i'm back at CIA studios for a few weeks. huzzah!

this time on my own self-directed residency, trying to make a good start on an interactive wearable project i feel like i've been on about for ages! in fact, it's the one that i went to UOW to make a start on.

well, just today i feel like i've made a new kind of progress!

last week was about planning and writing applications for other exciting things, but today i spent a chunk of the day getting my head around the process for making works again (conception, research, design, build, test), doing some more codecademy lessons and starting to fuck around with a wii-mote.

process







i wrote about this a while ago and have started to revisit josh noble and his excellent suggestions. especially because at some stage this morning, half way through a drawing, half way through eating, half way through a lesson and surrounded by a stack of pulled-apart boards, i had a moment of 'oh fuck, what do i do now?'.

i know that this residency is about play - it's about giving myself the time to get my head into learning some basic programming, to mess around with circuit boards and to work on some prototypes. it turns out that i've become quite accustomed to producing work, go, go, go, outcome, outcome, outcome that i had forgotten what it was like to just get a bit lost.

and sometimes i freak out when i get lost. (conception, research, design, build, test. sigh)

codecademy



steve berrick (my geek partner-in-crime and general awesomesauce) put me onto this site.

apparently it's Code Year - the year we can all learn to get technical and this site is set up to give week-by-week lessons. Codecademy is one of the initiatives for it.

And it's really amazing! it's exactly for dumb-asses like me.

You get little badges and running scores, things to work towards, step-by-step lessons, hints and a Q&A section that is full of questions. including dumb ones like mine.

var The_Gist

And it's supported by some amazing people, including the ubiquitous online startup VC rad-man Fred Wilson. He's kind of everywhere. I like his quote from the site:




I'm currently getting my head around javascript, which i think is going to stand me in good stead for processing later too.

I'm only at the end of the first week's lessons/projects (I have a FizzBuzz badge, for those playing along at home), and i have a few weeks' worth of catching up to do, but i feel like it's already making a difference.

One of their partners is Girl Develop It, a site which supports more girls programming and developing (which i totally endorse). A fantastic idea, that certainly makes me even more determined to learn shit.
Although, i have to say, the get-together aspect of GDI is not as interesting to me, or exciting as the format that Codecademy have done.*


wiimote and osculator



on the weekend, i went to OK Gallery to see David Egan's show. There is an interactive sculpture in it and i was lucky to find out a bit more about the magic behind it.

I discovered a component that is perfect for what i want (bluetooth enabled, gyro responsive, connected to ableton). for some godforsaken reason, sparkfun have retired the board and it's no longer available!

argh!!

in my lazyweb call for help, the kids at ololo suggested (probably not for the first time) that i look into the wiimote as a sensor.  and that i could use this ace new program call osculator, which graphs the OSC data from the wiimote, which can then be exported, or played. yay! exactly what i needed.





this began an exciting day of shifting my head side to side, watching the axes go up and down. using words like roll, yaw and pitch - seriously (not just to win words with friends).

i also pulled apart an after-market version of the wiimote and will start playing with how to package it using cloth, leather, felt - other things, not plastic.

i feel like i actually made progress today and that i could almost start to build something! yay!




*mostly because I'm a nomad, between time-zones/hemispheres and often i'm not so interested in the meet-up model, but the actually learn shit at the same time model.