WOW. I´m back from brazil since three weeks but thats the first day I really get into reflecting and posting about FILE festival and the SMSlingshot project in Brazil.

First: it was an amazing trip. We met so many new friends and saw even more interesting projects from all over the world that it´s hard to list everyone. FILE festival especially the awarded projects and the exhibited pieces at FIESP/SESI theatre are worth talking about. You can get the full report at the InterfaceBlog by Form+Zweck. It´s so much, that it might take while to cover all the projects.

FILE festival was divided into a few parts: We´ve been part of Paulista Interactiva, a curated bunch of projects that deal with interactive art in public space and were shown along Paulista avenue, one of the big main streets in Sao Paulo. During three nights we took our equipment consisting of three SMSlingshots, a massive 15.000 AL projector, and our laptop with the little camera and modem and stuffed it into a little combi van. Then we built everything up in the street and the people reclaimed their surrounding facades. Thanks to Daniel for his support and help! We won´t forget! The people, and the festival curators aswell, loved the SMSlingshot and so got the third prize in the interactive art category at the FILE PRIX LUX awards. Thanks for that one! We are also featured in the festival reader which is a brick of a book containig also a dvd with our demo-video.

Because FILE is more then just showing cool projects, we got the opportunity to give a talk during the symposium. The first time we declared the “act on hybrid estates”, our manifest for free access to public images. It was well appreciated and will be translated in portugues soon and published in shortened german version in the next weave magazine.

Finally I want to thank Gabrielle for the support, Daniel for the portugues training and the technical assistance, The whole FILE festival crew for making it possible to come over

Flights go on wednesday, nothing is packed, everything is dismantled and a slight feeling of stress is coming up.  But as always everything will work fine and we´ll be standing at Tegel with three realtime working SMSlingshots ready to be shown at the museum of modern art Sao Paulo, a perfectly worked out keynote lecture for the FILE symposium and enough sound, books and happy vibes to stand the long flight to brazil.

As you might now allready know, we are invited to show our SMSlingshot project during the FILE electronic art fesitval in Sao Paulo Brazil. We will show it at three different venues, one at MASP,  SESI theatre and in the streets. On the 27th of July we also give a talk at the related symposium to declare the “Act on Hybrid Estates” - our manifest on digital augmented urban space. And not to forget meet an incredible bunch of nice and interesting people. And Mojito showers every morning!

I will try to post the best projects we will see at the festival at the TUI^Blog by Form+Zweck design magazine. So drop by there from time to time and get the news!

Here are some snapshots from the groundation course presentation of this years summer term. The students were up to design an object that rises as high as possible from a one square meter plane of ply wood. The results were quite mingled but over all good. It is still not easy to learn how to make a moodboard, learn two different CAD softwares such as solid works and rhino with grasshopper in one time, plus a CAM software to mill the design afterwards. But they did well and managed to go through this rapid prototyping process with elegant struggling. Full respect. Because of all the new influences on the design experiences of the students, it is difficult to stick to designing in a manner of styling and shaping. It´s more a fighting with fabrication technologies that is somehow bonding the designing skills. However… again a nice term at the university of the arts in Berlin. It will have been the last one for this year because I will take a half year education sabatical to take care of my wonderful daughter and family.

I cordially invite you to the UdK Rundgang of this summer term at the upcoming weekend . There will be two foundation course projects to be seen that I hosted this year and several other interesting objects, installations and performances. The Rapid Up and Rapid Volume project were about to learn CAD/CAM techniques at our milling machine and CNC laser router. You will find the project results at the faculty of design in the rooms 116a/117.

I will give a talk at FH Potsdam on the 7th of july around 5 pm. It will be part of a interdisciplinary project of product designers, media scientist, urban planners  curated and organised by Susa Pop. The talk will be about our work in public space and the dangers and limitations of creating (inter)active art in public spheres. It will be a little brother version of the talk I will give in sao paulo in end of july! And it will be in german. So if you are around, drop by and join!

Tomorrow will be the record release party of the new DŸSE/Goldner Anker split single. For the 7″ I designed a wooden single adapter, displaying essentials of both bands: the Y of DŸSE and the Anchor of Goldner Anker. Every record is supplied with one. So come to their shows, get it because they fit in all 7″ singles! Even I do not have one copy yet so the record in the picture is a different one, as you might have alleady recognized..

All two bands will play tomorrow at the Chemiefabrik in Dresden/Germany. DŸSE is also on a european tour right now and will play several shows in Austria and at the Fusion festival. They are very worth checking out. Awesome band. Goldner Anker will play at the 20th of june during the BRN festival in Dresden. For those who miss the show tomorrow!

The SMSlingshot won the second prize at the Art of Engineering Award. We´ve been to Hannover Industry fair where the award was handed over. Strange situation, strange show, strange people but now we can go on in redesigning the installation and performance tools. Thanks to the LabBinaer guys for having so much fun anyway.