Brixton Hill Studios is the great independent performance rehearsal and recording studio complex that’s owned by Stephen Gilchrist. A group of dedicated musicians and engineers operate the centre for the many performers who link up there. They are also founder members of AIRRS, the association of independent rehearsal and recording studios.
We share a big love of Cardiacs and it’s family of firm friends that makes for a comfortable exchange of ideas and enthusiasm for social music spaces and cheerful resourcefulness. So it’s been a pleasure to spend time with them, upgrading to gigabit fibre and plumbing in fast network access throughout the building that links the rooms to the studio and CCTV communications.
The last couple of years tested everyone’s resolve and stamina not least those striving to hold together socially oriented enterprises whilst the cash supply to cover running costs evaporated. Everything got fixed though, studio systems were refurbished and new paths of exploration for media streaming from the spaces were activated thanks to support from Arts Council and all of the team at BXHS.
Regular broadband service in Brixton is abysmal (14/2mb/s ADSL at best) so with the huge 1GB capacity they can now also offer some local business access for those within reach of ethernet (100m) or 5.8ghz radio with line of sight. Neighbours Octagon Studios were first to benefit with 100mb/s dedicated connection and improved distribution to their 3 recording suites. The Windmill Brixton pictured distantly above, is a short hop from the rear of the studios which has also been linked up so that live events from their world famous music venue can now be relayed at full quality to mass market streaming services and BXHS own infrastructure.
If you are in the Brixton Hill area and seeking a fast affordable broadband connection without heavy contract in the company of fun and interesting people please get in contact!
I called Charles Hayward after lunch on the day of the recent Albany show to ask if anyone would be filming/recording and he laughed, yes, there was a plan to get a multi track recording though no plan for video. It’s been 7 years since I last filmed Albert Newton live (single camera) and on this occasion Gemma Freeman and the Cosmic Something play first, great. So with little time to prepare I opened up the portable filming kit to check out the options.
old smartphones, sports cameras, mini tripods and USB battery packs.
These tools get infrequent exercise and were collected together with the intention of use as networked cameras along with CCTV and ad-hock media feeds. All get picked up in OBS for live casting via our SPC streaming servers. Instead this time we are going to record as much video as possible from several cameras and cut it all back to the multi-track audio once that is mastered.
To start the Zoom H4 wouldn’t accept the SD card so recovered the H1n from our Laurel and recorded on-stage sound with that instead. All the smartphones were working OK though despite checking out everything before leaving, one of them still failed to write video to micro SD so we lost a great sequence, grrrr! It wasn’t until halfway through ‘Cosmics’ set that this all became apparent, by which stage could have picked out another old phone but in the dark and with show underway brain was more muddled than it should have been!
The 2 HD sports cameras have very wide angle lens so they had to be on the stage with the performers which is just about when it became clear that filming a performance in the round is very different. The musicians trios in both acts faced each other on the rectangular stage, so it was tricky to find a camera positions to keep more than two performers at a time in view.
The Smartphone cameras are more adaptable so they got mounted on some short mic stands kindly provided by Albany crew. Still it was hard to find the views to capture the scenes well. With one smartphone failure it’s the wide angle material most often used but in lower light levels the gain get pushed harder. The biggest shock later was that latest addition MotoG8+ which got used but wasn’t prepared and ships with some awful AI image magic running. It attempts to smooth out the signal and steady the image in frame so looks very different.. ho hum that’s all turned off now!
Once home, was excited to review the clips and drop them to a timeline for composition. Since the show it’s been a rather slow process of pecking away at the tasks of locking the clips into sync with the audio recordings and dropping the camera audio as they tend be overloaded anyway.
So far there are just a couple of rough edits done but as I get back into the swing of the edit software it’s working better. All in all it was a bit too much to handle alone nevertheless a most enjoyable process, I hope others are satisfied with the results so far!
Just to make things a bit more complicated I first used an old i5 iMac to edit one of the performances, running Catalina OSX (so no 32bit final Cut or Premiere) with latest DaVinci Resolve as it’s the only free 64bit editor. For the other used a refurbished mini HP PC running Linux Mint 20 and KdenLive.
