News, Students, Women in Computing

New online community for young IT passionates

Screen Shot 2015-11-24 at 11.54.04

DEGENERATION IT, a collaborative community created for IT passionates (in education or not) has been launched by Goldsmiths Computing student Sharon Profita.

Sharon, a third-year BSc Creative Computing student, says: “I know there’s quite a lot out there that could be considered similar, but I want this to be accessible to ‘newbies’ too, most of the forums or websites I visit are very advanced and sometimes I feel too ‘green’ to ask a question. I want everybody to feel welcome and safe.”

Designed to strengthen the young developer community, the site comprises four sections:

Projects
“Post what you’ve done for an assignment or on your spare time. Games, software, cool data visualizations, a particuar algorithm, anything you’d like to share.

“Every year across the UK, hundreds of aspiring programmers complete a ton of coursework and create projects. When they leave university, this work largely disappears. Degeneration IT is a hub for this kind of work, that values ideas even more than execution. All the projects posted end up in your profile, so you have a mini-portfolio where you can also share links to your actual portfolio or linkedin, github, behance.” Go to Projects

News
“This section can range from the latest indie game/software or hardware, to your attendance to an event, a tutorial you made, or whatever you want to share with other ‘degenerates’.” Go to News

Events
“A searchable calendar with events (like hackathons and conferences) around Europe. Not only you can browse, but if you’re organising/attending or heard of an event that’s not listed you’re more than welcome to post it.” Go to Events

Ask a question
“A place where you can ask questions or post requests for specific issues or needs you might have.” Go to Ask

Events, Inspiration, Videos

Wed 25 Nov: Kyle McDonald artist talk

On Wednesday 25 November, seminal computational artist Kyle McDonald is at Goldsmiths talking about working with code as medium and theme.

The event is free, courtesy of the creative streams in the Goldsmiths Department of Computing. All welcome – no need to book.

Where: Lecture Theatre, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths. Map
When: 6pm-7pm Wednesday 25 November 2015

Kyle McDonald is an artist who works in the open with code. He is a contributor to arts-engineering toolkits like openFrameworks, and spends a significant amount of time building tools that allow artists to use new algorithms in creative ways.

His work is very process-oriented, and he has made a habit of sharing ideas and projects in public before they’re completed. He enjoys creatively subverting networked communication and computation, exploring glitch and embedded biases, and extending these concepts to reversal of everything from personal identity to work habits.

Kyle has been a member of F.A.T. Lab, community manager for openFrameworks, adjunct professor at ITP, and has been a resident at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon, as well as YCAM in Japan. His work is commissioned by and shown at exhibitions and festivals around the world, including Ars Electronica, Sonar/OFFF, Eyebeam, Anyang Public Art Project, Cinekid, CLICK Festival, NODE Festival, FITC, and many others. He frequently leads workshops exploring computer vision and interaction.

Where: Lecture Theatre, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths
When: 6pm-7pm Wednesday 25 November 2015

Find out more about our Creative Computing degrees >>

EAVI, Events, Videos, Women in Computing

EAVI Gigs XIV – Thu 26 November

EAVIXIV

EAVI Gigs return for their second outing this November at the Amersham Arms. A night of free improv, music using interactive textiles, dismantled grime and more, with DJs til late.

Performances from fluxtrio (Hayes/Schroeder/Pestova), Yearning Kru, Phantom Chips, Gorenidal and Chi Po-Hao. Post-show DJs Spacer Woman and Team GBH will be running the whole gamut of human emotions with their excellent selections, so bring dancing shoes and emotional armour.

Where: Amersham Arms, 388 New Cross Road, London SE14 6TY
When: 8pm – late, Thursday 26 November 2015
Tickets £5 – or buy £4.50 tickets online

fluxtrio (Hayes/Schroeder/Pestova)
https://fluxtrio.wordpress.com
fluxtrio brings together three performer­/composers who are known for their unique approaches to performance and their use of innovative instrumentation, both acoustic and electronic. This collaboration will combine their diverse skills, which include building digital instruments, pioneering novel technologies, improvisation techniques, and live electronic treatment of acoustic sounds.

Yearning Kru
http://yearningkru.tumblr.com
Yearning Kru combines some of the finest moments of the past twenty years of electronic music: the glitched, disjointed, sad beauty of Fennesz and Mego artists alongside the sample mangling genius of 0PN that finds the alien in the everyday. He has been critically acclaimed by Tiny Mix Tapes and the Wire, and releases on Quantum Natives.


Gorenidal
Gorenidal wrestles algorithmic beats and noise from an Atari and an fm synth running on an iPhone. He has a forthcoming release on Quantum Natives.


Phantom Chips
http://www.phantomchips.com
Tara Pattenden aka Phantom Chips is an artist, musician and maker of electronic noise instruments. For the past 5 years she has been working with soft circuitry to create interfaces that manipulate sound through touch and movement. As Phantom Chips she performs with an array of home-made instruments, concocting rhythms from manipulated found and recorded sounds. Phantom Chips has been known to invite the audience to wear and play her costumes and join her in creating sound through movement.


