small quick pallet animal for Hackney Wicked Festival
Entries Tagged as 'portfolio'
impossible fireflies
June 27th, 2011 · No Comments · art, portfolio
This is a thermoelectric lantern using energy from one tea-light candle to power 6 high brightness LED fireflies who cluster round the flame. The combined light output of the LEDs is about 100 times more than the light output of the candle.
It’s constructed using a chip from an old 12v fridge, which normally uses electricity to create a temperature difference across its two faces. In a fridge, one side of this chip is kept at room temperature, and therefore the other side becomes colder.
In this project, we run this effect in reverse, heating one side of the chip with a candle, and allowing the other side to cool with a heatsink from an old Dell computer. So we generate small voltage which we then amplify to power the LEDs.
The lamp is made from an antique Chinese-made oil lamp. The oil fill valve on the back of the lamp has been converted into the control switch with 3 modes – FIREFLIES – OFF – HI-BEAM.
urban henge v1: equinox
March 23rd, 2011 · No Comments · art, portfolio
The movement of the Sun, Moon and Earth create the most fundamental rhythms for life on Earth. In modern city life, we live to different, man-made rhythms – the weekend, Christmas, or the last friday (payday!) of an arbitrary, non-lunar month. It’s even difficult to find natural calendars – city lights mean that the effect of the moon’s light is often unnoticed, light pollution blocks stars, and our line of sight to horizons is often blocked by the city skyline.
Urban henge v1: Equinox is a street art version of a neolithic calender which indicates the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox from the Sun’s position. A small discreet mirror is positioned so that at precisely 12:00 noon on each equinox, and on only these 2 special days, the sun is reflected exactly onto the trilithon (stones).
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temporosaurus: recycled pallet dinosaur fire sculpture
February 12th, 2011 · No Comments · art, portfolio
“temporosaurus” by Anthony Goh, 2011, 2.5m x 1.5m x 2.5m high, discarded pallets
Temporosaurus is constructed from unwanted forklift pallets. These pallets are temporarily rearranged to give life to a creature of myth – a tyrannosaur – whose purpose is to be ritually burned. From the audience perspective, the fire marks the start of the creature’s life, but as soon as it is lit and becomes alive, it is also simultaneously dying as the flames consume it. So it illustrates that to die beautifully whilst giving warmth and light to others is also to live fully.
Photography by Lucy Tanner
Escape [Mobile Phone Birds pics and video]
September 29th, 2010 · No Comments · art, london, portfolio
Some pics and video of our installation down at the V&A, also read about it at Not-fig and Creative Applications
Escape by Anthony Goh and Neil Mendoza from Neil Mendoza on Vimeo.
Birds [Objects] by Neil Mendoza from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.
Tags:art·birds·installation·mobile phones·tree·V&A
London Design Festival: Digital Design Weekend at the V&A on 25th & 26th September
September 24th, 2010 · No Comments · art, london, portfolio
UPDATE: see pics and vids of the installation in action here
This weekend at the V&A, there are a bunch of workshops, events, art and joining-in stuff that celebrate digital art and design. Me and Neil will be there all day Saturday and Sunday with some robotic birds constructed out of mobile phones so pop down and say hi if you’re around. We will be talking to anyone who listens about microcontrollers and hardware hacking(!) aka the language of love.
Mobile phone birds in construction phase
It’s all free. Other highlights include light graffiti workshops, Hidden V&A iPod tours, and toy hacking. Full programme here:
Digital Design Weekend at the V&A on 25&26th September
Tags:art·mobile phone birds·V&A
Haunted Typewriter exhibiting at Unleashed Devices show
September 13th, 2010 · No Comments · art, portfolio
Me and Neil have been working hard in the shed for a couple of weeks building a Haunted Typewriter. It’s a 90 year old typewriter which we have painstakingly totally automated, brought to life and given senses and personality, via a microcontroller, 30 odd actuators, and an aggravatingly large number of wires and little bits of metal.
