Here are some of our favourite photos from Feral Vector 2015. It was fantastic to do a videogames event in a venue flooded with daylight, near beautiful outdoor spaces.
See more on our flickr stream.
Thank you!
We have a heap of thanking to do, and a few links to pieces people have put up about Feral Vector. We thought it would be worthwhile to do a thing in a beautiful venue near good countryside and outdoor space. It, and you, exceeded all of our expectations. Soon, we’ll have a heap of photos and videos to post too.
Firstly, thanks so much to Jo Summers and Ross Fowkes for their tireless hard work in making Feral Vector happen. Without them, it would be impossible. The Birchcliffe Centre, particularly, Libby, for providing an excellent, airy, daylight flooded venue for people to talk, play and make things in. It felt like a massive breath of fresh air compared to most. Our hardware sponsor Boneloaf, Tea sponsor Sheridans, Thing sponsor Twisted Tree Games, and media partners A Maze and Ga-Ma-Yo. You all helped enormously in the run up to the event and let us do things we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. William Pugh, Dominik Johann, and Kevin Patterson for making things beautiful, trying so many event things out for the first time there, and keeping us entertained. An awful lot of you jumped in to help with things from tea making to signage and cleaning up; thank you all. We really couldn’t hope for a lovelier audience.
You can catch up with a lot of what happened over the weekend on this storify. Here too are a few things other people have done. Emily Short wrote up some of her favourite moments on her blog, Jake Tucker wrote about it for Vice, and Abi Wright made a short video about it:
Workshops 2015
Our workshops for next week are below. Expect to make stuff, learn stuff, and go on walks. Spaces are are limited so we have a booking system, for which a link and link and password will be sent out to ticket holders only, first thing on TUESDAY 26th.
George Buckenham: Making Twitter Bots
Twitter bots are a weird little things that can do all kinds of stuff. They’re now going far beyond the Markov chain _ebooks bots of a few years ago. George will teach you how to make your own, with a little help from Harry Giles. Some of our favorites at the moment are @pixelsorter, which takes the pixels in any image you tweet at it and makes them into a new image.
@tiny_astro_naut, which uses the output of another bot, @tiny_star_field, as its input.
@massconnect4, which takes input from teams of people @ing it, then renders the board using emoji.
Also the kind of, probably NSFW, but hilarious @suxting.
Alex Johansson: Cardboard Beats Keyboard
An introduction to building custom hardware. Using MakeyMakeys and a whole heap of cardboard, Alex will show you how to wire a prototype controller up and get it talking to your computer as if it’s a USB keyboard.
Ed Key: Botany Walk
Ed Key will take you walking on a short loop through the nearby woods and lanes, peering closely at, smelling and tasting plants that you find, whilst avoiding being poisoned. The discussion will also include thinking about what wilderness and wild growing plants mean. Learning about the environment they’re growing in as an emergent system, but perhaps also about running wild from cultivation or avoiding the strimmer. Beyond the physical, once we can identify plants, a web of folk-names and forgotten uses becomes visible… Make sure to bring sensible footwear if you book for this.
Harry Giles: Gamepoems
If you’re a writer, if you enjoy playing with language, if you like the idea of playing Mornington Crescent, this workshop may be for you. Gamepoems are en emerging experimental form that some game designers are playing with. Gamepoems are not restricted to mischief or being silly, but our latest favourite example is definitely CORSON.
Gareth Briggs: Political Football
An actual game of football, but with different rules. It’s a game about the relationship between performers and audience, and parallels from that and between designer and player, politician and voter. Like the nature walk, bring sensible shoes that you wouldn’t mind getting a bit muddy. Studs not required.