What an amazing time we had showcasing Microworld to the Singapore Public and, with over 4,000 visitors, it gave us the chance to fully test two new work-station pieces.
We were part of a team organised by Marine Studios and HKD of Margate bringing art and tech projects to the Science Centre Singapore as part of the international Maker’s Faire. We filled one side of the huge room with interactive art projections. Over the 4 days there were easily over 8000 visitors. We enthralled Singaporeans and others with a range of engagements from a few seconds to some kids who stayed with us for 4 hours. They explored every combination, learning about design and simple visual coding and just having fun.
You can see a range of photos from Microworld : Singapore on Flickr
The organizers and technicians in Singapore were brilliant, special thanks to Ling Ling and everyone who was so enthusiastic and organised and made everything a pleasure. We were really struck by how positive and willing to experiment the science museum crowd is, and how eager to learn Singapore was as a whole. It is such a confident place teeming with energy and ideas. We made several connections with other Science Museums from that part of the world and they seem to be moving in the direction of combining science, art and creative coding as a sort of glue – which is just the area we’re interested in too. Perhaps this trip indicates a future direction for us.
We tried out some new works and new technology. This was the first time we’ve networked workstations and wall sized projections and the network was super stable throughout, apart from when a kid got over enthusiastic and snuck round the back and pressed something he wasn’t supposed to. We created two brand new pieces and adapted two others :
- SEED (teaching basic cellular automata coding) – which transfixed some kids to the extent that they spent up to an hour creating rules and patterns that we hadn’t thought of – and which we incorporated into the program on the last day.
- DRIFTERS (designing spring based creatures). Favoured by young girls who patiently built up their own plant-like floral creations. We had to overhaul this program over the event as there were too many options. You’d be surprised what people get up to with a mouse. By the weekend it was stable and straightforward to use.
- SQUIDLETS – was properly networked for the first time and as a result we enabled over 500 people to become digital art.
- MULTIPLE – we added some new variations and added contours which increased the animated feel of the program which was as popular as ever with all ages.
Thanks also to the Geek_Play team, Kate, Rich and family and friends. And the other artists showing who created an exciting and noisy room full of diverse ‘meet, make and play’ activities from paper and pencil animations, to gravity probing games all the way through to cutting edge robots and lasers.
Also showing in the space were works by :
- Social game designers Sophia and Mink introduced space and time concepts to all comers
- Geek_Play ran an arena full of Sphero robots, robot designing workshops and battling video games and helped with all the projects
- John Sear builder of magical collaborative experiences for public spaces ran Renga and mobile story telling workshops
- Choreographers of time Bruno Mathez and Carol MacGillivray produced a magical stroboscopic space and ran a variety of animation activities
So all in all a brilliant experience. Our most spectacular Microworld and lots of possibilities for the future.
