Last Thursday I gave a short presentation at Eastside Projects about fizzPOP. There were a few presentations on the night, all of which focussed on what artists have been up to since their studies. Although I’ve been out of university since July 2007 fizzPOP has really been my main activity since then.

Photo by Nikki Pugh

What’s interesting about fizzPOP is that in many ways it relates to one of the aims of artists/art groups, which is to be part of/build a community and acquire their own space or studio where they can explore their practice.

Although fizzPOP did start off as being nomadic and taking place in pubs, bars and even around people’s houses we’re now in the much more fortunate position of being hosted by Friction Arts. Whilst not all hackerspaces would consider this an ideal situation what it does is give us that all important space for us to hold our activities and a central place for the community to meet.

From conversations with other artistic friends I’ve heard that one of the potential hazards of forming a collective in order to acquire space is finding committed people who are willing to put money and time into making the space viable. fizzPOP is no different. Regardless of the current economic climate there will always be problems in finding enough people to pay the rent, heating and electricity bills! However, the fizzPOP Howduino on Saturday proved that there is a community and interest in things like this.

We had a wide variety of people attend, some of whom knew very little about technology.

Some may consider making lights blink or generating random noise to be simple tasks, but for a beginner it opens a door to a whole new approach to their work. Being able to build a device from scratch or knowing how one works bring massive benefits to anyone.

You can read my slides below. There’s lots of stuff, including credits, in the notes.