Ada Fruit

Announcing the FLORA, Adafruit’s wearable electronics platform and accessories

Today we’re announcing our new open-source wearable electronics platform and series of accessories. We rarely announce something until it’s shipping to customers, but you’ll see a lot of these out in the world from our testers as they show off some projects – so we wanted to post about this now.

For the last few years Ladyada has been thinking about everything she wanted in a wearable electronics platform for Adafruit’s community of makers, hackers, crafters, artists, designers and engineers. After months of planning, designing and working with partners around the world for the best materials and accessories, we can share what we’re up to. The hardware is now in the hands of our staff and testers!

We call it the FLORA.

Adafruit created the FLORA from scratch after many months of research and we really think we came up with something that will empower some amazing wearable projects.

The FLORA is not the first wearable Arduino / Arduino-compatible. Leah Buechley’s LilyPad was developed in 2007 – we wanted to also make something that’s wearable, but it needed to be a completely new platform for our accessories/modules and goals for the project.

We’ll have updates and more big news soon in the wearable electronics space, so please stay tuned to the Adafruit blog. We have a product page you can sign up for soon, you can sign up to be notified when we have the first round of units ready. As always we’ll have great pricing for educators, resellers and hackerspaces.

We’ve put together a list of features/decisions that we hope will answer many of the questions about the FLORA. Please feel free to post up any questions in the comments. There may be some minor revisions to the hardware since we are in beta and working with our testers in the field. We wanted to share our thought/design process, we hope it helps others when designing hardware.

The FLORA FAQ

The FLORA is small (1.75″ diameter). We wanted the smallest possible board for our wearable platform.

It’s based on our experiences shipping our own, shipping, customer-tested Atmega32u4 Breakout Board.

The FLORA comes with projects at launch, the FLORA addressable and chain-able 4,000 mcd RGB LED pixels and premium stainless steel thread.

Here’s a quick video! (HD version).

The FLORA has built-in USB support. Built in USB means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up. No additional purchases are needed! Works with Mac, Windows, Linux, any USB cable works great. Currently the PCB comes with a mini B connector but future versions may change to microUSB. Either will work great.

The FLORA has USB HID support, so it can act like a mouse, keyboard, MIDI, etc. to attach directly to cellphones. Our iPhone/iPad/Android app coming soon.

The FLORA’s modules include: Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more.

The FLORA has a small but easy to use onboard reset button to reboot the system.

The FLORA is fabric friendly. The FLORA does not use FTDI headers (built in USB support) headers of any kind sticking out can grab and tear fabric.

The FLORA has an onboard 3.3v 100mA regulator with protection schottky diode and USB fuse so that power is consistent and can power common 3.3v modules and sensors.

The FLORA has onboard polarized 2 JST battery connector with protection schottky diode for use with external battery packs from 3.5v to 16v DC in. Can be used with LiIon/LiPoly, LiFe, alkaline or rechargeable NiMh/NiCad batteries of any size.

The FLORA does not have a LiPo charger included by design, this allows safe use with multiple battery types and reduces risk of fire as it is not recommended to charge these batteries on fabric.

The FLORA has onboard power switch connected to 2A power FET for safe and efficient battery on/off control. Often FETs are not included in other designs that leads to switch failure as small SMT switches are rated for only 20mA current use.

The FLORA power system is specifically designed to allow easy control and power of a large quantity of digital RGB LED pixels such as the FLORA pixel series of accessories.

The FLORA is extremely beginner-friendly – it is difficult to destroy the FLORA by connecting a battery backwards due to polarized connector and protection diodes. The onboard regulator means that even connecting a 9V battery will not result in damage or tears.

The FLORA has 4 indicator LEDs: power good, digital signal LED for bootloader feedback, data rx/tx.

The FLORA has an ICSP connector for easy reprograming for advanced users.

The FLORA has 14 sewing tap pads for attachment and electrical connections. Data buses are interleaved with power and ground pads for easy module and sensor attachments without worrying about overlapping traces which are not possible with conductive thread.

The FLORA works with the Adafruit-fixed Leonardo bootloader (not released) and will work with any future released Leonardo-compatible bootloader. FLORA is currently using our Adafruit bootloader and Adafruit USB vendor ID.

The FLORA comes with Adafruit’s support, tutorials and projects. Adafruit has dozens of projects that will be released with the FLORA in 2012 and has staff 100% dedicated to creating tutorials and projects for use with the FLORA.

The FLORA is made in NYC at Adafruit, it was designed by Limor Fried (Ladyada) she is an Electrical Engineer with a proven track record of providing over 26 high-quality libraries for Arduino/Arduino IDE, over 100 tutorials, open-source code and contributions to the Arduino project. She was a member of the MIT wearables group and likes to sew.