The PC just didn’t have enough GPU to run DaVinci anyway and really struggled at first to playback the Kdenlive timeline. I soon discovered that was it because automatically transcoding of the clips that didn’t fit with the edit profile. Similar issues effected the work flow on the iMac but it seemed that in both cases the more work got done layering and previewing the clips, the better they performed. In the end I moved both to the PC where colours have been easier to balance with some filters.
A rough mix of the multi-track recording of Albert Newton made by tech team Albany arrived from Harmergeddon mystro Nathan and once Cosmics return from current tour we hope to add theirs to complete the edits.
Please now see below for completed versions of both.
An evening of genre fluid music curated by local musician and sound activist Charles Hayward.
Music is social space, a helter-skelter ride for the ears. Our line-up this time includes the radical fire groove of Albert Newton, the outsider alt psych power trio Jemma FreemanandThe Cosmic Something.
International players Pat Thomas (keyboards), John Edwards (double bass) and Charles Hayward (drums) are Albert Newton. Immediate, compelling and enticing, this vibrant music continues and develops across a wide range of audiences and spaces including palatial cultural cathedrals, social dance events and scruffy South London pubs, a conscious strategy to break divisions put in place by an avant-garde elite eager to maintain a cultural schism that confirms an avant-garde elite. Initially a quartet, since the death of jazz trumpet legend Harry Beckett in 2010 the group remain a trio, working its way slowly back from a ‘music of absence’ towards a place of resistance and communal joy live in the moment: fire, groove, conviction and strength.
The best moments are when paths cross and ideas find a place for themselves. My day to day activities are routed with as many opportunities for fresh interaction as possible. This seemingly haphazard approach reliably turns up the unexpected, boosts interest and often bears strange fruits!
I recently responded to friend Patricio’s request for IT support. His dad had sat on the macbook and bust the screen during a recent visit from Argentina, suspending work in progress at Artmongers and no doubt interfering in the London School of Muralism process. It’s going be less costly to replace it with a comparative model from ebay than try to fix it but it’s not settled yet. We also breathed life into his aging iMac by adding an SSD boot drive as the old spinning disk was dragging everything down.
He asked about my mum which is source of much anguish these days, in a rolling health and care drama. Before getting into the well rehearsed rant he instead got me to pose with this protest banner, which helped me feel much better. Do try to keep your oldies out of those places… they are a road to nowhere.
Whilst there, I received a call back from Honor Oak community centre with an invitation to visit and help sort out their computer suite and broadband muddle. Successive initiatives to facilitate IT training, and a multitude of demands on the shared resources have resulted in a residue of half forgotten installations and tangle of expectations.
Catbytes have most recently stepped in to reset the clutch of aging laptops for use in the over 50’s tech club sessions each week. On my next visit we will help rationalise the admin office layout so they have better access and understanding of their existing resources and space to swing a cat. Meanwhile some essential plumbing and urgent caretaker issues are being prioritised !
Great friends Pete and Gareth in Brixton recently became surrogate parents for a rescue cat and a litter of kittens born shortly after arrival! As they begin to peek out of their nest and clamber the furniture, Pete has been convening introductory sessions at Studio Voltaire, where he recently took up a 3m square space. YT helped him establish a Digital Marker there, so that all the studio users have a shared working place to co-ordinate around, from where new collaborations can be spawned and celebrated. The studios got a massive facelift with funding form the Arts Council so that local art practitioners like Pete have a supported space for development of new work, if only he could escape those creatures..
Subscribe your social initiatives and get in contact to share the SPC resources for enhanced support and development of your plans or projects!
Following on from Funki Porcini’s spectacular second showing of ‘The Laserium‘ at commonground in Coventry, YT collated something of those synesthetic impressions in an effort to represent the event, knowing full well how far short of the moment these fine videos and images are!
The comprehensive development process at play and arrangement of the whole ‘instrument‘ in the room, contributes immensely to the sense of purpose and excitement shared. Everyone wowed at the array of regulators, switches, gears and rods, the twinkling of cut glass gems in the spin of stepped motors, driven reflectors and cascading cables before the first flickered laser pulse.
Photos by Pete Gomes
Each of the 300 + laser pointers are rated at 3R or below for safety sake. Nobody should be complacent about the dangers of eye damage even at low powers so the safety reminder, to avoid looking into wayward beams, a worthwhile reality check. That said, all the light either deflects off cold mirrors and refracts through cut glass or filters before making it to the huge presentation surface.. eyes forward.
