squirmelia | What I did in August 2018 (Reply)

I went on holiday to Aberyswyth and watched a beautiful sunset from the castle, played Dance Dance Revolution on the pier, wandered through caverns, took a boat trip on an underground river, went on a journey on a steam train to the Devil's Bridge, ate damson gin ice cream, saw waterfalls, wandered on various beaches and stared at the sea, took the funicular up to the the Camera Obscura, and walked on the beach between trees that were part of a submerged forest at Borth.

I went to Nine Worlds Geekfest and wore a skirt made from floppy disks, watched Knightmare Live, attended an Audience with No Face, caught up with friends, danced at the disco, went to talks on subjects such as representation in dating sim games, diversity in heavy metal music scenes, video-games and mental health, depicting social media in art, and what a female friendly future would look like.

I had an amazing time at EMFCamp! Thank you so much to the organisers, the Gothic Valley village who I camped with, and all my wonderful friends I caught up with over the course of the weekend!

For those not familiar with EMFCamp, it's described as "a non-profit UK camping festival for those with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things: hackers, artists, geeks, crafters, scientists, and engineers." This year, it happened in Herefordshire.

Some of the things I did:
I played a game of Jet Set Willy on Matt's giant soft Spectrum keyboard by stepping on the keys!
A satellite was organised to pass over the site and one morning, we attempted to make a shape of a wolf and howled at the satellite as it went over.
I attended two brain interface workshops – one making a brain-computer interface to a phone from a circuit board, silver foil, bathing cap, and one making things happen with Scratch in response to data – such as the cat meowing and changing colour when the user is surprised.
Null Sector was one of my favourite parts of EMFCamp. Lasers and containers and fire and games and installations, and even Gavan's Jonty song played at the end!
Last year, I had a musical ballpit to look after, so only made it to one or two talks, but this year I went to lots of talks and they were all excellent! I went to talks on subjects such as: algorithmic light art; the future of invention; why the world needs a vagina museum; how to make a humanoid using a 3D printer, wheelchair and ROS; sex robots! The truth behind the headlines; Never mind the molluscs: (Mis)adventures in “aggro-rhythmic composition”; Poetoid lyricam: A camera that takes poems; computational creativity; the singularity: dance, digital ethics and datavis; open-source modular tech jewelry; making music in the free and open-source world; the art and science of the motivational corporate anthem; adventures in DIY electronic instruments; Things that go bump on the net; powerpoint karaoke; lightning talks; the knitting network printer; The making of TiLDA Mk4.

I ate dark chocolate and earl grey ice-cream.

I went to see comedy at the Comedy Store, with colleagues.

I organised karaoke with some of the women I work with, so I could pretend I was in Aggretsuko. We ended up singing many songs and dancing around with umbrellas and had a fun time.

I wandered around the Frieze Sculpture Park in Regent's Park with my mum and stared at sculptures.

I read Truisms aloud at the Jenny Holzer exhibition at the Tate Modern and stared at words and marvelled at her art.

I had lunch at the Hope with the Farringdon Lunch Club and ate a Kevin pie.

Ingress:

I went to the Ingress Enlightened London monthly social.

I started the Towers banner and this led me to see the Russian T-34 Tank on a street corner and it was pink again. I got stung by a wasp in Camberwell. I played a game of Guess Who at the Roebuck. I wandered through Peckham and ate samphire at Wildflower and had drinks at the Brick Brewery. I got a boat across the Thames to the Doubletree Docklands pier one evening to start the banner again where I had left off. I walked a lot in August and doing the Towers banner led me to many different places in London.