Aesthetec in 2011 and what’s coming up in 2012

January 19th, 2012

Well, it’s a bit late to still say Happy New Year, but we wish you the best anyway.

It took a little bit to recover from the break and getting back to work. 2011 was kind of a whirlwind for us, with the opening of the new Calgary Science Centre – now known as Telus Spark – the project that was in the works for two years for us and involving ~30 exhibits, moving our studio to a new permanent home, whipping up an installation for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, and rounding off the year-end with some R+D work with a dance company! We were exhausted but really glad to have gotten this video out of all of it (huge thanks to Ryan Varga):

Then before breaking for the holidays, we cleaned up our studio space and threw a year-end party – which was when we realized how perfect the space is for a party gathering (bonus!):

Coming up next in 2012 we are really excited to announce that we’ll be presenting more work in our home city of Toronto!

Aesthetec is teaming up with TIFF for their annual TIFF Kids event, aka ‘Sprockets’, to present an interactive play space for kids in the beautiful gallery of the TIFF Bell Lightbox building. This event will take place in April 10-22.

Then in May, we will be presenting interactive work from our very own studio/store front window as part of the Art of the Danforth 2012 event, which coincidentally is taking place in our neck of the woods.

More info on both events will get posted as we get closer to the date.

Happy year of the Dragon – it’s going to be fierce!

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Pictures from Nuit Blanche last week

October 9th, 2011

It has only been a week, but our Nuit Blanche installation seems like ages ago now that team Aesthetec is transplanted to Calgary for the rest of October. Thanks to everyone who braved the cold and stopped by to see our installation at Fort York, we know it was far out of the way and the wind chilled to the bones.

SMILE turned out to be a great success (besides the fact that they worked, people had fun with them!), and thanks to our project partner Dashing Collective, we even had a party room serving some drinks and coffee and providing a bit of warmth and seating for the entire evening.

We managed to take a few photos on our camera, but proper explanation, photos and video documentation will be coming soon. View our little set on Flickr.

And Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

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Aesthetec at Toronto Nuit Blanche this Saturday!

September 29th, 2011

In collaboration with Dashing Collective, we are very excited to be presenting as part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche this year.

SMILE, short for Socially Motivated Immersive Light Environment, is an interactive light installation that will cover the ground of Toronto’s Fort York National Historic Site. Cubes of lights positioned in a hexagonal grid form the lightscape. Light patterns will change as the audience move small control nodes around the field, and evolve organically as they come together.

This project has been in the works at our studio for the past three months. We’ve created a set of customized electronics consist of individually controlled and wirelessly networked group of LEDs. Beyond just being able to receive command from a control computer, each LED node is part of a mesh network that can send and receive information to and from each other as well. Additionally, using radio frequency signal readings, we are also able to locate positions of the moving nodes in the field.

The picture above is from our first field test yesterday. At night, the park is surrounded by lights from the Toronto skyline, but still far enough so that the light cubes stand out beautifully. Please come and join us this Saturday, October 1, from sunset to sunrise.

Fort York Historic Site
100 Garrison Road, Toronto
http://g.co/maps/4ceek

More information:
http://dashing.tv/nuitblanche2011/
http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/

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Fun day in the studio

August 18th, 2011

Today, something delightful happened in the office: we got 3 different projects on the table with 3 different forms of LEDs, ALL BLINKING! As you know, there’s nothing more lovely than seeing blinking lights, after days of programming and soldering.

First, this morning we got these individually and wirelessly controlled RGB LEDs to blink:

Then Adam got this seizure-inducing LED matrices, which we are using for a customized display in the Calgary Science Center, to blink:
[warning - this could cause your eyes to start watering]

And not to be out done by the boys, Erika got this super-rad red, green, blue spikes hooked up together and, yeah, you guessed it, they blink!

In the other corner, Willy with the projector and camera vision setup is also creeping along:

Woooo! Time for beer!

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Some media from Ottawa

August 5th, 2011

Some photos from our Ottawa trip are up on Flickr.

We wanted to edit together a video of the experience, but the event being the “Waterway Soundfaire” with emphasis on the ‘sound’ part of the title, our media became quite difficult to edit.  We were set up near a stage for a hand-bell ensemble hailed from Estonia, who was just down the road from a percussion quartet.  Then every so often a marching band from NYC would come by, it was a true sound faire in every sense of the word, and SO MUCH FUN!

In failing with the edit, we just have one fun clip to share from our new Floppy Disk Music – a piece we put together just for this event, using materials we had around the studio.  It’s a modified version of Solar Panel Music, but using photocell embedded in the disks instead of solar panels.  This lady stopped by every so often and stayed true to her costume character the whole time!

A few more description of the event is on Chamberfest’s site, here: http://www.ottawachamberfest.com/daily/waterway-soundfaire

Til next time,

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We’re going to Ottawa!

July 28th, 2011

In case you or anyone you know is hanging out in Ottawa this weekend, we will be setting up some interactive sound toys at the Chamberfest, as part of the “Waterway Soundfaire” program. Again, we’re showcasing some work-in-progress sound installations that have been developed for the new Calgary Science Centre.

The Waterway Soundfaire will take place by the Rideau Canal, in front of the National Arts Centre. (We’re told that we will be along the waterfront and under the bridge.)

Saturday, July 30th, from 1pm – 4pm. This event is free.

We’re very honoured and excited to show at the Capital! Stop by and say hi!

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Sneak peak of (one of) our latest project…

July 12th, 2011

While some of us are busy setting up the new office space, Mark and Adam are having a little too much fun working on-site with the exhibit fabricators. Here is the first video of what will eventually be a permanent exhibit in Calgary titled “Looping Table”, which is sort of a riff on our last piece, “Sound Playground” but with different interaction and musical elements.

Yeah, hot!

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We are moving!

June 28th, 2011

Today is our packing day, can you tell we’re totally ready?

It’s been exactly two years since we started out in this space, and we love it for all that it has given us. The location is perfect for downtown Toronto, lunch options are plenty, and everybody else seem to also be working in the vicinity. And it’s a great spot for working on the weekends then going out to get fancy dinners (yay Chinatown!).

But in the short period, we’ve out grown our space and it’s finally time to move into a space that we own. We’re looking forward to having a proper wood shop in the back, a kitchen with sink AND running water, store front for experimentation, and an entire 1000sq ft. basement to store stuff! We’ll now be away from the hip downtown core, but we hope that the East end of Toronto will get hip in time.

See you around!

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New project in the works: SMILE

June 22nd, 2011

It’s been a busy bit from spring coming into summer (we can’t believe it’s already end of June!), but we’re excited to share the news about our up-coming project that will be installed at Nuit Blanche Toronto: SMILE. We’re collaborating with Dashing Collective to do this oversize interactive lighting installation at Fort York!

Given the scale of the project and the time frame, this is quite a feat. Especially for the fact that we’re also crunching to get all our work for the Calgary Science Centre out the door around the same time! But true to the Aesthetec style, we only do difficult work, actually “challenge” seems to be our specialty.

Check out the blog for more information on the project: http://dlyt.me

First outdoor prototype testing with our customized software –

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More MMF Video

May 12th, 2011

Ryan Varga, the creator of “We Make Things” interview short, was also at Maker Faire and did an amazing job capturing the event and many makers this video:

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