Lights out and we are ‘Off the shoulder of Orion‘. The interstellar shudder of the opening bars and whirl of light teleports us out into the abyss. Alien apparitions sweep the space and are slashed with neon thrills then crushed by beats in crystals of crimson! Each musical theme then sends us further out and up. Next we are ‘Swimming with Eels‘ and crashing through traffic. Bass rolls over and over our disembodied senses that cling to the bent plywood seats as the ride smooths us round shattered landscapes and fettered pathways.
…are we in or out now?
instrumentalist
We break for while, standing there pupils stretched, smiles yawning – it certainly is most deluxe. Let’s re-hydrate and touch down for a beat on terra-firma to let that all sink in, percolate, ready to swell over us again.
Delight at the restart, as we drop a gear and head along fresh phases of green and passes of shimmering blue, cascading vibes. Solo alla fine, superstructures of violet synesthesia swamp the place so there is no edge to it! Turning to gauge some perspective, cyan blends and saturates with lush tones and towering textures, red, immersive. When we cut back to the room for an acknowledgement of Ashley Hopkin’s ‘Take Me To It‘ bass line, it’s a reminder how such experience is inspired, extruded, colluded and extraordinary.
It’s hard now, to recollect a moment prior to the impact of pandemic and despite continuous effort to sustain the many open threads of investigation, regular publishing here stalled.
We have been writing using WordPress since 2010, first in response to rising demand for support of CMS development from subscribers and friends and ever since as a regular process.
In September, after six months development and close cooperation with play-workers at Crumbles Castle, the Digital Markers project concluded it’s prototype stage with launch of a very customised and beautifully styled WP site.
It’s a guide that describes use of low cost computers and open software sources for arrangement of co-authored installations around a public place. It’s an evolutionary pathway out of MAZI project and into a very different landscape. With covid at large much of the advocacy for offline and hyper-localised services has been kicked into long grass whilst a swarming around high profile cloud based services, Zoom etc. has drawn much of the attention that has perhaps set back great progress made there.
Now with benefit of a bit of space and time to think again of options, have had opportunity to try out contrasting approaches and lighter payloads of flat file CMS, HTML authoring environments and peer2peer exchange innovations.
The rise of SBC (single board computers) famously Raspberry Pi with it’s many clones and competitors, stimulated a soup of mongrel, experimental and specialised OS offering system solutions. Most of which have been fun to pick up on and test out from Alex’s berry server repository from which we have identified most favourably with DietPi for many reasons, best explored in a more dedicated post.
Right now my favourite quick and clean CMS option is Bludit which features WordPress post extraction plug-in, a liberation from database back-ended and security trip hazards of conventional blogging systems. Regular maintenance and occasional migration of the dozen or more titles has become a major time hog, so pull over to the cold shoulder for a gawp at http://blu.spc.org where you are welcome to continue reading about the work, review and distractions of yours truly in 2021.
If I were able to focus more intently on my peripheral vision, would perhaps prefer to be pushing on with ScuttleButt and delighting in DAT formatted blobs of hip reference and critical comment, alas life’s current distractions outweigh those better intentions. Not that there has been much time for idleness, far from it. Since April, the end of the garden at home in Deptford has drawn in all spare resources, local recycling and free energy of isolation in the construction of a ‘virus shelter’ call it SHED nth, whatever. More about that over on BLU once Christmas lunch is done.
Our environment is swamped with radio signals from a huge range of local, commercial, infrastructural and personal devices. This noise goes on unnoticed day and night but increasingly of interest as our dependence on mobile communications, IOT and remote control systems stack up around us.
Raspberry Pi, usb RTL-SDR and wideband antenna kit
SPC has been hosting regular SDRX workshops at Uniform rooms in OPS. We are making good development progress toward launch of ‘software defined radio power’ monitoring system to help visualise where different frequencies are being used.
The many months of ad-hock design and experimentation with low cost equipment are being distilled into a working recipe for building distributed monitoring networks that publish data for the public record. Great RTL resources exist to support this research which we are keen to contribute to.
Use of the entire RF spectrum is governed by Ofcom in the UK and each country has it’s own regulatory framework, to organise use of the electromagnetic spectrum for commercial and social purposes.
