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Workshop Day at the 2018 Gray Area Festival [SOLD OUT]

On Sunday July 29th, the final day of the Gray Area Festival, join us for a selection of Creative Code workshops taught by eight talented instructors, recognized for actively shaping their fields and practices. We invite you for a rewarding day of hands-on learning for a pass of only $100. Workshop passes not included in Festival Passes.
Workshop Logistics

Four workshops will be held during Session 1 (11am-2pm) and four workshops will be held during Session 2 (3pm-6pm), take one from each set for 6-hours of learning!

Session 1: 11am - 2pm

Stitching Sound
with Gabe Duggan

Stitching Sound builds from ancient traditions in fiber work (weaving, knitting, and other off-loom processes) to explore the roles tension and media play in balanced installations, spatially, aurally.

We will work together to construct an installation with strand and planar elements, particularly metal wire and sheets, to inhabit and visually amplify a space.
We will then materialize the potential energy within the installation through sound and interaction by applying contact microphones to these newly arranged surfaces.

Scan to sculpt: 3D Laser Scanning, File Repair and 3D printing for Artists
with Sophie Kahn

This workshop will provide a crash course in 3D scanning, design and printing. Students will create their own scans with a 3D laser scanner, and then learn how to sculpt, repair, manipulate and output their scan files as 3D printed artworks. The workshop will cover basic 3D modeling and file repair, along with tools for using 3D scanning and printing 'against the grain' to yield results that are experimental and unexpected. It will also introduce students to ways in which 3D scanning and printing can be integrated into the flow of their own art practices.

Processing Oscilloscopes
with Ted Davis

Using his recently released XYscope Processing library, media artist Ted Davis will share beginner-friendly creative coding strategies for audio/video synthesis by drawing vector graphics on an analog oscilloscope – a conversion of shape paths into sound.

Drawing vector graphics with sound: after a creative coding warm-up in Processing, participants will learn their way around XYscope, a recently released Processing library that allows users to draw vector graphics on an analog oscilloscope – a lab device for displaying and analyzing the waveform of electronic signals. You will then learn how to program vector graphics and then how to convert their shape paths into sound. Fed into a 2-channel oscilloscope in XY-mode (there will be at least one device for participants to play with) the audio signals will reveal your vector graphics in glowing glory. By experimenting with a variety of generative visuals and their corresponding sound oscillations, participants will understand the fundamentals of audio/video synthesis and explore the tight relationship between what we see and hear.

Session 2: 3pm - 6pm

Create a Wireless Touch Capacitive OSC controller for Music and Visuals
with Mark Hellar

This class will combine code with craft to create a touch capacitive wireless interface to control audio and video software. At the core we will learn about the powerful and cheap ESP32 micro-controller which comes packed with feature like bluetooth, wireless and touch capacitive pins.

We will combine this with conductive pain on a laser cut template to make an control interface that communicates via the Open Sound Control(OSC) Protocol. In addition to physical materials students will be walked though code sample to allow them to control audio and visuals. Students will come away with the undestanding of how to customize the hardware and software to make it there own. This workshop has a $33 materials fee per student.

Intro to Biomaterials for Design
with Annelie Koller

Join architect and biohacker, Annelie Koller, as she aims to demystify the brave new world of biodesign with a workshop using living organisms to create new design materials. She will introduce you to some DIY techniques to grow your own biomaterials and explore biological systems as a valuable tool in design thinking.

This workshop will use organisms such as bacteria, yeast and mushroom mycelium to create a range of materials from cellulose "leather" to mycelium building materials. These tools can be used for prototyping and help expand the participants thinking on how this may be applied in a new direction of design, and ultimately change the way we make consumer products. This new way of manufacturing and materials will soon disrupt the resource-depleting methods we currently use.

Participants will leave the understanding of how the building blocks of life that can be used in design and protocols that they can safely use at home to experiment and explore further. Be prepared to get your hands dirty and your organisms clean. This workshop will have a $15 materials fee per student.