It uses sensors to react to people who approach it or look at it and most of the time it is a fairly grumpy and misanthropic machine. You can see a vid of it in action here, in the final testing phases:
Haunted Typewriter typing from anthony goh on Vimeo.
Haunted Typewriter close up from anthony goh on Vimeo.
It’s part of an exhibition called Unleashed Devices at a gallery called Watermans, down in SW London, and the private view is this Tuesday the 14th September 2010.
From the Guardian write up:
“Unleashed Devices brings together students, hackers, designers and artists in an unusual exhibition of interactive sculptures, modified electronic toys and other hacked, mashed and open source works… The projects combine artistic communication with science and technology, robotics, computer vision, physical modelling and psychedelic manipulation techniques…”
There are some really nice pieces of work there, one of my favourites is a sundial that points itself towards any source of light, hence always telling the right time with its shadow. Exhibition catalogue is here.
We have almost electrocuted ourselves, set fire to a lot of things,
and fried many electronic components during the build, and it would be
good to see any of you for a drink (freebies) at the private view. Email me or call me if you’re thinking of coming down.
Haunted Typewriter at Unleashed Devices
Watermans 40 High Street Brentford TW8 0DS
1 September – 22 October 2010
12pm – 9pm daily.
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thermoelectric LED butterflies lamp
April 28th, 2010 · No Comments · art, nature, portfolio
This is a lamp made from scavenged parts which uses heat from one candle to generate electricity to power 6 ultra-bright LED butterflies. It’s a designed for someone who lives off-grid, so it can provide a bright white light source off just one tea-light. It uses the heatsink from an old Dell computer, and a thing called a peltier chip (converts heat into electricity) taken from a 12V fridge.
I was inspired by the amazing instructable from reukpower, and have made a few refinements to the way it all fits together. Pretty happy with it. The most cool thing about it is that the light from the LEDs is really really bright – much brighter than the light of the candle. Spooky huh?
close up of the butterfly – cut from a plastic bottle and painted
One thing that particularly pleased me is that it’s made from hardly any new parts. I only had to buy a transistor and some heat conducting paste.
you can see the circuitry underneath – it’s a circuit known as a joule thief, which sort of transforms the voltage from the peltier chip into something that can run the high-brightness LEDs
inside the tin cans – loft insulation surrounds the peltier chip (the white square)
the finished lamp/mobile
Tags:butterflies·eco·electricity·lamp·LED
Billie Jean LED Shoes
February 21st, 2010 · 1 Comment · art, fancy dress, portfolio
These are shoes attached to LED floor tiles, equipped with a pressure switch so that they light up when you step, just like the Michael Jackson Billie Jean video.
I had this project lying half-built around for ages, but lacked the will to finish it, as I went through this phase of being unable to do any fancy dress without getting a giant sinking empty feeling inside. In the end I’m glad I finished it, it’s one of the best outfits I have ever made. They are much fun/funnier that I thought they would be – people just start dancing around you.
My new thing for projects is trying to make them from as little newly purchased stuff as possible. For this project I had to buy the polycarbonate (£10), the LEDs (cheap – about £5) and the electronics (about another £5), but the shoes and wood are scraps/charity shop.
In the future I will modify them so that they have a “flash on and off” mode as well as pressure mode.
For those who are into it, you can see how they work on Flickr
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The Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race 2010
February 16th, 2010 · No Comments · london, nature, portfolio
Image from Michelle Bower
Just an early warning to say hold the date, The Goat Race is back, at Spitalfields City Farm, just near Brick Lane, on Saturday 3rd April 2010 (Easter weekend). Same day as a similar sounding sporting event.
Image from WowtheWorld
If you’d like to get involved with either the Goat Race, doing a stall or activity, promoting something, or the afterparty, get in touch.
I finally built a site for it at www.thegoatrace.org , and you can join us on Facebook at bit.ly/goatrace .