Back in 2006 YT travelled to Riga, Latvia for the Waves conference where Julian Priest installed a 5m Whiteboard ‘The Political Spectrum‘ presenting a hybrid mapping of worldwide radio allocations and social interactions of visitors to the show.
Our main focus of recent months has been fixed on plight of beloved droog and long term collaborator Alexei Blinov. His death just last week of organ failure followed six months of struggle with pancreas and liver cancer, chemotherapy and health services.
A fabulous circle of friends enveloped him with love and support throughout, not least in respect of his creative drive and fierce intellect, but for the huge sense of fun and selflessness he encouraged in all who knew him. A very special friend indeed.
The public Transition Celebration is planned for Sunday 15th December at one of Alexei’s favourite bars, Strongroom in Shoreditch London 3-10pm, please come early and celebrate his life and times.. together!
A sensational gathering of friends and family shared in the unique celebration of his life and times. It centred around this wonderfully apt and beautifully crafted plasma capsule which scanned and smoothed Alexei’s passing on and up to next phase of further exploration and infinite dreaming..
See the growing collection of Alexei images and video clips in this shared album.
We have worked with many artists, musicians and performers over the 20 years of regular tech workshops and studio sessions at Deckspace and most recently in the Old Police Station at Uniform room where we often have opportunity to meet new friends and exchange energy.
These posts often crash together reports of SPC studio, outreach and refurbishment activities which are pressing for time, require documentation or risk slipping away!
Babar Luck is a regular visitor and faithful student who has tuned his experience of self publishing and promotion to both offline experimentation and comprehensive web development of this mastery. His Mazi based ‘spaceship’ travels with him to live performances as Citizen Folk Band, East Trinity and solo sets, each delivered with great panache. We helped him resurrect babarluck.com which like so many domain names had slipped out of control over the years, so that now it forms an intersection of all his activities and adventures. Next Show is at the Birdsnest on 21st December (yes it reopens on 6th) so hope to see you there. Buy one of his many albums to send a friend!
Here are a few subscriber projects where YT has been able to offer support creative development to customise simple tools that enhance their public representation.
James Braddell AKA Funki Porcini first dropped by Obsolete 1995 to introduce himself and his work, a very different time to the one we all now inhabit. None of us anticipated quite how the experimental approach we took to networked media, shared resources and critical thinking then would continue to inform on our lives and practices 25 years on.
Things 2016 was the first website that James has made for Funki Porcini that we refreshed together recently. It collects together all his record releases, artworks and films, those released through Ninja Tune and later his own Uterus Goldmine.
We wanted to identify a process of working that would not present update difficulties and flexible enough to accommodate new ideas. Each release or public activity can be added in CMS blog form that can be extended to hold the next things!
Studio59 is the latest album so do listen to it and check this review!
Pete Gomes called up to tell me Gareth Watkins and friends would be enacting The Hamlet Machine during Bloomsbury Festival 2019 and did we have a 360 degree camera? Sure, so we visited and dropped it in amongst the performers whilst they drilled their process. Senate House has been getting a lot of attention recently for its austere exterior and deco interiors, the Crush Hall was a stunning setting.
Over the weekend Jerneja Rebernak invited me to join a waterside workshop with the Planetary Institute where she would talk us through the mechanics of her pocket lab which utilises the Mazi toolkit. It frames research into shoreline flooding that forms part of MA study at The Bartlett Institute, on show there from Thursday 3rd December.
We used our smart phones to connect up to the inbuilt hotspot which then presented a selection of prepared repositories for environment sounds, images and reflections on the topic of rising water levels that will effect us all before long. Any recordings we made or images of our walk were easily uploaded to these shared libraries over fast WLAN to the built-in storage so useful group interaction possible without need for broadband uplink, keeping stuff local.
Looking at the flatlands around the river Lea at Cody Dock, it is not hard to imagine how rising tides will recapture this ground all too easily. We met briefly with Simon, project leader for refurbishment and development, who lives in a barge at the dock and knows all to well how precarious life is on the waterways and the dangers we face as climate continues to change.
On a recent visit to Ilford, YT got up to the top floor of Redbridge Town Hall where SPC are currently re-igniting the legacy network infrastructure with high speed fibre broadband and wireless access for Spacestudios.
Refurbishment work is underway throughout the building not least at ground floor level with large gallery space and refashioned entrance ramp ready for mid October. Inside there are two floors of newly available studios for local artists as well as Spacestudio artists, to secure a suitable workspace out east in this impressive building.
