EVENT: wuthering bytes, a festival of technology

Technology festival Wuthering Bytes is happening again this year at Hebden Bridge and I am privileged to be a speaker there on the final day, Friday October 2nd.

Tickets are a tenner per day that you want to attend which is a really great way to do it so you don’t necessarily have to attend the full week – though by the looks of it there is something for everyone and a good variety of content, more information is available from the Wuthering Bytes website or from the Twitter account but here is a general overview of the days and content (not in order of days).

What’s it all about?

The festival of technology event Wuthering Bytes takes place from Saturday, September 26th until Friday, October 2nd.

  • Open Source Hardware Camp (talks)
  • Open Source Hardware Camp (workshops)
  • Festival Day
  • Open for Business
  • Intelligent Towns
  • Tomorrow’s People
  • Make, Do and Mend Technology Fair

The information that is on their website about my talk, as well as my profile, is here, but head over to their site to see the schedule of talks and events.

Hope to see you there!


Making smart objects to reduce anxiety in everyday life

Forget your keys? Wallet missing? Oh no, me too – now my day will feel ‘off’. Have you ever checked your bag more than once, wondering if you’ve packed those essential items? Or left home without them only to have a much more stressful day because you now are worried about it?

When I forget I feel bad, and I’m trying to alleviate these negative emotions and implications that affect our everyday lives. Can we create smart devices to help us to communicate what is in our bag?

Using an interactive tagging system, I’ll demo a bag that houses a radio frequency reader (RFID) that will let you know if you have your items or not. My talk will look at solutions to these issues, where the systems can go wrong and what can we do to make our objects smarter.


BIO:

Christine has been working in creative fields for many years. She loves to build physical systems using circuits and software, which may sense and respond to our relationship with a physical world. A focus on hardware devices being integrated into everyday objects that feel natural to the user (physical computing) is a priority and she has been making prototypes that satisfy both the practical and aesthetic needs that drive her. The last few years of her research has focused on forgetfulness, distributed cognition, embedded systems and HCI. In a previous life, she worked collaboratively with artists and received Arts Council and British Council funding.