We are taking on board feedback from last year – more activites and fun surrounding the race, and a better organised afterparty. So stay tuned.
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my fragrance launch
January 22nd, 2010 · No Comments · advertising, portfolio
Those of you who know me a little better will know of my strange fixation with R&B megastar, Usher. So, thus inspired, I am turning 30 and to celebrate I have created my own signature fragrance:
30 – Pour Elle, Pour Homme. The new fragrance by Anthony Goh.
Yes, really. The fragrance has been hand made (by me and my mum) from scratch in extreme limited edition of only 50 bottles (10ml), all individually signed and numbered by Anthony Goh.
The bottles will be for sale at the launch event (a.k.a. my 30th birthday party!!) and all the money from fragrance sales will go to either Haiti Earthquake support or the Celia Hammond Animal Trust in Canning Town. Perfect for collectors or as a gift to a loved one. Facebook for the invite!
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How to make a terrarium
December 26th, 2009 · No Comments · domestic life, nature, portfolio
I had a spare lightbulb that I had hollowed out left over from another project so I made it into a terrarium for my mum for Christmas.
It’s very easy to make, you hollow out a lightbulb, then add regular soil, then stone or bark (I used bark) that has a load of moss on it. A dramatic rock adds good zen effect too – I used a chip of slate stolen from the garden centre.
No special tools required, though I used a few cotton buds to clean up the inside after all the soil had gone in.
Inpsiration from Instructables, one of the fewer and fewer remaining websites that bring me some form of joy.
The other good thing about this is that I still don’t really know what it is. I guess the nearest analogy is a pot plant, but it’s much cooler than a pot plant.
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video of our RFID art thing in action at the Science Museum
May 27th, 2009 · No Comments · art, portfolio
So I now have video from Neil of our installation in action. It’s built on our home made multi-touch screen, which allows users to paint or draw using their hands or an empty brush.
The idea is that users copy a picture and submit it. The software then creates an composite image based on all the submitted user images. As more and more people submit images, the composite image starts to look more and more like the actual image.
It’s based on the idea of the Wisdom of Crowds – a theory which basically states than in the right conditions, the averaged guess of a crowd will consistently beat any single expert’s guesses. An example of this is sports odds – the odds (which are formed by a huge number of people all guessing and hedging) are a more accurate predictor than any single expert, over time.
Sum of its pArts from Apex on Vimeo.
There’s also a write up and video of the Takeaway Festival 2009 here at Jotta, an online community arts portfolio site.
I really enjoyed working on this. it’s the first bit of interactive art, or in fact any art I have done. I was mostly surprised at how possible it is to build devices that on the outset seem impenetrably complex, and has given me loads of ideas for the future.
Here’s the posh write up of it.
Sum of its Parts
Brief Synopsis
The Sum of its Parts is an experiment in collaborative art. Over the course of an exhibition, participants take turns to reproduce iconic pieces of art. After each interpretation, the average colour is calculated for each pixel to produce the current collaborative work. This installation was exhibited at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre in May 2009.
User Experience
In it’s rest state, the installation cycles through the original pieces of art. Next to the original, the participants’ interpretations are shown being composited together. Once the composite reaches its current state, it pauses briefly before the next original is shown. Participants are instructed to touch the screen to begin. On touching the screen, they are presented with a selection of four works they can reproduce. They select one of the works by touching it at which point it grows to fill the whole screen. On touching the screen it fades away to leave a blank canvas the same colour as the background of the original. There is a menu that allows participants to see the original again, show a palette or submit their painting. After using their hands or a brush to interpret the original and selecting to submit, they see their painting becoming part of the collaborative work. The installation then returns to its rest state.
