NOTES

While processor speeds and the use of computation in our society have increased enormously, it is significant that the materials of electronics construction itself (discrete components soldered on to resin printed circuit boards) has been broadly consistent for well over fifty years.

The Penelope project is concerned with re-evaluating histories of textile technologies with mathematical and scientific thought. The emergence of “wearable electronics”, in particular inspiration from Penelope collaborators and …

An update on the Sonic Kayak project, including a chance to give us some feedback.

Results from our survey - an attempt at developing our environmental data sonification approach to be both enjoyable but also interpretable.

Making an AccessLab event work online. This post covers changes we made to the workshop format, what worked and what didn't, and what we'd do differently next time.

For some time we have been prioritising tools and processes that can be reused for different purposes in times where infrastructure is failing. Part of our COVID-19 response to the above problems has been to refit a small garden shed with a solar power setup (from our Sonic Kayak workshops) so we can run one of our CNC machines more or less unsupervised*, slowly churning out small parts for …

Notes on our new turbidity and air quality sensor designs for the Sonic Kayak project, to allow fine scale mapping of above and below water pollution.

We're redesigning Viruscraft for a new project on virus and host co-evolution with Dr. Ben Ashby at the University of Bath. This post explores the options we're considering and why.

Austin Houldsworth's words, images and video from his 2019 Eden Project/FoAM Invisible Worlds residency - the Intergalactic Space Agency.

Following our workshop with visually impaired people at Trevassack we were left with mixed feelings, on the one hand the participants were very happy and seemed inspired by the day - but on the other hand we experienced plenty of technical difficulties with the new GPS system, and we didn't have enough time to really get into sonic mapping.

The important thing was that the participants gave us so much …

As part of our Sonic Kayak project, we have been looking at adding new sensors to the system. These are our notes from our research and prototyping.

Notes from a sound mapping workshop for the Sonic Kayaks, with participants with visual impairments.

After two workshops and the testing day at the Eden Project we took the final version of Viruscraft out to Science in the Square: a big event run by Exeter university with around 3,000 visitors. It was a fantastically rainy day, which meant lots of budding virus builders of all ages took shelter in the big tent in the middle of Falmouth during peak holiday season. The installation turned out …

Last week we ran an AccessLab for anyone interested in climate change or involved with Extinction Rebellion. This is to document how it went and what our next steps could be.

For the last couple of years I've been doing sporadic teaching of electronics and programming for undergraduates and masters students across a couple of courses in my local university. This has taken the form of one on one teaching a day a week in the spring term, in a basement cupboard sized room with a soldering iron and piles of components. Students book up half an hour blocks of time …

The latest version of the Farm Crap App is currently undergoing final testing by agronomists and farmers before a new release in the autumn (let us know if you would like to take part in the beta testing). This version sees a gigantic increase in the amount of different crops and manures it contains, and the vast majority of the RB209 guide is now represented, so it is very satisfying …

One of our biggest (and unfortunately entirely unpaid) research projects is administration. Accounting in particular is interesting from a range of angles, as a kind of cultural probe into the current state of what society considers important - but also as seemingly the single thing that very powerful white men loose lots of sleep over.

Recently the UK Government decided to require all companies to issue their VAT tax …

We are delighted to announce the joint FoAM/Eden Project Invisible Worlds resident for 2019 - Austin Houldsworth. No buyer for your property? Has climate change ruined the housing market in your area? ‘The Intergalactic Estate Agency’ is here to help.

A few pictures from last weekends debut of the Penelopean weaving robots at Algomech festival in Sheffield. After a frantic couple of weeks in mass production, a swarm of 8 robots and a may pole invaded the winter gardens: wove and un-wove braids to the sounds of livecoded beats and ancient Greek poetry.

We were recently asked by one of the UK research councils to write about how we collaborate with university academics to build ‘impact’ into research projects, partly to provide inspiration for the researchers but also to address some common misconceptions.

This post is a summary of Karin Johansson's MSc placement at FoAM Kernow on the Sonic Kayak project. The Sonic Kayaks are currently being modified for use for people with visual impairments. Karin helped develop and test an evaluation approach that can be used in future to look at whether the Sonic Kayaks offer wellbeing benefits to the paddlers.