Digital Synesthesia: Creating Visual Music with Max 7
with Taurin Barrera

This workshop will focus on creating artful connections between audio and visual data using Cycling 74’s Max 7. During this session, we will build an audiovisual application that processes incoming audio data to influence generative 3D graphics. We’ll learn how to build an audiovisual world of reactive 3D shapes in Jitter with OpenGL, and make it shine with interactive shaders and custom visual effects. Finally, we’ll look at live performance strategies and ways to optimize creative expression in Max/MSP/Jitter and Max for Live. This session will be a practical introduction to Jitter, with a focus on 3D graphics, meant for musicians, VJs, and audiovisual artists.

Instructors

Gabe Duggan

"Gabrielle Duggan (b. Buffalo, NY) combines techniques of traditional fiber work with disparate materials and contexts to explore physical and social tension.

Building from an education in Fine Arts and Fashion (SUNY Buffalo, FIT) and Fibers and Surface Design (NCSU, Master of Art and Design), Duggan's work has been supported by the NC Arts Council (RAPG), Art on the Atlanta Beltline (GA), Artspace PopUp (NC), and exhibitions at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Flanders, and Lump (NC), and Garis & Hahn (New York, NY by AH Arts).

Duggan has been an Artist in Residence at the Musk Ox Farm (AK), IndieGrits (SC), Governors Island Art Fair (NY), and Artspace (NC); a Knight Foundation Emerging Artist at Ponyride (MI); a Fellow at Salem Art Works (NY); and recently an R.R. Dunn Artist in Residence at Adrian Smith's laboratory in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Duggan has taught Textiles at Georgia State University and North Carolina State University, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Texas."

Sophie Kahn

"Sophie Kahn is a Brooklyn-​based Australian digital artist. Her videos, prints and 3D printed sculptures explore the collision of new imaging technologies with the unstable human body.

Sophie studied at Goldsmiths College, London, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited her artwork in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul and Beijing. Sophie has taught in the Department of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute, and in the Interdiscplinary Arts & Media program at Columbia College, Chicago. Her work has been featured in numerous festivals including Zero1 Biennale, Transmediale, and the Japan Media Arts festival. Sophie is a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts Digital and Electronic Arts Fellow.

Ted Davis

Ted Davis (*1983) is an American media artist and designer based in Basel, Switzerland, where he's an interaction design lecturer within the Visual Communication Institute at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW. His own work and teachings focus on design and image making via programming new and newer media, along with embracing the error and glitch while questioning the ideal and mimetic conditions digital media is asked to encompass.

Annelie Koller

Through the lens of biology, technology, and human ecology, Annelie Koller seeks to develop a new language of design for a better future. She is currently an Associate Director of Experience design at Digitas. She spent 3 years at the biotech startup, Modern Meadow, the first company to grow sustainable collagen-based materials in a lab. She is a founding member of the New York-based Lady Tech Guild that aims to empower women in the emerging manufacturing industry. She also co-produced the Biofabricate summit that showcases the current world of biologically grown materials for consumer applications. She holds a part-time lecturing post at the Parsons School of Design and is a past resident of the art and technology foundation, Eyebeam. She graduated with an M.Arch degree from the University of Pretoria, South Africa and an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons, New York.

Taurin Barrera

Taurin Barrera is an American electronic musician and new media artist whose work explores the interactive connections between technology and perception. Barrera combines computer vision, noise and chance, and electroacoustic composition techniques to program audio-visual instruments and environments. Barrera uses emerging technologies to augment our sensory experiences of sound and visual art, he composes sounds and music you can see, and images you can hear. My research interests include: Algorithmic composition, creative computer languages, interactivity/HCI, machine learning, music information retrieval, networked performance, music technology, physical computing, noise, analog synthesis, DIY, molecular gastronomy.