Glocal’s Digital Summer Camp for Youth in Surrey!

Writing by Jeremy on Tuesday, 29 of July , 2008 at 3:57 pm

The above image is an example of a participants’ response to exploring colour and motion using the Motion Sequence Application (MSA).

Hello Glocal Blog Readers!

Glocal just held a week-long intensive Digital Summer Camp that was hosted by both Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology and the Surrey Art Gallery.

22 Youth from Surrey were selected to take part in this free digital summer camp from July 14-18, 2008.

 Each day from the camp had different themes:

 

Day One – Students (such as Sarah Lae whose photo is pictured above) learned about the details behind Glocal’s various open source software toolkits.

 

Day Two – Students were then given guided workshops using the user-friendly computer programming language, Processing.

Day Three – Arduino camera hacking with the help of guest artist,  Daniel Jolliffe.  The cameras were hacked via labourious soldering sessions using Glocal’s custom-printed circuit boards.  Later in the day, the class went outside to neighboring Holland Park which was the site of Surrey’s Fusion Festival once the Summer Camp had finished.

 

Day Four – A special conceptual photography workshop was developed in order to educate the Students on ways they could stretch their imagination and make full use of the freshly hacked cameras and their newfound enthusiasm for Glocal’s Software Toolkits.  This included the 60-balloon cam made famous by one of Glocal’s committed volunteers, Byron Peters.  In the above picture, we have an example of conceptual photography by one of our Summer Camp participants, Stephen Golding.

Day Five – This final day at the Camp occurred at Glocal’s home-base, the Surrey Art Gallery.The Camp explored the surrounding Bear Creek Park region and tested out their own camera hacks and newly acquired software skills.

 It was out of these landmark sessions that such hardware devices as the Skatecam were researched and developed. This picture above shows Tyler Mast with his own Skatecam that he had built himself.  Other notable cams included the: Bikecam, Hamstercam and even the innovative Spray-Paint Cam (see below).

Please scroll down for more images from this camp…

 Shifting expectations, young girls made up the majority of youth selected for the camp through an on-line application process.

 

Digital Intern Dennis Rosenfeld worked with half of the participants of the Digital Summer Camp at a time to demonstrate how to “hack” open a digital camera. He then instructed them on how to intervene into the shutter system so that the wiring could be attached to the circuit boards which would allow the cameras to operate hands free.

Guest Artist Daniel Jolliffe worked with half of the participants of the Summer Camp at a time to teach basic electronic circuitry. Working in pairs, participants were shown how to use a soldering station and wire a circuit board from a circuit schematic diagram.

 

Mentoring Artist Jer Thorp provided a lecture on generative and regenerative art practices to students, providing an explanation of OpenSource software. ..  Jer then led the group through a basic introduction to the OpenSource programming software called Processing…. 

 

Students were able to design their own simple Processing program and to save images from their own program.

Participants were invited to use their creativity with the glocal software applications and to provide feedback to improve the functionality of the programs. Participants contributed over 4700 images to the glocal project during the Digital Summer Camp week, many of which provided enlightening insight into the capability of the software and the potential for an amazing exhibit in September 2008. The following image utilized the Multiple Exposure Application.

  
 

 The Digital Summer Camp finished with a participant project that utilized the skills acquired during the camp. The objective was to provide a series of photographs that utilized innovative photography. Initially, participants brainstormed possible ideas for their projects, which the glocal team will use to develop educational toolkits for educators. The following image represents one participant’s idea of innovative photography.

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Category: Summer Camp

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