Loyane’s Bianchini‘s exhibition of artworks on show at The Cello Factory in Waterloo, were created during a Zsuzsi Roboz scholarship at Morley College. Throughout the year she was free to take any course to work with different materials and test new methods. This resulted in a range of print, fabrication and imaging experiments with metalwork, augmented reality and photogrammetry artefacts.
When we next meet again it will be at CSM 3D to define some ‘Digital Markers’ with Kings Cross communities.. much as we worked on together in Brazil with Reverso in 2017, more on all this later!
On Saturday 21st September it’s this years Selce AGM and 5th birthday, a Salsa Solar’bration (please!). Get your ticket now..
Each year the coop members, directors employees, volunteers and friends all meet up to discuss future plans to celebrate the progress of renewable energy work and share ideas. The seven school roof solar arrays in Lewisham and Greenwich will shortly be redoubled with a further seven community installations. Don’t miss out on this upcoming opportunity to invest in this South East London Community Energy success story.
Summer rolled right over us and despite the despair of a catastrophic euro drama looming, some great fun was had here in SE8, not least during Nestival at the Birdsnest pub. YT clipped on sports cameras to mic stands and atop teetering PA’s, capturing some of the great bands playing. To help ensure listenable audio, took the trouble to record sound separately which required a bit of post event compositing.
It all started with Harmergeddon’s great performance on stage2 and we were lucky to catch them as a cool beer had proved a distraction outside..!
Babar Luck introduced the latest World Citizen Folk Band line-up in some glorious sunshine outside in the acoustic tent.
We were very keen to catch a rare performance from Jack Blackburn and The Conformists but before setting up the stage sound Jon Le Champigon popped out for a change of environment to play flute, sing and strum guitar for us all!
Rapscallions AKA The Conformists played a great short selection of new and familiar songs, hey hey London!
These should have been uploaded to the Tallbastard channel where we have nearly 300 subscribers so perhaps we can get them listed there as well soon.
This huge effort of will and organisation has resulted in a public spectacle of action and imagination, presenting research outcomes and rewarding creative collaborations.
The Bitcoin memorial totem stands centre square of four neo-industrial units, a ‘digital hamlet’, containing all the commissioned works, which opened for public access Friday 12th April, then each day until the end of Easter Monday, 22nd.
Each of the commissioned works articulates insight onto aspects of AI systems, augmented experience and hybrid media that’s fun to explore, rewards participation and is easy to appreciate. Local press and TV joined us for a few hours on the windswept square followed by sponsors Cambridge Consulting and ARM with invited guests for beer and cake! Over 1500 people visited over the 10 days, we recorded some of the daily footfall here.
For all involved it’s been a year long challenge to focus first on a research process that responded to the aims of the commission, then identify suitable material for public exhibition.
For DDBC this has meant some deep digging into Blockchain insertion and extraction techniques, modulation of text to speech systems for open research interaction and record keeping. Messages recovered from the Bitcoin blockchain are being sifted into 8 channels for vocalisations of Hello- World, Love, Faith, Shout-outs, Tales, Poetry, Adverts, and Memorials.
Over a 1/4 million bitcoin transactions contain text insertions, a trend started by Bitcoin originator Mr Satoshi with his message in the genesis block. Can you find it there?
Each message needs review and categorisation to be spoken at the totem, more than our modest team could achieve alone. Much as any recovered archaeological artefacts need cleaning and sorting before the origin and intent can be claimed, so we invite you to visit DDBC and support the rediscovery process.
It’s been a busy start to the year at Uniform, the latest SPC lab. This month we will conclude the MAZI EU commission with a final review in Brussels. Each of the consortium partners will meet once more to present the outcome of 3 years research and development into the MAZI toolkit. All the reports and publications relating to the work are already available at the public website where you can download a fully working operating system image (v3) to flash on to micro SD cards for Raspberry Pi 3B+. Our regular Mazi workshops resume in March so get in contact soon to schedule a session.
The momentum of the Creeknet MAZI pilot in Deptford, the outreach initiatives at CSM and interconnections Maydayrooms flow on. A clutch of fiercely independent community action and resistance also push forward with an agenda to preserve Tidemill Gardens, promote community run library at PCL, utilise radical social spaces in Squats and DIY spaces in the area..
