Northern Bloc - Llandudno - Thursday 29 Jan 2009

On Thursday I attended Shutdown:

The personal computer promises everything faster, better, cheaper. You can even conduct your social life online. But does this shift risk damaging our local economies and communities? What happens when you turn your back on the computer and use technology to build communities in real life instead?

The workshops and seminars explored the uses and implementation of social media technologies and of open methodologies in the area of research and creative practice. The event focused on the practical.

The presenters at the seminar were:

Adrain Bowyer: Wealth without money

Look at your computer setup. Imagine if you hooked up a 3D printer. Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical items. To give you an idea of how robust these items are think of Lego bricks and you`re in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

This talk will be about RepRap - the Replicating Rapid-prototyper. This 3D printer will make items by building them up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you EUR 30,000. And it isn`t even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs will be about EUR 400). That way it`ll be accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Anyone will be able to swap designs for anything to be made on RepRap using the Internet in the same way that music is currently shared. The RepRap machine is being distributed entirely free to everyone using open-source - so, if you have one, you can make another and give it to a friend.

Paul Miller -Why Don’t You? -School of Everything

In the 80s and 90s, the kids TV show `Why Don`t You` was more revolutionary than you might think. Its full title was `Why Don`t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead?` and it was all about the interesting stuff you should do instead of watching telly.

Now there are a whole range of internet services that have a `Why Don`t You ethic`. They`re not interested in creating a service that sucks people in - instead they focus on getting people out doing stuff with other people. In the case of School of Everything that`s about learning new stuff but there are others such as Meetup.com, ThePoint.com, PledgeBank.org, Dopplr.com that are all about helping people organise activity and not about them uploading their brains. This presentation will look at how you design an online service that helps people do things in the real world.

Simon Whitehead - Movement Artist

Simon will talk about the development of his practice - from working as a dance artist in a theatre setting to his current movement work, which often involves basic technologies and technologists. He will discuss several projects which combine the use of basic, often renewable technologies such as solar and wind power, mobile phones, sound and film, with an element of collaboration - working with other artists , the public and animals.

Simon will discuss some of his most productive collaborations in more detail, exploring how his work often involves working closely with technologists, such as long-standing collaborator Barnaby Oliver, who now lives thousands of miles away in Melbourne as well as more commercial relationships which have resulted in projects such as Walking to Work.

Simon will discuss several projects which don`t foreground the use of technology and the factors which influence these decisions. He will be rounding off his presentation with some observations about his experience of making his work and finding and developing an audience for it in his location in rural west Wales.