Mala y su latin Flavor

Mala at Work on New "Cuban" Album

• Words: James Eaton at xlr8r.com

In a recent article on Clash, the online culture hub reports that dubstep diety Mala (whoseXLR8R podcast we still can't stop listening to) is finishing up an album he recorded with Cuban musicians. Apparently, the DJ/producer was coerced by Gilles Peterson, who has been traveling to the island nation for several years, to make the trip. As the Brownswoodlabel head and BBC radio host explains, "I basically took Mala over [to Cuba] with me and we spent the first few days recording Latin rhythms and we took those back to the UK and he’s been working on that. We went back and made the album, but when I was making the album I would be in studio one and all the musicians would come through and play a straightforward type of album. Then when they were done with me they would basically go through and see him and he would do his interpretation of the Cuban thing for his own album, which is going to be coming out in February." Peterson went on to say he has another chapter of his own Havana Cultura project in the works, which will reportedly drop around the end of February or beginning of March. Needless to say, word of a new full-length LP from Mala has our attention absolutely piqued, and we'll be bringing you any and all updates once they arrive.

John Foxx and Benge MR. YES

John Foxx: Mr. Yes In conversation with the synth pop pioneer and his current collaborator, Benge. The final track on John Foxx's 1981 single, Burning Car, was called "Mr. No." And you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was the man's theme song. Whether it be leaving a band at the exact moment they were primed for stardom (Ultravox) in the late '70s, going it alone on legendary synth albums like Metamatic and The Garden or withdrawing from music altogether in the '90s to pursue graphic design, Foxx has been more than willing to play Bartleby time and time again. Turn it around, though, and you have a guy who has had the courage to walk away. A guy who can't help but hate to do the same thing twice. A guy you can also call Mr. Yes. At this past year's Unsound Festival, we talked to Foxx alongside his current collaborator Benge as part of RA's Live Exchange series. The duo had recently put together an album, Interplay, that formed the basis for our conversation. Typically eloquent, Foxx was so engaging that we decided to edit and condense it for publication. Speaking with RA's Todd L. Burns in front of a crowd, Foxx and Benge touched on their partnership, the creative process and the power of the bass drum. The new record is a return to synth pop in a way for you. I am wondering why now? Why was this the right time to revisit this space? John Foxx: It was an accident in many ways. Benge made a record called Twenty Systems, in which a lot of synthesizers sounded like themselves. What I mean by that is that they didn't imitate any other instrument. I think it is a great sickness to try to imitate orchestras or bells or something specific. I think that this is a misuse of the instrument. What Benge was able to do was that he allowed them to make sounds that no other instruments could make, and therefore allow them to sound like themselves. When I heard that album, I wanted to work with him and to make some abstract music with him, but it didn't quite work out.  At what point did you realize it was turning into a more "pop" project? Benge: Halfway through the first track I think.  John Foxx: Once we had set up something on the Moog, we let it run by itself and produced a rhythmic loop, and we were able to produce a song immediately. You have the melody, you have rhythm and you have harmonic intervals that lend themselves to layering. So I instinctively started started to sing along with the machine, which is a lovely way to work: the machine leads. The machine takes precedence. All you do is listen to what the machine produces. Benge would set up things, and it was delightful to respond to it. John, were there any lyrical themes that seemed to recur throughout the album? John Foxx: Yeah, I always seem to write about the basic level; a man, a woman and a city. It's because I am an urban creature most of the time. I think that's increasingly relevant now because I think most people do live in cities and I think it is very interesting what happens in that environment. We alter ourselves constantly to live in it, to survive in it and that process has very poetic levels. I don't want to sound pretentious, but it is very moving the way people accommodate each other and the city that they live in, and try to build this environment together. You almost have to dissolve yourself, re-incorporate yourself with the city in order to make it work on any level. All those tiny interactions and the major draws and minor draws that result from all that. I find it endlessly fascinating. I could sit in a cafe all day and some times I do. It's like being part of a beautiful ocean that is constantly moving. A lot of what I sing about is trying to describe some of that process.  I've read you talking about the importance of acoustic space in your work. I was wondering how that came to play in this album if at all. John Foxx: We weren't so concerned with it because I think everything is artificial in some way.  Benge: One of the rules is that we didn't use any plug-ins. Everything had to be a real effects unit. But we did try and keep the production side of it quite raw. We kind of felt like it was a very important part of the overall tone of the record. I am quite proud of the rough edges.  John Foxx: Imperfections were part of the philosophy because I hate perfected music. I detest anything that is overworked. When you see a painting that is perfected and finished, and there are no marks of a brush on it, I always find it very oppressive to see. It is painful, it is never a pleasure. If you see a Degas for instance, you see the gestures and the movements that are being left and it is another dimension but it is very important to the picture I think.  I was in art school before I started and saw friends of mine just destroying themselves because they wanted to reach some kind of perfection so I was determined not to do that. Some people want everything to be perfect, they want their clothes to be perfect, their mind to be perfect, their hair to be perfect, and they are perfecting themselves out of their relationships. I don't want to. I have been there, and I'm not going back. So it is important to me to be imperfect, and it is a skill. I reached imperfection quite naturally. [laughs] If I reach perfection accidentally, I will consider suicide. Benge, how long did the recording process take?  