The pattern matrix is a tangible weavecoding system for exploring the connections between code and weave. Developed as part of the AHRC funded weavecoding project and Future Thinking for Social Living, it was built as a collaboration between Makernow and FoAM Kernow (now Then Try This), developed during an arts residency at Miners Court extra care housing scheme in Redruth, Cornwall.
What happens when we apply a five-thousand-year-long view of technology to programming? What are the parallels between investigations into weaving as thought and livecoding performance? Both represent new ways of approaching human activities otherwise reduced to purely "utilitarian" roles, but which are central in all our lives. Is weaving - perhaps the first digital artform humans engaged in - actually itself a computational process?
Symbai is a project in collaboration with Dr Shakti Lamba who studies the evolution of sociality and culture in humans. She collects detailed networks of knowledge and prestige in villages of different cultural backgrounds in rural India. Symbai is a solar powered Raspberry Pi/Android anthropological research tool allowing Shakti and her field assistants to work collaboratively in areas with no power or internet connectivity.
Egglab is an online computer game in which players search for hidden eggs against different backgrounds to help scientists make new discoveries concerning camouflage and its evolution. The game has been featured in The Economist, The Guardian and Popular Science and has been played by over 40,000 people.
We have developed a free software programming environment and set of teaching projects based on Raspberry Pi and its freely available version of Minecraft. This is used as part of an initiative to provide short programming courses and taster days for young people in Cornwall.
How do butterfly wing patterns evolve? The Heliconius Butterfly Wing Pattern Evolver is a game where you take the role of a hungry bird and drive the evolution of an edible species to mimic the patterns of a toxic species. The game is based on genetic models used by the researchers at Cambridge University and was commisioned for use at the 2014 Royal Society Summer Exhibition in …
A behavioural research tool for use in remote areas lacking reliable internet connectivity or power. Developed for the Banded Mongoose Research Project at Exeter University for use in their field site in Uganda, Mongoose 2000 uses a Raspberry Pi to synchronise behavioral observation data across multiple Android tablets used for daily recording of mongoose behaviour.
Citizen science games and online experiments for Project Nightjar, one of the Sensory Ecology Group’s studies, based at the University of Exeter (Cornwall Campus), in collaboration with the Behavioural Ecology Group at the University of Cambridge. The project aims to increase our understanding of camouflage in the wild and its relationship with survival. To do this we study the camouflage of ground nesting birds, and their eggs and chicks.
A sustainable agriculture project designed to help farmers make the most of their manure.
An artistic, musical and technological research initiative founded by Kaffe Matthews and Dave Griffiths and joined by many bicrophonic artists exploring the conjunction of sound, cities and bikes. Using GPS technology and small linux powered BeagleBoards and Raspberry Pis, the Bicrophonic Research Institute produces sonic bike installations across the world. See the main site for this project here for up to date information and latest performances.