Niftymitter

Scottish born Roy Shearer is the face behind this work.

Niftymitter is a short range FM transmitter based on the open source hardware design by Tetsuo Kogawa, housed within a cardboard body, with a variety of options for hacking. The transmitter is tiny and handy for small scale radio broadcasts, building a distributed PA system for performances, linking your personal audio player to your car radio, or for general audio experimentation.

Be a tester!

In December 2009 Roy will be sending out a hacking kit to 6 people and you could be one of them! The kit will contain the stable build of Niftymitter v0.2x and a whole host of bits and bobs to add on to it to adapt its function and behaviour. You don’t have to have any technical knowledge or interest to take part, merely some curiosity for Niftymitter or for broadcasting sound wirelessly. I would prefer it if you don’t know me personally so, will give preference to those living farther away, but in the UK. If you are interested, email me at info(at)openthing(dot)org with some info about yourself.


Roy is one of 3 awardees of the 2009 Crafts Creative Development bursary at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, Scotland in partnership with the Scottish Arts Council. The purpose of the bursaries is to support individuals to create new work through awards of up to £10,000. The work created through the bursary scheme will be part of an exhibition at the 2010 Craft Festival Scotland organised by the Past, Present and Future Craft Practice research team.

Craft Scotland's 'C' Word Campaign

With Emma Walker at the helm, Craft Scotland have a refreshing new marketing strategy and are taking the sector straight to the heart of public life. This is no more evident than their new C word campaign which is set to promote Scotland’s craft industries as innovative and desirable. Hip Hip Hooray to that!

With the launch of a dedicated website supporting the campaign, a cinema commercial - launching in Manchester, London and Minneapolis USA - and a series of interviews with the Times newspaper, Scottish Craft has a genuine future focus and more than just a twist of va va voom!

To find out more about this campaign the Times newspaper have interviewed Emma and are profiling a range of makers engaged in Scottish Craft, with the furniture maker Joachim King, opening this new conversation. You can also follow Craft Scotland on Twitter

Quilts: hidden histories, untold stories

Sue Prichard's blogging (in support of the forthcoming exhibition 'Quilts: hidden histories, untold stories' at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) is one of the most consistently enjoyable reads on the web in terms of craft. With an eloquent turn of phrase and a boundless passion for her subject, Sue delivers entertaining, intelligent and refreshingly modern conversation on the craft of quilt making.


Quilts 1750-2010: hidden histories, untold stories
V&A, London
March - July 2010

Chicks on Speed

In preparation for our Craft Festival next year (with its emphasis on future practice), Frances Stevenson, Laura Simpson and I had a great afternoon in conversation with Alex and Melissa from 'Chicks on Speed'.

Taken from last.fm ...
Chicks on Speed are a female electroclash band, born when Alex and Melissa met at the Munich Art Academy in 1997. Chicks on Speed’s core members are Melissa Logan (Upstate NY, USA) and Alex Murray-Leslie (Bowral, Australia), who collaborate with amongst others Anat Ben-David (Tel Aviv, Israel), Kathi Glas (Berlin, Germany) and A.L. Steiner (NY, USA).

Around Chicks on Speed there is grouped a large and ever-changing collective of musicians, producers, fashion and graphic artists, designers, film and video makers, and so on. Though usually considered part of such musical genres as electroclash, actually Chicks on Speed started as a multidisciplinary art group, who applied punk-inspired DIY ethic to performance art, collage graphics and home-made fashion (they have created their own stage costumes with cheap and recycled material such as plastic bags and gaffa tape, for example).



For a look at their work, go have a look at the Viva La Craft exhibition which was held in Melbourne Australia, March-April 2009. Brilliant!

And in person, come and see it in Dundee, Scotland next summer!

Future Craft

One of the key things we do as part our research is engage in conversation with people from a range of disciplines, in an attempt to develop knowledge and understanding of craft in terms of first principles.

We'd like to extend this conversation that we've been having with you via our BLOG, and as such invite you to join the debate about Future Craft. This is part of our preparation for a futures dialogue which we are organising with Dr Glenn Adamson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, next summer (10-11 June, 2010).

11 Ways (and counting) to Consider 'Future Craft'

• As a process that unites a range of creative endeavours
• As human intervention within real world scenarios
• As a vehicle for and of cultural, political and social commentary
• As a form of radical innovation
• As a research path concerned with intellectual experimentation
• A discipline that mindfully respects and disrespects tradition
• A methodology that unites the past, present and future perspectives of creative practice
• A philosophy articulating the creation of knowledge through making
• As a space in between established fields of enquiry
• As aesthetic commentary
• As a way to irritate and/or inspire people
  

Plus Some Ways to Consider Contemporary Craftsmanship

• Skill honed to the 'master' level
• A word denoting meticulous attention to detail
• 10 000 hours of dedicated practice
• An act of human labour
• A practical process

Our futures dialogue with the V&A London, comes in the form of a 2-day symposium entitled, 'Prototype: craft in the future tense.'

We'll be in touch soon with more info for debate and discussion, but for now, pls follow the link.

Jerwood Visual Arts

Geoffrey Mann (2009) and Drummond Masterton (2008) are two contemporary makers who exemplify the idea of post-disciplinary practice and over the past two years have been winners of the Jerwood Visual Arts awards.

Both Drummond and Geoffrey were commissioned in 2007 to work with Dr Louise Valentine as part of her Mindful Inquiry research. The results of which will be disseminated in Spring / Summer 2010.

The Jerwood Visual Arts website is home to The Jerwood "In Conversation" series 2008 - one-hour public conversations between two artist /makers /designers/ choreographers /architects as a means of increasing awareness of the shared practice of materials concerns, conceptual rigor and application processes undertaken by artist, makers and designers.

The "in conversation" series explored the connections between practice and the shared values held by the practitioners in these conversations. For example,

Monday 16th June - 6pm till 7.15pm - Cornelia Parker and Ron Arad

Listen now

material ecology

Neri Oxman is an architect and researcher whose work attempts to establish news forms of experimental design and novel processes of material practice at the interface of design, computer science, material engineering and ecology. (taken from her website - www.materialecology.com).

She is currently based at MIT where she is a Presidential Fellow working towards her PhD. Named as one of the 100 most creative people in business by 'Fast Company' (June 2009) she argues that "on the fringes [...] is where disruptive innovation begins".

Handcrafting Computational Media

The work of Maggie Orth and her Electronic Textiles or textile computing devices are worth getting to know a bit better...an MIT PhD graduate, Maggie's work is concerned with active and programmable materials in textile design.

The enjoyment and quality of her craft for me, lies not simply in the experimental manner that she approaches interactive technology, smart materials and the weaver’s loom but the way she considers people and their emotional and sensorial engagement in the experience of electronic textiles. Her work retains a respect for the tradition of textiles while demonstrating responsibility for the future of the discipline, nurturing a dialogue with other knowledge domains while critically prodding alternative technological methods and material cultures.

To listen to Maggie talk about the her PhD work in terms of concept, material and technology visit utube.