Another month came already since the last Dorkbot in May. A day before Canada Day long weekend, June Dorkbot had 12 people in presence.

We had 3 speakers: Shannon Hoover, Robyn Moody and me.

Shannon talked about his experience at the Bay Area Maker Faire held on May 21st & 22nd and discussed the possibility to have Mini Maker Faire Calgary with an example of Mini Maker Faire Vancouver back on June 25th & 26th.

Robyn presented his past & recent artwork, starting from his performance piece; Public Opinion (2002) to his latest installation; Butterflies (2010).

Butterfly 1: On the origin of species from Robyn Moody on Vimeo.

I presented my artwork: Filled II, Symforest and Kehai as a process for my practice of body-responsive installation. Especially, the current interest with GSR sensor that originated in traditional lie detector.

Untitled from shiori saito on Vimeo.

I really enjoyed the Dorkbot event held at EMMEDIA in May, and I can’t believe it’s been another month for next Dorkbot.

Now what’s exciting is that I got an opportunity to present for June Dorkbot! :)
That makes me very excited and nervous at the same time. I am looking forward presenting my practice and past artwork.

Many thanks to Dorkbot Calgary and EMMEDIA for giving me this great opportunity.

What: Dorkbot Lecture Series
Where: EMMEDIA #203
, 351 – 11 Ave. SW.
When: June 30th (Thursday) 7pm

Presenters

Sharon Stevens

http://www.essense.ca/

Sharon Stevens is an award winning activist, an award winning video artist, and a community collaborator.

She has been an independent video producer since 1989 and is committed to production values that include collective process and a feminist analysis. She has made a dozen collaborative and solo videos in as many years, and has received two Alberta Motion Picture Industry (AMPIA) nominations, winning one in 1996 for her documentary, Doodlebugs: the Video. Sharon’s work has been broadcast on WTN and screened at various festivals across Canada and was included in the 1998 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Sharon has volunteered for artist-run organizations in Calgary including herland feminist film festival and co-founder for herland’s InCamera Film/Video Production Workshop. Currently she is on the Folk Music Festival Board, a board member for AMAAS and has served on two Steering Committees for the Calgary Arts Development Authority. Sharon was recently awarded the William Irvine Justice Award to recognize social and/or environmental justice work by a person or group in the city of Calgary.

She has integrated art, activism, feminism, and social justice into her life, and still has fun.

Shiori Saito

http://shiorisaito.com

Born and raised in Japan, Shiori Saito is a Calgary-based new media artist and researcher. Shiori graduated from the Media Arts and Digital Technologies program at the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2009.

Her work explores emotional narrative and interactivity through digital technologies such as video and bio-sensors. This exploration often blurs the lines between “body and space” to create a intimate human experience.

Shannon Hoover

Shannon Hoover is involved with Endeavor Arts http://endeavorarts.com/exhibitions.html. He will be talking about his experience at the Bay Area Maker Faire.

Many thanks to EMMEDIA for donating our space this month.

I know Apple introduced OS Lion. But I want Munchkin.

Dorkbot is a loose organization of people doing strange things with electricity and nurtures a local electronic arts community and encourages emerging and established artists to present new works for informal peer review. I think the meeting is going once in two months so far.

I started following their events since the last meeting in March. It’s a nice peer reviewing community that gives me inspirations from others’ electronics projects.

When: Tuesday May 24th 7 pm
Where: EMMEDIA

Presenters:

Dana Schloss and Katherine Ziff

Dana likes making exhibits that people like playing in.  She came to Calgary to develop exhibits(with the help of Calgary’s helpful population) as part of the team at the New Science Centre. Before arriving in Canada she worked as a designer, prototyper and fabricator in Childrens Museums and Science Centers in Philadelphia and New York.  Dana is dedicated to using maker-based models for developing museum exhibits that are fun, relevant and hopefully meaningful.  She would also very much like it if you came to Dorkbot to try some of the exhibits we’ve been working on.

Katherine makes exhibits that remind you why it’s so great to be curious. She is part of the team developing exhibits for the new science centre. Before that, she developed exhibits and programs for children’s museum and science centres across the United States.

Here’s our New Science Centre blog. Check out what we’re up to.

Lon Parker

Lon will be talking about Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

Garrett Baumgartner

I’m a new media artist and an all-round creative guy residing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Originally from a small town called Nipawin located in northern Saskatchewan, I moved to Calgary to attain my BFA in the Media Arts + Digital Technologies program at the Alberta College of Art + Design (ACAD). Currently I am donating my skills as a Researcher in Residence and as a Technical Producer to the Creative Environment for Emerging Electronic Culture (CE3C – pronounced “seek”) at ACAD.

My expertise and interests stretches across several areas of digital media creation — from website development, video art and animation; to electronic textiles, photography and interactive installations. As a new media artist, I enjoy exploring and pushing the bounds of technology as a means to create memorable and enjoyable human experiences. I am always open to new challenges and I look forward contributing to projects and organizations that share a sense of creative discovery.

When I am not busy working on projects I can be found reading the latest current events stories, playing a few songs on my guitar, or spending quality time with my girlfriend, Shiori, and my cat, Tabi.

Garrett is online at http://gogogarrett.com/

So excited for the meeting on 24th! :)

For more details from here.

This is my 1st post since I renewed my website! :)
I’m putting more contents shortly…

It’s getting more like Spring/Summer in Calgary, but I’ve been missing cherry blossoms and ume trees for years ever since I moved to here. Good thing that I came back to home in Japan in early March to see the early-bird ume trees.

The 2nd week of C4A workshop kicked off!
Our participants are developing their visualization and interactive sound interface projects from last week even further.

Last week ended and this week started with multitouch projects starting to appear and happen. For example, Gerry and Garrett were testing their touchscreen projects today and Greg was testing his touch interface for his sound performance last Friday.

See more images & video from here

I was interviewed & covered in the Calgary Journal on mediaFRESH 2010 awards finalist under a new category in the awards for best hardware or software innovation.

Ninth annual Media Fresh Awards to recognize success and diversity in digital media industry by Marina Giannitsos on Calgary Journal.

From March 23 to 26, 2010, as a part of 2010 Reel Artists Film Festival Calgary, I was attending and organizing Live Cinema Workshop with Mia Makela held @ CE3C, Alberta College of Art and Design.

Under the mentorship of Berlin-based digital artist, Mia Makela, 11 participants joined and presented live performance based on a graphic programming environment for interactive control over digital media, called Isadora that Mia was teaching us in this workshop.

This 4-day workshop was very intensive (learning the software and making a piece from scratch in 3 days!), but I learned a lot of fun things about Isadora and live cinema. Although I’ve had never done performance before so it was a big challenge (I was really, really nervous), this live, performative, “actually happening” and non-linear narrative inspired me a lot, making me want to do something like this again.

The participants consisted of hybrid of current students and alumni from different departments in ACAD, which made me so happy for having an event that unties artists from diverse disciplines (sculpture, drawing, photography, film, animation, web, interactivity and etcetera etcetera etcetera!).

My performance piece: DEEP

I made a piece that explores my own emotional memories with night-time landscape in conjunction with a GSR-sensor-embedded gloves so that I can generate sound while I’m touching my face, hair and arms. However, due to a silly technical glitch (I couldn’t get sensors working while I connected my computer to a projector even though they work perfectly on my computer without being connected to the projector….), I couldn’t use the gloves…

I also should’ve got more visuals (it was kind of repetitive), but it was a good place to begin with.
I definitely want to refine this in the future with working sensors!