Tech Spec
Hardware
1 x Laptop running installation software
1 x Multitouch Table Sending TUIO signals over OSC
Multitouch setup for the installation at the Science Museum consisted of:
4 x 780nm 25mw laser
4 x 90 degree line splitter
1 x Unibrain Fire-I Monochrome Webcam
1 x IR Filter
1 x 150cm x 113cm sheet of Perspex
1 x Projector
1 x Sheet of drafting film for back projection
Software
The software for the installation is written in Java. The blob tracking was done using Tbeta.
Tags:multitouch·rfid·science museum
takeaway festival opening night tuesday 19th may 2009
May 13th, 2009 · 2 Comments · art, london, portfolio
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working with Neil and Simeon, building a giant collaborative art touch screen thing. It involves lasers, loads of wood, and cameras, and it’s been a nightmare to build so far. I have almost cut all my fingers off numerous times and accidentally shot myself in the eyes with high power infra-red lasers.
This is all for the Takeaway Festival – a fusion of technology, music and art – happening at the Dana Centre, SW London over a couple of weeks starting Tuesday the 19th May. It’s without a doubt the nerdiest thing I have ever been a part of, but it feels good.
I would love if it you came down to the Tuesday opening night (they have beer), or if you can’t make it, you can see our installation anytime after that for a couple of weeks. See the details below.
Here’s a picture of us prototyping the device.
Takeaway Festival Schedule
The Festival opens Tuesday May 19th with our first day of workshops and our Opening Evening 7.00-9.30
- The Exhibits and Interactives are open from Tuesday May 19th until Saturday May 30th
- Entrance is Free
- Exhibition finishes on Saturday May 30th 15:00
- Please note: The exhibition is also open on Monday 25th May (Bank Holiday)
Opening times: Monday to Friday 10:00 – 17:00
Saturday 23rd May 12:00 – 17:00
Saturday 30th May 12:00 – 15:00
For workshops and evening events you will need to book in advance so please call 020 7942 4040 or e-mail tickets@danacentre.org.uk
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Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race 2009
April 12th, 2009 · No Comments · london, nature, portfolio
I hereby declare the First Annual Varsity Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race to be a total success. An edited thank you note from Anne Hopkins, Goat Race co-founder:
Thanks to the 300+ of you who chose Goats over Boats on Sunday – it was awesome and ridiculous in equal measures and most importantly raised over £700 for the farm. Thank You.
Our favourite squat-legged friend, Cambridge, barreled in first on the day in front of the rather more willowy Oxford with a time of 52.6 sec. Go the under-goat!
We can’t get enough of giggling at shots of the goats muscling their way along the course, so please do send us your pics (simeonrose@gmail.com) or add them to the Facebook event page or put them up on the net and tag them goatrace2009.
Huge thanks to go to Cookie for his brilliant design work, Ben for winning tunes, Hal for race-calling and general fine-sportsmanship, Paul for playing Bookie, our nimble-needled knitters, La Fromagerie for the cheese (which Sam Williams won…eventually!) AND of course to the Spitalfields City Farm for letting us run with this random idea in the first place.
(Sorry about the drinks bungle, we were there with free booze but the pub wouldn’t let us serve it to you due to a miscommunication — we will make it up to you next time, promise!)
Anne, Simeon & Anthony
See the pics here on Flickr.
Anthony Goh http://www.deadinsect.co.uk
Abelha Cachaca http://www.abelha.co.uk
Anne Hopkins http://www.snap-shot-city.com/
Simon Cook http://www.made-in-england.org/
Pigsnoots http://www.myspace.com/dothedirt
Magic-ish http://www.magic-ish.com/
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The Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race 2009
March 12th, 2009 · 2 Comments · london, nature, portfolio
On the same day as a similar sounding event, Sunday the 29th March 2009, we will race two actual goats along a difficult, meandering course lined with cheering spectators.
It’s a charity event from Anne, Simeon, me (and Cookie and Nicky) to help raise money for Spitalfields City Farm, situated just behind Brick Lane.
So come down, browse Brick Lane market, cheer on the goats, and then we’ll all go to a nearby pub or bar for a free (or at least very cheap – I am negotiating with some places now) drink.
