Today was good fun, I did a Super Chip Tune Samba band workshop at the BBC Blast event in Bury St. Edmunds with a local school group. They did really well, so well I rewrote song of the patterns during the lunch break and even let them come up with some themselves for the rest of the group to play. They were little troopers managing to play for four hours in total, which is incredible especially considering the temperature today.

The event was full of other activities like photography, stop frame animation and sound design, I ended the day with a performance and Q&A and good fun was had by all.

You can find out more details of the event and BBC Blast in general here.

“A Day At The Seaside” is a new interactive audio visual installation by Matthew C. Applegate / Pixelh8 at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh. The project sees several groups of school children visiting the seaside, some for the very first time and documenting their visits using digital cameras and audio recording equipment. The experience collected by all is woven into an interactive recreation, a digital beach.

Created by Matthew C. Applegate the project utilizes the talents of David Chatting (additional programming) and Mike Challis (sound recording) and the many school children from Beyton Middle School, Blackbourne Middle School, Thurston Community College, Cockfield Primary School and Great Barton Primary School who took part.

The project is Managed by Bella Scarr at Aldeburgh music and funded with generous support from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The installation is on display at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, in the prestigious Jerwood Kiln Studio between August 6th -14th.

We hope you will come and join us on our very special beach.

I had a wonderful time at the Vintage Computer Festival, the National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park, so many computers so many exhibits. I instantly fell in love with the a Vextrec computer once I saw and heard it in action. I got to see some of the collections from other museums like the Centre for Computing History who have some immaculate and rare computers and even Jim Austin’s Altair 8800 from his collection.

I was very fortunate to meet and chat with most of the speakers Chris Serle (The Computer Show) , Sophie Wilson (ARM processor and Acorn Computers) , Dylan Smith (the Tweeting spectrum) I even asked some questions during the Q&A’s for both Sophie Wilson and O.M.D. who gave an amazing Q&A and performance of some new songs and classics. The volunteers at the museum also took to giving presentations at the museum Peter Onion on the Elliott 803, Tony Frazer on the Witch, Delwyn Holyroyd on mainframes of the 1970s, Tony Sale on Colossus and our youngest volunteer Adam Bradley on the Cray series computers which the crowd loved.

I also gave two performances in the mansion which were good fun because of the small audience size, people could ask questions during, for the chip tune performance I even took them through the code for the visuals. The second show on Sunday was was a re-showing of Obsolete? and a Q&A which I am beginning to like doing more and more. For the rest of the time I was directing people round the museum and talking to exhibitors.

All in all it was a great weekend and good fun was had by all, I even picked up a second BBC Micro.

You can hear BBC’s Broadcasting House’s report on it here around 54 minutes in to the programs, also report on the event at the BBC Technology website here.

Very excited about being a part of the Bury St. Edmunds BBC Blast weekend, there are literally loads of activities for the 13-19 who wants to get involved and get creative, the events are free and I will be there with a Super Chip Tune Samba Band and to give a performance and lecture. Electronic dance music, fashion and film making it’s all here thanks to the BBC.

Facebook event page for my workshop here and main BBC Blast Bury St. Edmunds page here.

Image reproduced with permission see footer.

As a follow the Outriders radio documentary that went out Jamillah Knowles at BBC Technology put together an article on it, which ended up on the BBC front page next to some guy called Steve Jobs.

Again it features the excellent Simon Cottee director of Pixel – A pixel art documentary and the amazing Tristan Perich creator of the 1 bit symphony and you can find more information on their stuff on there too. You can read the full article here and listen to the podcast here.

Enjoy

Image reproduced with permission see footer.

Very pleased to be featured on BBC Radio 5′s Outriders took the time to have a closer look at Pixel Art and Chip Tune Music, I was interviewed alongside the excellent Simon Cottee director of Pixel – A pixel art documentary and the amazing Tristan Perich creator of the 1 bit symphony and I am very pleased with the coverage that this documentary brings to these areas. You can Listen on the radio on BBC Radio 5 it is broadcast on Tuesdays at 0300 in Up All Night or you can listen now online here. You can also have a go on a re-creation of the circuit bent NES at Childhood Remix here. Enjoy!