Meanwhile infrastructure development in Arthub continues at the Deptford studios and in Woolwich where a huge new studio floor has been added to the long established warren of well lit and facilitated spaces upstairs. Both have had Ubiquiti wireless network equipment installed to at first distribute broadband utility to all the artists. Redraw Internet provided the fast start connection to Woolwich Arthub from over the river via 5ghz link.
This month a 1GB fibre service will be installed to serve all the studios a level of connectivity to scale up to requirements over the coming 5 year lease. Meanwhile infrastructure development in Arthub continues at the Deptford studios and in Woolwich where a huge new studio floor has been added to the long established warren of well lit and facilitated spaces.
Both have had Ubiquiti wireless network equipment installed to at first distribute broadband utility to all the artists. Redraw Internet provided the fast start connection to Woolwich Arthub from over the river via 5ghz link. This month a 1GB fibre service will be installed to serve all the studios a level of connectivity to scale up to requirements over the coming 5 year lease.
Mycaene House is a community centre in Charton Village, Greenwich. SPC first extended the office broadband into 4 floors during 2014 with a set of low cost routers and this spring we will return to update the network with latest wireless broadband equipment and help with development of meeting support systems and streaming media capacity.
An educational program of workshops to help people get online is underway to help improve skills for those with little experience who may struggle with the demands of network life or whom seek to improve on their knowledge .
Brickfield Studios was opened 4 years ago after completion of refurbishment by new owners Space Studios. This month we added comprehensive infrastructure monitoring for the wireless network and updated all the equipment firmware to match.
Now any jitters of service can all be tracked and improved where possible. Already, it’s possible to see increase of connections and and variations in the scale of use. The Sandstorm server installed there before we began the MAZI project consumed us, has fallen out of use for lack of promotion but still working just fine! We hope to have the time this year to get back on to all these threads with some quality time and focus.
This years SPC home page look came about due to some rich seasonal food and rare dive into basic Java scripting!
It’s the page presenting key links to the SPC lab work in progress or which we want to remind you of!
AMP – has evolved in response to use and exploration since it’s outset in 2016 when it was clear that the combination of willing souls and appropriate tools coincided to make such a prospect realistic. Activist media is being enriched with complimentary data using timebased and subjective recording methods to improve annotation of these hidden histories.
Engineerin
BAK – the first and most loved of the SPC spaces this pubic access media lab set the frame for so much that followed it’s closure in 1999.
UNI – Most recent and smallest of the SPC labs is situated in the infamous of Deptford buildings the Old Police Station on Amesham Vale, some claim is in New Cross. History can’t be denied and tells us New Cross is within Deptford!
OWN – The open wireless network has been rejuvinated as part of the MAZI work along Creekside so that researchers and contributors could better stay connected and utilise local broadband network infrastructures that their Mazi toolkits could link up to.
block stack hack
DDBC – This Collusion commissioned work in progress is due for exhibition in Cambridge early in April 10 days between 5-15th so please visit us there. Our research into blockchain insertion and message recovery has uncovered thousands of corporate communications and personal testimonies all of which will feature as voices from the past in our installation at centre of an exhibition village outside Cambridge Junction.
Reverso – We had a great response visit from Sao Paulo workers at the end of 2018 following our trip to their favellas in 2017. Work goes on here in Central St Martins and at locations around that huge city of cities in Brazil using the MAZI toolkit to co-ordinate social action and represent community culture of distributed spaces. Roll up, roll up get your fresh zones here!
Sao Paulo workers visit Pepys community Library family!
Latest steps to prepare the sponsored EX Networks server so it’s ready for exploration of blockchain scraping techniques have been successful. The DDBC project now features it’s own version of MFTM and BlockSci, both provide tools to unpack individual block transactions to further evaluate the contents in our search for human reviewable materials.
Next we must improve on these techniques to unpack clustered transactions that we expect contain more complex data types, images, sounds, code as well as more lengthy texts and patterns. Time has got away from us these recent months, so we are now under pressure to engage developer assistance for extraction and representation of discoveries. Experimental Nodejs, C++ and Python code drive this process , all skills in high demand. All this toward a spring 2019 Collusion commissions exhibition.
