalised and documented in the same thesis as the original BeatBearing, so please get in contact with me at: pete [at] petecube [dot] com.
An alternate method is to add your project to the relevant section of the BeatBearing forum. This forum may also be useful for finding tips and revisions to the design. Please post in the forum first before directly emailing me with questions, as this will benefit all other makers with the same problem!

Radio Interviews

A couple of new radio interviews with me talking about the BeatBearing:

  1. "Morning Ireland" on RTE. This interview also includes my PhD supervisor Sile O'Modhrain and SARC colleague Mark McKeague. Mark talks about his Twitter radio project - I'll include the video below. Thanks to Eimear Lowe for doing the interview. You can download/listen to the interview here: [mp3] or [stream]
  2. "Phantom Daily" on Dublin's Phantom 105.2 fm. In this interview I get to waffle on about the Tenori-on, acid house and free jazz amongst other things BeatBearing related. Thanks to Róisín O'Dea and Simon Maher for the interview. You can listen/download the interview from here: [mp3]

p.s. More info on Mark's Twitter Radio in this BBC story


www.beatbearing.co.uk


Have set up a project site for the BeatBearing:

www.beatbearing.co.uk

The main feature is a forum for sharing tips on making your own BeatBearing. The aim is to add more content over the next month including links to academic papers, similar projects, and hopefully details of other peoples BeatBearing projects now that MAKEzine vol.17 is out!


Physical Sketching Slides


I've given this talk a few times now. It started with an introduction to physical sketching for a workshop on stylistic interaction at the Tweak festival in Limerick, and then has been modified slightly for presentation to MA students in SARC. This is the most recent version, and contains a short exercise at the end for using physical sketching in the explorative design stage of a novel musical instrument.

The talk is based upon Bill Buxton's book "Sketching User Experiences".

The BeatBearing is used as a design example, to help illustrate the difference between sketching and prototyping in the design process.


David Merrill's Siftables

Spotted David Merrill's Siftables project in the New Scientist yesterday, then came across this talk he gave at TED. I like the idea of using the Siftables as a music controller/instrument, but I think too much functionality is being packed into each device. Perhaps the music-Siftables will get really interesting when each block is smaller and cheaper, so that you could use a few hundred of them at the same time.
Below is a video of just the music application:
Siftables Music Sequencer from Jeevan Kalanithi on Vimeo.


Gus' BeatBearing Interview



Here's the interview of me talking about the BeatBearing project recorded, directed, and edited by Gus Sutherland. The interview was made as coursework for Gus' film MA at Queens University Belfast. The interview was made just before Christmas, and preceded (and perhaps indirectly triggered) the recent publicity of the BeatBearing.

Kugeliger Klangcomputer


I had a telephone interview last week with Deutschlandfunk, a German national radio station, for their science and technology program. There is an accompanying online article, and there is also an mp3 of the interview. Google translate comes in handy for a translated version of the article.
I like the translation of BeatBearing to "Kugeliger Klangcomputer" or "spherical sound-computer". It's definitely got a good onomatopoeic ring to it.
Thanks goes to Frank Groteluschen for the interview.

BeatBearing on BBC newsline

The BeatBearing appeared on BBC newsline (Northern Ireland) on Tuesday. The online article contains a streamable clip of the extended feature, or you can download it from here:
Download small version - 6MB (same video as above)
Download large version - 40MB


Thanks to Chris Page (shown above) for organising, filming and editing the interview!

BeatBearing on BBC newsline at 6:30 tonight


The BeatBearing (and myself) will be on BBC Newsline Northern Ireland tonight at 6:30pm. You can watch the full extended interview here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7852209.stm
And the online article is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7784669.stm

BeatBearing in the Times Online


An article on the BeatBearing is in the Times Online. Thanks to David Sharrock for the interview, and Alan Lewis for the photos (which I think are only going to appear in the print version, which should be out in the next couple of days). You can view the article here:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5574138.ece