=====Programme=====
2:00pm doors open
Donation £3 to enter. (100% of all money taken goes straight to the farm).
Amusements:
** The Official Goat Race Bookie and Sweepstake
** Goatee competition
** Goats in Coats on Boats which Float in Moats Game
** Goat Hoopla
3:30pm The Race Starts
4:00pm Prize giving ceremony
4:30pm Afterparty
We retire to a nearby pub or bar, with DJ and a good drinks offer (likely a free cocktail) for those who attended the race.
=====Dress Code=====
Strictly: Black Tie, Rowing lycra, boat club jackets and ties, or goat.
=====Date and Location=====
Sunday March 29th
Spitalfields City Farm, Buxton Street, London, E1 5AR
Click here for map
Nearest tubes: Whitechapel 5 mins, Bethnal Green 5 mins, Aldgate East 5 mins
So that’s it.
It’s going to be loads of fun – if you want to come, why not get involved with the pre-race banter on the Facebook event page here.
If you’d like to be involved, running a stall, or helping out in any way, let me know too – my email address is on the top right of this blog.
See you there!!
Tags:goat race
blogger relations case study – handbag amnesty
November 12th, 2008 · 1 Comment · advertising, portfolio, thoughts
I’ve just finished doing a blogger relations campaign. By blogger relations, I guess what I mean is that no content or assets were created by us – no video, no flash app, no ‘viral widget’, or anything. Just a good old competition and an interesting message.
Client (handbag.com) wanted to raise awareness of Handbag Amnesty, a charity appeal involving auctioning celeb handbags on eBay.
We wanted to generate original unique, on brand, coverage, which would also provide link equity.
In a nutshell – we got 4 key fashion bloggers to run a competition for us, where they would ask their readers to blog for the chance to win a bag.
You can get the idea of by looking at this post here on one of the host blogs.
Results were excellent – with the only equity on our side being the charitable nature of the campaign, and four £250 hangbags – we managed to generate over 150 real, user-written blog posts about the campaign.
I really love working with smaller brands and campaigns, and am consistently amazed at how ROI often grows as budgets shrink.
Some things I learned:
Bloggers can be an incredibly helpful, positive bunch. People who blog and stick at it are overwhelemingly nice. The blogosphere is a nice place. I have ideas about why this is true, which I might write about later. Our call to action of helping to spread the word about a charity auction (even a heavily sponsored one) was as powerful as offering people free bags.
In some categories, there just isn’t the depth of blogs (yet) to be worth getting stuck into. If you’re having to change your campaign significantly just to get it onto the blogosphere, you should probably ask yourself why you’re doing this. There are many other good ways to use social media, depending on your goals.
There is a huge difference between commercial blog sites and blogs.
Blogs are 2-way, personal, conversational and link a lot to each other. This is what gives them their value to us marketers – we know people are engaging with them. We can see it from the comments and links. Commercial blog sites rarely get the conversational, 2-way thing.
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Abelha Cachaça UK – my new 39% ABV baby
November 3rd, 2008 · 4 Comments · abelha cachaca, portfolio
I haven’t had a lot of time to update this blog recently, for a couple of reasons.
1. I’ve been working freelance – just doing half days – which means that I don’t have a lot of extra time sitting in an office, which is the kind of time that you use for blogging, e.g. when you’re waiting for a meeting.
2. I’ve been working on this exciting new project which I can finally reveal. We’ve created and are launching a new brand of cachaça in the UK. For those who don’t know, cachaça is a sugar cane based spirit (a little bit like rum, but not rum) from Brasil. It’s the main ingredient of the world famous Caipirinha cocktail.
Our cachaça – Abelha Cachaça – is very different to most the cachaça’s you find on sale in the UK. It’s produced in the most traditional way using 100% natural ingredients at a farming collective in Bahia, Northern Brasil.
