Festival Day

Friday, 2nd September 2016

9:00am — 9:30pm The Town Hall, Hebden Bridge

Time
09:20	Welcome Getting Wuthering Bytes 2016 off to a start with a welcome from compère, Dr Laura James.
09:30	Dr Lucy Rogers Hacking Robot Dinosaurs Come and hack our dinosaurs" – how could I resist a request like this? How I tamed dinosaurs and can train anyone to keep them under control.
10:10	Dave Lynch Project Nimbus: The projection of Moving images onto Clouds from Aircraft In 2015, Project Nimbus achieved the inaugural projection of moving images onto clouds from aircraft. The image — Horse in Motion - Muybridge 1878 — is a shared cultural reference between art & science. Inspired by a proposed US military non-lethal weapon, the Laser Zoopraxiscope is an open source cloud projector, combining historical & innovative projection technologies. Since the initial report in New Scientist, Nimbus was nominated for the Ars Electronica STARTS Prize in 2016 has been covered worldwide including BBC, wemakemoneynotart.com, Smithsonian Magazine, Engadget and even sparked its own conspiracy theory. Beyond the spectacle, genuine collaboration, driven by the role of art as research and underpinned by the triad of art, science & maker cultures involving aviators, technologists & cultural specialists, was inspired by the power of an idea & joy of risk - currencies beyond money. Through a pioneering, 4 year journey of art/science enquiry and rapid prototyping are revealed moments of apparent physical impossibility, demonstrating the fragility of inspiration. The blurring of art, science & maker cultures encapsulates the spirit of innovation & optimism that pervades research practice. Project Nimbus was created by Dave Lynch, Mike Nix & Aaron Nielsen.
Tea/Coffee Break
11:00	Rachel Coldicutt Prototyping for Public Good Can small prototypes help us to understand big systems? And can working quickly teach us about long-term change? Rachel will talk about the challenge of making really good new public services at Doteveryone.
11:40	Phillip Roberts The Magic Lantern at the Turn of the 19th Century A short history of the magic lantern at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. At this time the magic lantern was one of the most important modes of disseminating images and was a key part of a transformation in visual storytelling that took in a wide range of media and cultural formations. At the end of the 18th century the lantern was used as an entertainment device by traveling entertainers and in a variety of small-scale exhibitions in the home, at fairs and other small venues. It had a low reputation as a device of itinerants and charlatans, having long since lost its association with experimental science. The lantern market began to change in the first few decades of the 19th century as the lantern was taken up by new manufacturers and sold as a consumer novelty to the increasingly affluent middle classes. This forced a transformation in the lantern market that coincided with a wider series of changes in visual media, as devices such as the kaleidoscope and thaumatrope, and exhibitions such as the panorama, cosmorama and eidoranium, expanded optical media into new modes of exhibition and consumerism. This had the effect of shifting these forms of visual media away from popular storytelling traditions towards a new consumer culture driven by middle class spending habits. This is drawn from analysis of material artefacts held in the National Media Museum, Science Museum, Bill Douglas Museum and elsewhere. My work addresses the clustering of different forms of media into constellations of materials and practices. I will show that there is no history of the magic lantern (or of scientific instruments, optical media, popular exhibitions or consumer toys), but rather many multi-stranded histories that connect and intertwine and cluster about particular historical moments.
12:20	Hwa Young Jung Northern Powerhouse: A Text Adventure Game Northern Powerhouse: Last Towns Standing is an online art commission by artists Re-Dock, working with young individuals aged 13-25 from across Burnley, Wigan and Hull to create an online adventure game about the North. Set in the year 2065, the sci-fi dystopian story was created over a year with the young people experiencing a range of workshops that explored DIY cartography, world building, creative writing, making objects and programming to bring their world to life. Text adventure games are a form of interactive fiction, using software to simulate non-linear narratives. The format has the potential to cross over into diverse interests between gamers, writers, readers and creators. An accompanying touring exhibition Northern Powerhouse 2065 of ‘artefakes’ from their imagined world in currently touring libraries across the North.