As the MAZI Creeknet pilot draws to a close, SPC has been negotiating with contributors and connection suppliers in the local area. Together we will synchronize with existing mesh network hosts in SE8 to bring latest infrastructure elements into play in conclusion of the three year pilot process. An additional set of Ubiquiti mesh radios are being installed during October to extend fast network access along Deptford Creek for the use of all, not least so that the distributed spaces along the creek enabled by the Mazi toolkit can link up to share outcomes.
Next generation Internet will feature crypto-enhanced distribution and retrival forms of peer exchange. Popular media resources, specialist interests and social services all seek the continuity and open accountability blockchain technologies offer but there is a long way to go before widespread understanding and adoption.
Meanwhile attention has turned again to WWW innovator Tim Berners-Lee and recent launch of Solid – social linked data, for building decentralized social applications – check the public page for uniform. YT still favours Sandstorm for day to day ease of deployment, hands off maintenance and great adaptability, perfect for slackers – but lets stay open minded eh..
We welcomed many friends, guest speakers and local networkers to celebrate a most productive and pleasurable week of workshops, review MAZI toolkit development and acknowledge collaborative progress.
Our week began with a workshop session co-ordinated with the Unmonastery pilot group and IR11 to host an all day testlab in the old Coop store on Pennywell Street in Muirhouse. A mix of resident artist, visiting engineers and local academics shared in Raspberry Pi unboxing, software exploration and collaborative configuration sprint, to establish a dozen fresh ‘Mazizones using the MAZI toolkit.
Some of us met again after lunch on Sunday at Skylight bar inside Tolbooth Market off the Royal Mile. We were introduced to the partners of a new co-working space in one of a set of rooms, around a courtyard, being reconfigured as food market and social club. They were very keen to investigate network publishing and membership co-ordination options to encourage data sharing, creative collaboration and improved sense of involvement in the new venture.
On 16th and 17th October, MAZI consortium hosted two days of public workshops in the Summer Hall, where everyone had time to work through the options for setting up and customising the toolkit to suit their particular project or method of working.
We were all stretched to feed the needs of such an energetic and enthused group each day. So many ideas and interventions underway the air was thick with brainwaves and network intensity!
Some also took time out to personalise their Raspberry Pi cases and hear more from award winning artist entrepreneur Denise Allan of Wee Replicators pioneering use of recycled plastics for 3D drawing pens and printers.
Over all over 60 happy researchers took up the offer to continue working with a Mazi zone of their own, which we look forward to hearing more about in the months ahead.
A harvest festival finale’ event for MAZI is scheduled in Edinburgh for October 18th. It will be preceded by Unmonastery testlab days in Muirhouse on 13th, 14th with Mazi workshops at Summerhall on 16th and 17th .
All are invited to participate in the MAZI making and to share in the information bounty in collective celebration of offline and complimentary networks. The network publishing toolkit runs on a Raspberry Pi and allows for flexible installation, customisation and innovative application of your activities. Contact the organisers at Napier and grab your selves a ticket to ride the waves with us all for a few days.
If you are already familiar with these small computers you might be pleased to hear about how to utilise the space on those pesky micro SD cards without handling them more than necessary. We use the Berryboot PI bootloader to swap between retro gaming, media jukebox and the Mazi toolkit. Alex has built up a definitive Pi OS repository of squashFS images to test out and deploy where you also will find the latest Mazi version awaiting you.
The collaborative and DIY working culture is very much the theme as those with shared studios increasingly feel under pressure to meet rising rents or move on out of town. So it was great to make a return visit to DIY space for London on the New Cross / Bermondsey boundary to pick up the PITPNXD T-shirts to discover new residents 1831 who have set up their custom embroidery machine in the old vinyl store.
On a road trip back from visiting mum in a Surrey hospital, Google routed YT through Croydon (really), traffic then slowed me just around the corner from a new project space by David Panos where I was well overdue a visit, wow!
Conditions is a new one-year studio programme for 12 artists each year. It gives 24/7 access to studio space and structured critical conversations to develop artist’s work, as well as encouraging collaboration and collective work on exhibitions and events. All held in a custom conceived workhouse lovingly prepared by David and his collaborator Mathew Noel-Todd, Brighton Uni escapee. We all missed the August application deadline for this years intake, though I recommend a visit next time you are passing through.
This Antifamily LP he co wrote and produced over a decade ago is one of my favorites!
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