Now showing in the Hub at mac birmingham (extended until Friday 25th July), an exhibition and film documenting the recent Interactivos? Birmingham project and seminar which took place in June at mac. Artists and technologists worked together collaboratively over a two week period to develop interactive digital media prototypes.  

Contributors to the exhibition include: Cham Athwal (Birmingham, UK); Javier Cruz (Chile);  Rafaelo Fernandes de Carvalho (Brazil); Anaisa Franco (Germany); Divya Kasturi (Stevenage, UK); Ivan Petkov (Austria); Alberto Rivero (Spain) and  whoun (aka Juan Cedenilla).  

The Interactivos? model was created by Medialab-Prado as a hybrid between a production workshop, a seminar and a showcase, providing a space for reflection, research and collaboration.  Interactivos? Birmingham was led by Birmingham City University in partnership with Medialab-Prado, sampad, mac birmingham and BBC Birmingham.

Javier Cruz will be at mac birmingham on Friday 11th July  between 2pm and 5pm  to share the prototype, Rhythm Body, that he developed at the recent international Interactivos? Birmingham project.  

Please come along at any time between 2pm and 5pm and meet and chat with Javier and interact with,  explore, dance with, develop sounds for the prototype. 

“Playing in a rock folk band in Chile was the inspiration for  Rhythm Body, showing me how music has mathematical concepts intrinsically built into it  Rhythms can be generated around these concepts and I believe that everyone is able to create these rhythms, using the body as a trigger. Rhythm body employs sensors around the body which read movement using gyroscopes and accelerometers.  The sensors are processed by an Arduino, which sends the information to an Android device via wireless Bluetooth.  Once in the Android, the data is processed and presented in a musical and visual way”.

For further information, contact: Pat Dawson, mac birmingham, on 0121 446 3227.

Javier was one of 7 project leads who developed a prototype as part of Interactivos? Birmingham, responsive and immersive future technologies,  which was a two week international collaborative workshop and seminar event taking place at mac birmingham in June which brought together the creative minds of artists, scientists, designers and digital developers.   

An exhibition documenting the project is currently running in The Hub at mac until 20 July. 

We conducted a busy Twitter chat session yesterday with the experts, presenters and collaborators of #interactivosbham as well as with all of 'you' out there!!

We asked five questions during the chat:

Q1. What's the best collaboration you've ever been a part of, and why?

Q2. Technical knowledge is less important than curiosity. What do you think?

Q3. Sometimes it helps not to know how difficult your project is beforehand. Discuss.

Q4. Digital maker or passive consumer: how would you describe yourself? 

Q5. Do new technologies such as Raspberry Pi make it easier or harder for anybody to be an artist/create something?