Lunch
14:00	Giles Edwards What does mass spectrometry have to do with me? Mass spectrometry isn't just a mind boggling pastime for the egg heads; it is simply a method by which the mass of atoms or molecules is determined experimentally. Mass spectrometers have been used for some fascinating applications in our world like measuring pesticides in carrots, testing for steroid use in athletes, the authenticity of Manuka honey, neonatal screening and carbon dating to name but a few. Mass spectrometry is one of the most powerful and versatile analytical techniques available today with unsurpassed speed of analysis, sensitivity and selectivity that can precisely determine the identities and quantities of compounds within a sample. Mass spectrometers have been sent on numerous missions into space and are used to determine the composition of terrain or the atmosphere of various celestial bodies including monitoring the air quality on board the international space station. More locally, Professor Grenville Turner from Todmorden developed the argon-argon mass spectrometry dating technique to determine the age of lunar samples returned by the Apollo missions. Starting from the basics of what constitutes an atom, the periodic table of elements and ending with a practical based session analysing some simple small molecules such as paracetamol and caffeine. The electronics that drives a liquid chromatography tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry system (LC/MS/MS) will also be discussed and on display for a hands on practical session.
14:40	Irini Papadimitriou Digital Futures: art & design in a hyper-connected world Artists have always had a pioneering role in being the first to reflect on our society, culture and technology, but also help us engage with contemporary issues. In current times of technological developments of unprecedented speed and a world flooded with information, artists and designers respond and reflect on the future impact of technology on our society, raising awareness about our power and powerlessness in the age of digital information.
Tea/Coffee Break
15:20	Geoff White (Channel 4) The Secret Life of Your Mobile Phone A unique and fascinating journey into the private life of a gadget you thought was on your side. Afterwards, you’ll never look at your phone in the same way again… The Secret Life of Your Mobile Phone is a live stage performance using cutting-edge interception technology to reveal the people, places and companies your phone is talking to behind your back - and what it's telling them.
16:10	Seb Lee-Delisle Glowsticks, Lasers and Making Art with Code Seb Lee-Delisle takes us on a fantastic journey through creating art with creative code. From mass participation interactive glow-stick games to large scale public digital laser fireworks and much, much more. The possibilities are endless.
16:50	Andy Finney Catching up with Domesday or ‘Whatever you do, don’t be too early’ Beeb boffins decide to use obsolete technology’, is what the Sun said about the Domesday Project … many years after the project discs were published in 1986. Of course at the time the technology was cutting edge but it has since become a useful example of digital obsolescence (even though most of the content was analogue). Andy Finney, who was technical lead at the start of the project and went on to produce some of the content, will discuss the context and thinking behind the project’s technical decisions and how, many years later, mass-market technology finally caught up with ... and exceeded ... Domesday’s vision.
17:30	Amy Mather The Making of a Mini Maker With the help of Manchester’s tech community, 17 year old Amy Mather has grown into an active STEM ambassador and all-round tinkerer. Her journey began with a random act of kindness that provided her first Arduino and has seen her address an audience of over 10,000 people. Now a dab hand at public speaking, her talks and workshops have introduced hundreds of children and adults alike to the worlds of Programming and Making. In this talk she will detail her journey from that very first Arduino, right up to her Mission to Mars* and all with a homemade dinosaur hoodie thrown in for good measure! *via the BBC Micro:Bit
18:00	Lightning Talks Sign up on the day! The bar also opens, with a selection of local ales and other drinks available :o)
19:00	The Legendary Wuthering Bytes "Happy Valley" After Party Dave Ives (Red Tin Tunes), Mark Tranmer (Gnac, The Montgolfier Brothers), Richard O'Brien (Vespertine Records). Playing folk to electronica, dream pop to space rock. Food will be available from the cafe.