For a number of years, linux.conf.au, a week-long convention (held this yr from January 22-26), has held “miniconfs” providing house for tech group area of interest teams to share their innovations and concepts. In 2018, 12 miniconfs have been held on the primary two days of the convention, and the Art + Tech miniconf took the idea to the subsequent stage with a complete day of 11 talks about making artwork with tech, in addition to an artwork exhibition head throughout the convention. This miniconf was organized by blue ribbon award-winning knitter Kris Howard.
Disclaimer: Some of the hyperlinks on this article include mature content material. As Kathy Reid, Linux Australia president, mentioned: “Significant art is often contentious, because it challenges who we are and the notions we hold of ourselves. Our job here is to allow that art to be shown, while creating a safe environment for those who do—and do not—wish to view it.”
Art exhibition
The Art + Tech miniconf was held on Tuesday, the second day of the convention, however rather a lot of the audio system’ work was exhibited throughout the Monday lunch break. This allowed attendees from across the convention to see the paintings on show and drove curiosity within the talks on Tuesday.
The way forward for artwork
The opening discuss, “The future of art,” was introduced by J. Rosenbaum, one of many miniconf artists, who started by saying, “Robots are not our evil overlords, they are our new best friends.” J. shared a showcase of inventive works, starting from the lovable and attention-grabbing to borderline disturbing. Some of the extra consumable examples have been the works from Botnik, the minds behind the just lately viral “Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash.” J’s total discuss is absorbing and worthy of reflection.
If I have been a pixel, what would I do?
In an outline of the complicated world of shaders, Harley Mellifont confirmed off the ability of the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) in his miniconf discuss, “If I were a pixel, what would I do?” He additionally talked about a tutorial on shaders that may “blow your mind.”
On writing machines
In a chat close to and expensive to my coronary heart, Mark Rickerby spoke on writing machines and their historical past, from the 1840s to right this moment’s twitter bot Markov chains. He additionally summarized attention-grabbing points associated to getting machines to compose English in a pure method (which was additionally the subject of a lightning talk at Linux.conf.au 2017 by Roan Kattouw).
Building detailed fractal units for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
In a chat the place you simply had to be there (as a result of it was not recorded as a result of copious quantities of Marvel content material), visible results artist Miles Green shared behind-the-scenes work to create the fractal set design from Ego’s Garden and Ego’s Palace in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. It was a really attention-grabbing take a look at how AnimalLogic created only a small little bit of the background surroundings for a fantastically wealthy film.
The knitting printer
In a chat that I had an more and more onerous time not audibly squee’ing all through, Sarah Spencer shared how she made a network-connected knitting printer, highlighting the All Yarns Are Beautiful and Electo-knit tasks. She has launched a variety of tasks referring to her workflow on her GitHub page, together with octoknit, an interface to add patterns to a Brother 950i knitting machine, and binary-to-image, which takes textual content and outputs it as a picture, permitting you to do issues corresponding to knit your favourite lyrics into a shawl!
Sketching in
In his discuss, Christopher Biggs confirmed how he practices iterative design by actually sketching in hardware. He described a few of his facet tasks and the iterative improvement course of afforded by low-cost 3D printing mock designs, a way he picked up from Naomi Wu.
Lost artist on the earth of expertise
Following a lineup of builders, Karynne Ledger, a chef and artist, confirmed us how she makes use of expertise to augment her artwork. She lamented that it’s not simple for her to choose up sure tech merchandise that her extra technically inclined pals say are “easy.” This resonated with me, as technologists ought to be certain that the issues we create are simply accessible and usable by folks with various ranges of technical aptitude, not solely by folks like us.
Hobbyist lighting tasks
Hacker and maker and generally developer Peter Hardy shared his varied lighting projects, together with his bodily Kerbel Space Program console, with huge crimson buttons and LED shows, and a sound-activated liquor cupboard.
He additionally demonstrated iCircuit, an app that means that you can check circuit diagrams with out the prospect of LEDs “shining very brightly very briefly.”
Crochet the coral reef
In her presumably oversold discuss title “The best talk ever1!!!!! Hyperbolic hyperbole,” Rachel Bunder described her crochet coral reef undertaking and the mathematical complexities of the multi-dimensional artwork that’s wool work.
Balsa
In a chat prefaced with “this is why you don’t need to buy a 3D printer,” Dr. Josh Deprez described how he created his mini Mac, a pc primarily based on Raspberry Pi with a case fabricated from balsa wooden. He additionally spoke on the iterability of balsa, a really light-weight wooden available in craft shops.
Cross-stitching
I rounded out the day with my talk on my cross-stitch generation software. In 2014, throughout my first-ever lightning discuss, I by chance promised that I’d make open supply cross-stitching software program. Four years later, I’ve launched 626, a Python-based HTML generator that does simply that. I additionally launched a QR code chart generator, which takes a string and generates a QR code cross-stitch chart, an thought that folks have been excited to see after I tweeted about it in early January.
Want extra? You can watch talks from the miniconf on Art + Tech’s YouTube playlist.
Linux.conf.au will return January 21-25, 2019, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Details concerning the occasion might be posted all year long on linux.conf.au.
