pixelraiders2, Sheffield Hallam University, SheffieldFor some visitors the conference actually opened a day earlier, attending a one day workshop with Casey Reas giving an introduction into his programming environment "Processing". Casey is a passionate and patient guy and the workshop gave all the participants a good overview. The examples were shown on the last days of the conference.
Malcolm McCullough opened up the first session of the main conference with an inspiring lecture on the necessity of deftness and tacit knowledge. He claimed that the days of "gentlemen don't operate machinery" are long over and that anyone had to learn and understand how applications worked today.
He quoted Annie Dillards "an American childhood" (to read the quote please select the cover thumbnail further down.)
As an example of tacit knowledge he reminded of a pianist. if you would ask him to explain what he was doing, or doing it consciously - he would be unable to play.
He also stated that one of the most remarkable thing is that even smart students lack knowledge of very basic things. Fact about nature etc. His statement was "Nintendo kids don't know that they don't know."
He also referred to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyis' "Flow Theory" and that we enjoy doing things because we already know how to do them. He introduced Stewart Brands "ISO/OSI model of paces" from (slowest) nature, (consciousness) culture, governance (infrastructure), commerce and fashion (the quickest.)
Alan Peacock spoke about a very intruiging project in which buoys that where far out on the sea created a sound scultpure which was triggered by the motions and tides of the ocean.
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