MicroMovement: Interacting with Hardware — Gray Area Festival 2025 Workshop
💫 hardware and the body 💫
This workshop will introduce you to the basics of microcontrollers and have you building tools to translate your movement into electronic expression. Have you ever wanted to make something that reacts to you? Want to learn the building blocks for wearable hardware? Students will be introduced to the basics of CircuitPython and learn to program an Adafruit Qt Py, accelerometer, and Bicolor LEDs. We’ll explore hardware in an accessible and approachable way, using these boards to build out a basic interactive piece that you can visualize your movement with.
No prior experience needed, and all materials are provided. Please note that registration closes September 1 so we can order parts in time.
This workshop is part of Gray Area Festival 2025.
Course Logistics
Dates: Sunday, September 14, 2025
Times: 4:00 – 7:00PM PT
Cost: $75
Format
In-Person Workshop at Gray Area
Address
2665 Mission St, San Francisco
Experience Level: Beginner to Intermediate
No coding experience is necessary, but familiarity can be helpful.
Requirements:
Students will need a PC/Mac Laptop with USB-C port or USB-C adapter, modern browser and internet connection.
Please install the MU editor before class (https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-circuitpython/installing-mu-editor)
Additional Information:
• No Refunds or Exchanges.
• View our FAQ here.
• Contact [email protected] with any questions.
Workshop Outline
- Introductions to hardware: What is a microcontroller?
- CircuitPython basics
- Communicating with your microcontroller
- Adding sensors and other peripherals
- Put it all together: movement-reactive light
Gray Area Festival 2025 Workshops
How To Become An Octopus (And Sometimes Squid)
with Miriam Simun
Sunday, September 14 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM
What might we learn by thinking, sensing, and moving like an cephalopod? In this embodied, experimental workshop, artist Miriam Simun invites participants to leave behind the habits of upright human life and explore the world from the perspective of the soft-bodied, many-armed cephalopod. A guided session in collective transformation, adaptation, and sensory experimentation. We train cephalopod sensitivities and capacities through psycho-physical exercises that help us to enact new ways of being with ourselves, with each other, and with and in the world.
Queer & Trans Ecopoetics in Crip Dimensions
with micha cárdenas, Cynthia Ling Lee, and M. Ty
Sunday, September 14 | 12:00 – 3:00 PM
How do we make art during multiple polycrises? This workshop invites participants to think through the intersections of gender, sexuality, ability, and ecology through play and creative interdisciplinary inquiry. Participants will be guided through embodied movement, writing exercises, and will work together to make a one-minute video.
Prosthetic Pixels: Worldbuilding with AI, Style, and Self
with Dalena Tran and Hirad Sab
Sunday, September 14 | 4:00 – 6:00 PM
In this collaborative 2-hour workshop, participants will use Fuser, a creative AI tool for multimodal generation, to design speculative futures through style training (LoRA), image and video generation, and lore co-creation. Participants will form teams and receive a unique world constraint prompt (e.g. “a world where memory is traded as currency” or “where bodies must be upgraded weekly”).