Chi Po-Hao
http://chipohao.com
Chi Po-Hao is a Taiwan based sound artist. He has been granted residencies at V2_Institute of Unstable Media in Rotterdam and Cité internationale des Arts in Paris. His works involve live electronics, referencing popular music and electroacoustic composition.

Events, Students

Hackcess Hackathon, 20-21 November 2015

hackathon

Hackcess is a hackathon focused on using digital fabrication and maker technologies to help disabled people live more independent lives, improving accessibility through technology.

It’s a two-day event hosted in partnership with Fab Lab London, Goldsmiths’ student-run Hacksmiths group, Autodesk, Ultimaker 3D Printers and the disability charity Whizz-Kidz. They’ll have a heap of technology for all you designers, makers, coders and product people to use to design new and exciting assistive technologies during the hackathon.

There will be food, drink, electricity, WiFi, 3D printers, digital fabrication equipment and traditional tools (that’s drills, hammers, wood and stuff like that) so that you can get on with the real work – changing lives. It will be a real opportunity to make change for good.

The event is open to makers and inventors of all ages including children. Young makers should be at least 18 years, unless accompanied with a parent/carer.

Where: Fab Lab London, 1 Frederick’s Place, Off Old Jewry EC2R 8AE
When: Friday 20 – Saturday 21 November 2015
Tickets and more details

EAVI, News, Staff profiles and activity

New audiovisual performance app developed by Goldsmiths researcher

Goldsmiths researcher Nuno Correia has developed AudioVisual Zones, a new iPad app for audiovisual performance which will be available at the App Store soon.

AVZones is open source and work in progress, built with openFrameworks and Maximilian, and part of Goldsmiths’ Enabling Audiovisual User Interfaces research project.

It’s composed of an audio sequencer/looper with a visualizer. By default, three audiovisual columns or “zones” allow for the manipulation of three audio loops. Each zone had three XY pads for audio manipulation: pitch shift, delay and filter. There are nine sounds available per zone. The application is scalable: the number of zones, XY pads and sounds can be modified in the code.

Nuno Correia has performed using AVZones in Berlin and at London’s EAVI XIII. In a performance, only the iPad is used for audiovisuals; the visuals from the iPad are projected behind the performer, and the sound comes from the iPad as well.

The project is supported by a Marie Curie EU fellowship, and hosted by the EAVI research group in Goldsmiths Computing. The code for AVZones is available on GitHub, and the app can be sideloaded manually on an iPad using Xcode 7.

 

 

Students

Report on Data Science & Analytics Conference, Paris

In October, PhD student Rapheal Olaniyan presented a paper at the IEEE International Conference on Data Science & Analytics. Here is his report on what happened. 

Big data is a new phrase we hear about very often these days. It involves the data generated by everyone and everything from social media and other digital processes. Organisations are now reacting to the explosive volume of big data starting with how to handle the startling volume to exploiting the data in order to generate insights useful for resource optimisation purposes.

One way to develop the analytical capabilities needed to deliver results would be to gather experts, short in supply though, around the globe. This would help in terms of collaborations, big data trends and industry focus, and capability development.

In October I travelled to Paris to present a paper at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Data Science & Advanced Analytics in Paris. The paper “Sentiment and stock market volatility predictive modelling- a hybrid approach” was co-authored by Daniel Stamate, Lahcen Ouarbya (both Goldsmiths) and Doina Logofatu (Frankfurt University). In the paper, we propose a new approach to developing the stock market predictive modelling based on a hybrid approach that incorporates sentiment, GARCH family and artificial neural networks. More so, our paper is now being considered for publication in the International Journal of Data Science and Analytics.

It was an excellent conference that brought together researchers, industry practitioners, other experts of big data. It was also an opportunity to meet great minds in Big Data analytics. Among the interesting people are some team from Facebook labs, Yahoo labs, top consulting firms and other highly referred professionals. It was one of the best conferences I have ever been.

Thanks to the professional approach to teaching and research dedication received from the Computing Department, Goldsmiths University of London and the funding for travelling expenses I got from the PGR Committee. I do enjoy my moment at Goldsmiths and I appreciate the academic support from the Computing Department and the Postgraduate Committee.

Events, Women in Computing

Mon 9 Nov: Creativity apps, casual users and serious AI

kcomptonKate Compton, UC Santa Cruz, is speaking on creativity apps at Goldsmiths, University of London.

When: 1pm-2pm, Monday 9 November
Where: Room RHB 144, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, University of London

Many creativity tools exist to support task-focused creativity, but in recent years we have seen a flourishing apps for casual creativity, fun and explorative creativity rather than task-completion. Creativity apps to make pottery, music, and Mario levels are bringing creativity to audiences outside of professional creative workers, but making this move requires new design patterns and best practices. Kate Compton will present some of her favorite new patterns that make these apps successful, and demonstrates them with new interactive prototypes.

Bio: Kate Compton is a long-time Procedural Content Generation (PCG) practitioner. She wrote the first paper on procedural platformer levels, generated the planets for Spore, and wrote the latest SimCity fire system. She is now a PhD candidate at UC Santa Cruz developing artificial intelligence to augment human creativity with generative art. She likes laser cutting, 3D printing, founding companies, and baking.

 

Creativity, independence and learning by doing.