The Art of Social Media

This piece is for the lovely Forge mag team to accompany a written piece about the internet (specifically social media) empowering young creatives to get their work out into the wider world. After a few days half-heartedly trying to make an overly complex illustration, I took some time away from it and a simpler concept started to emerge.

(B:) Future FORUM

Yesterday I shared the spoils of my Kano challenge at mac birmingham as part of their Future FORUM, the final component of this year's Future C U R I O U S festival. As detailed in my earlier post about my approach to the TINKER process, the result was a series of images inspired by colour mode RGB made using pencil, a scanner and various techniques of image manipulation on the raspberry pi using free software / Kano OS.

(G:) Byng@Kano ~ $

As one of the artists tasked with creatively utilising a Kano kit as part of the Future C U R I O U S TINKER commission, I have been working my way around the functioning of the raspberry pi and considering its potential in relation to my drawing practice. My initial response was that I would need to find out how to make work by drawing with code and that the raspberry pi was a potential competitor with regards to creating illustrations in the future instead of a tool I could utilise, but that thought process has changed a lot in the last few weeks.

Risography

When I saw Rope Press were running summer school workshops as an introduction to risograph printing, I leapt at the chance to get down there in order to try the process and find out how to get the most out of it. Arriving at the studio building I was met by the friendly Reece and shown up to the unit, which was every contemporary image makers dream. Rope Press are both an artist-led printing press and publishing house, so there was some srsly tasty books lining the walls, along with lots of example prints they have produced, through both orders and workshops.

(R:) Kano Unboxing

As part of Future C U R I O U S festival I was given a new toy, and challenged to use it within my creative practice. Yahtzee! This new toy was a KANO kit, a computer that you build and code yourself. Inside the box lay a Raspberry Pi 2, some charming illustrated manuals, a DIY speaker, fabulously orange keyboard, SD card, various colourful cables, a WiFi dongle, case and stickers (because what self-respecting future explorer wants their computer to look like everyone else's?) *NB: bananas not included.