Pretty much everything is done by hand, to create the best possible tasting cachaça – this sometimes means that our process is slower, or less efficient but we think it’s the right thing to do. It’s produced in the same way that cachaça was made 200-odd years ago, and as a result of all this it has an excellent full and natural flavour.
Here’s a slideshow of the production process if you’re interested.
(It also happens to be organic and ethically produced, but I feel a bit preachy going on about it. It’s just booze after all.)
It’s been ages in the works, sorting out all the paperwork and so on, but we finally have the first batch in the country and out of the claws of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Right now, we’re working on getting listings (bars, restaurants and shops to stock us), and as soon as we have a good base of them, we’ll be doing lots of exciting consumer marketing. If you have any good contacts (people who manage or own pubs/bars, let me know). Or with any advice generally!
In the meantime, feel free to snoop around our website, check out our cachaça FAQ – don’t laugh, I had to build this thing with my own bare hands! We have a cachaça blog here too, so stop by.
By the way, you can get in touch with me (Anthony) on anthony@abelha.co.uk or 07815 776 215.
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brief 2008 – fun planning/creative event with free booze – thurs 17th July 2008, london
July 9th, 2008 · No Comments · advertising, portfolio
EDIT: I’ve known Ele for years since my glue days and so I am happy to say that her company Roome Consulting are sponsoring us. They help match people up with jobs in the digital creative industry, and they’re really nice.
I’m helping my friend Ash organise this night – come along – it should be really good fun.
It’s FREE, there’s FREE BOOZE, and we have some senior agency bods there who you can try and impress. If you’re interested email themonkeypuzzler@gmail.com go to our Facebook group, and start goading the other entrants. Even if you don’t want to compete, you should come down anyway to chat to people.
Here is the gist:
Brief2008 is an semi-serious ad-industry social event where teams answer and present back a brief in 2 hours, probably under the influence of alcohol.
=====Teams=====
that’s you guys – made up of planners, account men, creatives, PR types, designers, strategists and whoever else. Get involved.
=====Judges=====
are senior creatives and strategists from some of the best agencies in town. Confirmed so far:
Iain Tait (Founder, Planning/Creative Partner, Poke)
Amelia Torode (Head of VCCP Digital)
Ben Milligan (Head of Planning, Holler)
Richard Knight (Creative Partner/Founder, Mission21)
Rachel Lawlan (Director of Integrated Strategy, DLKW)
=====Where and when is it=====
At the Design Council, Bow Street.
Thursday July the 17th, 6:30 pm sharp.
=====What’s in it for people?=====
Free booze!
Chance to show off in front of senior people from top agencies.
A chance to meet other interesting people from all different sides of the industry.
=====GET INVOVLED=====
Email themonkeypuzzler@gmail.com , go to our Facebook group, and start goading the other entrants.
See you there! Ant
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recycled junk jewellery: tower hamlets safety glass earrings
June 1st, 2008 · No Comments · art, portfolio
I’ve just started doing evening classes once a week in silversmithing and jewellery making at the community college in Bethnal Green, just for fun.
I plan to make a series of 13 pieces of jewellery – one representing each Inner City Borough of London, using items I find on the floor in each Borough.
The first piece is these Sterling Silver earrings made from chips of car glass from an accident next to a bus stop on Grove Road, Bow, Tower Hamlets, London.
It was my first time trying to use silver wire like this. I was hungover as hell, and they took about 2 hours to make, but if I did them again, it would would take much less time. Pretty pleased with the result, the safety glass really blings well – much brighter than I thought it would be.
These ones aren’t for sale, but I could make a new pair if you want, or even something different. Any ideas for the next pieces also welcome.
PS
I found the silversmithing course via the Tower Hamlets Learning Ladder scheme which is brilliant, has a range of courses in all kinds of different stuff, from cooking to languages, and cheap too – a 10 week course is £85, compared to fees of £400+ for doing it at a name like St Martins.
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