Workshop - Thomas Fürstner: Comprehensive Coding (Ruby)

WORKSHOP related to digital technology – graphics, sound composition, control robots, video, interactive sculptures...

5th to 9th November 2007, from 4.00 to 8.00 pm;
KIT, Glavni trg 14, Maribor

Participants of the workshop have learned how to use the trendy Ruby programming language in combination with Flash and Max/MSP to create fantastic graphics, daring sound compositions, control robots, videos, interactive sculptures etc.

Comprehensive Coding is a about the attempt to bring the Internet, all its data, protocols and algorithms back into the real world. Therefore technologies like GPS (Global Positioning System), sensor equipped microcontrollers, mobile phones and barcodes are combined with development environments like Adobe Flash, Max/MSP, PD and Ruby.

The main ambition of the project was to empower participants to get their hands on emerging technologies and to use them together with Internet services as a creative and expressive resource of artistic practice. Another aim of comprehensive coding is to change the common attitude towards digital artIfacts. The participants were encouraged to actively use all devices in a very liberal way, even to "misuse" them for accomplishing things they've never been meant to be used for.

Participants have learned in detail how to make abstract, digital data more comprehensible by giving them a physical presence in real space. At the same time they have realized how real world objects get more powerful by being augmented digitally and which new kinds of social interactions result out of this.

Although programming, especially scripting was an essential part of the workshop, programming skills were not a prerequisite to participate in this workshop.

A preconfigured setup for "location based services", "real world tagging", scripting of mobile phones and pre-built sensor equipment was installed in and around KIT during the worksop.

WORKSHOP MENTOR
Univ. Prof. THOMAS FÜRSTNER
Univ. Prof. at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, staff member and former technical director at the Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe and Head of Research and Development at System One, Gesellschaft für technologiegestützte Kommunikationsprozesse m.b.H., Vienna.