On the 29th of January, 2012 I was asked to be a judge at the Global Games Jam at University Campus Suffolk organised by the staff of the B.A. Games Design course. It was a great event and the ideas were top notch, making the judging quite difficult.

It was also nice to see some of my former students and see how they are progressing as designers and their keeness to point out their use of sound in their new creations. More info on the event can be found here and here with details of the winners.

I wish them all the best and look forward to working with them in the future.

I was very fortunate to be asked to be one of the “cutting edge” developers at the Power of Minds Hack with Honda, organised by Rewired State, in one word it was” excellent”. The concept was simple get 23 developers of various talents (art, music, coders and designers) and 10 of Hondas impressive “Cultural Engineers” and explore Hondas well documented ethos. We had approximately 48hours to think up and demonstrate an idea/product/piece of art inspired by these philosophies.

I was involved in two projects, both inrelation to it deployment on the iPhone “bikeAlert” alongside Emily Christie, Sym Roe and Kevin Fong a system allowing HGVs to become aware of cyclists. You can read all about it here.

My pet project was “SonarCycle” a simple app that transmits a Bluetooth signal to cars alerting them of cyclist being near. You can read more about it here.

There were loads of truly amazing ideas and you can read them about them all here. Do look at the outcomes they are fantastic. Today we presented our ideas to a panel to compete for a prize fund to develop the idea further, fortunately “bikeAlert” won best Design! and will go before a public vote shortly against three very worthy ideas.

I really enjoyed myself it is the first of this type of event which just allowed us to get on with the work, food, accomodation and wi-fi were all sorted out for us, we just had to think and create. It was amusing for me being a Guardian reader to use the Guardian Newspapers office as a kind of hack-space and we certainly made it our home for the two days. I got to meet loads of lovely and talented people most of which can be found on Twitter. @thehodge (inspirational work, excellent bloke)  @rainycat (cool wearable technology, lovely lady) @Yummity (fellow designer, who shared several ideas on music making which was spooky),  @symroe (coder and fellow beard master),  @Kevin_Fong  (“our” cultural engineer and excellent converstionalist),  @lawrencejob (brilliant ideas, will undoubtedly do well), @1jh (made me feel old, but very hopeful for technology).

My only regret is I didn’t get to speak to more of them more, but in all fairness we all had excellent ideas to work on.

Thanks to @rainycat for the picture.

I ventured out to London today for the Young Rewired State 2011 Show and tell event at Microsoft, and it was amazing. The young coders were fantastic and their ideas were too. You can read all the info about the winners and their projects here, big thanks to Microsoft, Google, Nokia, Samfry.com, QA Apprenticeships for their support.

The Young Rewired State team was fantastic and Microsoft was wonderful to visit.

I was fortunate to run not one, but two Retro Game Design Workshops at The British Museum in London yesterday. Using specially created software using processing. I was able to limit the designers to 16 colours and sprites of 64X64 to give it that authentic retro feel. The game designs were varied and wacky as always.

In the final installment of the three lectures at Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge we looked at the history of video game sound and music from Asteroids to Audiosurf, from Donkey Kong to Donkey Konga, Pac-man to Vib Ribbon.  Looking how small a role music initially played in games in comparison to current day use and music based games.

The second half of the lecture broke down three Xbox 360 games, their use of music and sound as part of the narrative and  game play.

The session ended with a small bit of Foley work showing them how simple it can be to make sound effects for their films and video games using everyday household items, I look forward to hearing the feedback from the other tutors and to see if some of them take up the challenge to make their own sounds for their games. A big thanks to Steven Harris at Anglia Ruskin for organising the sessions.

In the second installment of the lecture we looked at Star War : A New Hope analysing the use of character motifs and instrumentation. We viewed the first ten minutes of the 1977 classic and took it apart bit by bit. Discussing how the music is used to both comment on the film and give clues to future events and connections.

Good fun was had by all very pleased the are turning up on time and “return in greater numbers” to quote Obi-wan.

Next week it is al about zombies, video games and the history of video game music.

I have recently been working with the first year Video Games Design Degree students at University Campus Suffolk over the last couple of months teaching them about video game and film sound, the first four sessions we looked at Star War Clone Wars cartoon’s use of sound, Star Wars: A New Hope for its use of music, and then several video games to discuss the use of sound within them.

It has been really good seeing a change in the students understanding and appreciation of sound and its role within video games.

For the last two weeks we are recording our own sound effects for new games using classic foley techniques, allowing them to not only create the sounds but get confident in using the recording equipment themselves.  Today we made a roaring fire, lasers, screeching doors, footsteps and sounds of flying objects whizzing by.

I look forward to emails they’ll be sending in about what they want to make in next weeks workshop.

I was fortunate to give a talk to first year Music Technology students today about the Internet, Music and more.

It was interesting to discuss the various techniques available to them to get their music out there and to share some of the success stories I’ve had and how could improve their chances of success.

A good bunch of students and a good range of questions from these first year students who are just starting out.

I wish them all the best success and I am sure I will be back soon to talk some more about circuit bending and more in the near future.

It is always good fun to talk to other musicians and you can find out more about their course here @ Suffolk New College.

Good fun was had by all and it was nice to meet several other artists making interesting things, I am featured in the video @ around 7:36 talking about “Childhood Remixed”.

I was fortunate to have a chat with fellow artist Mark Dixon and discuss all things electronic and creative this evening, it is always good to meet other artists,  especially when there is dinner involved.  I was shown around his studio (which I am envious of) and some of the projects he is working on,  so hopefully there might be some collobarations or at very least more chats like this in the future.