Benge: It was over a year altogether, not every day but it was quite a lengthy process, because neither of us had any material that we had brought along, we kind of developed the whole thing together as we went along.  Have you found yourself inspired in your own solo work? Benge: John got me into this idea of not working to so much of a fixed sequencer timeline. The work I'm doing recently on my own is completely free flowing from that. You smile as he says that, John. John Foxx: Well, it's just because electronic music is locked into sequences and people feel they have to lock things into that sequence. But if you sometimes disobey that rule, you get something quite fluid and interesting and you can interact in a different way. It is great to get something mechanical or something stripped—a framework. And to make organic movements inside that is essentially what we did. You can do fantastic things as long as the engineering can support it.  What are some of the things that you listened to when recording? Benge: Arthur Russell, who was working in New York in the early '80s. He was someone that was making disco, but then putting this crazy kind of cello on top. It was almost like he went down some cul-de-sac and went somewhere that was forgotten about basically. John Foxx: I always felt that with every artist, you can hear a song or a recording they made that leads you to think they could have gone a different direction, so I am fascinated by those moments. Particularly with Kraftwerk when they put out this song called "Neon Lights." It seemed to indicate they were taking a path of almost like a modern Frank Sinatra. It was a ballad form, and it was really emotive. It seemed like a development was about to take place, and then it didn't. I think Kraftwerk exhausted their particular stream along the way. And I do not mean that in any unpleasant way. I think they're geniuses, and their music is fantastic. People do run out of ideas, though. And that one seems to be a wasted opportunity. You can see that in the work of painters or filmmakers as well. It's these moments I try to identify in anyone's work and my own to see where I might have gone if I was being intelligent or receptive enough.  "If I reach perfection accidentally,  I will consider suicide." That begs the question, looking back on your own career... John Foxx: Oh, every moment. When I used to work with a string guitar I could have made just ambient music and explored that in 1977, or I could have been a pop musician pure and simply. We all have those moments where we wake up at 5 AM and think, "Oh, if only I had married Marianna!" Music is very much like that. You make choices all along, and the trajectory we have is sometimes determined by finances, accidents or chance meetings. That is what makes it so interesting.  You mentioned Kraftwerk exhausted their stream. Do you feel like you have exhausted your stream, and do you worry about that? John Foxx: No, because I think if I do, then that's it. I will do something else. I don't mind exhausting it. I tend to love limitations, because you can't do anything without choosing limitations to work inside of. The worst thing is when you have too many choices. You can also inhibit your work by making your limitations so strict that you resolve the space between the limitations, and that is a danger as well. You need some limitations that can accept some alteration.  Benge: Part of the reason you can be creative is you collaborate so well, because it does keep you going. The thing with Kraftwerk is that they haven't collaborated as well. It's just those four people, and I think collaboration keeps it fresh.  John Foxx: I think that is very true. I am a social being, I like to work with other people, and you find that when you bring two elements together you get a third mind. Two people together means you get this third mind which is really strange and interesting, because it doesn't belong to a single person. It is a result of a collaboration.  At this point, the discussion was opened up to questions from the audience. One audience member asked about some of the drum machines used on the album. Benge: In fact, there are really only two machines that John really uses and we still have them in the studio. They have such a specific sound to them, especially people like us that are really geeky about those things, you can't really recreate in any other way so we are very particular about getting that exactly right.  John Foxx: The two things I have to say is that Benge plays wonderful drums and synth kits over top the drum machines as well, so there are two layers of drums. But drum machines… I don't want to bore you to death, but I think drum machines are wonderful because they can play things that drums can't play. They can play faster or slower or in time, and effect them very quickly. You can respond to a drum machine almost as quickly as you can with the drum that is played by a human being. What the bass drum does is it reproduces the human heartbeat. And we learn this from the womb. We synchronize our heartbeat with our mother in the womb. When she is excited, we get excited too, the heartbeat rises and falls and ours as well.  So it is a very basic human function that we synchronize our heartbeats with what is happening around us and other people's heartbeats oddly enough. So when you get into the situation where there is this big heartbeat in a dance environment, we all synchronize with that beat as though it is our mother. That is why we love big soundsystems that have this big bass, because we are back in the womb and synchronizing with our mother, and if you accelerate that gently then you accelerate your own heartbeat. Essentially, any kind of dance event is a womb situation. Original Article at: http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1480

Francis Ford Coppola, TWIXT

FIFTY24SF Gallery, in association with Upper Playground and American Zoetrope, are pleased to announce TWIXT sc. 83, an exhibition and installation coinciding with legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s newest feature film, Twixt. The exhibition opens January 13, 2012 with a public reception at 7PM.

Over his past three films, Francis Ford Coppola, famed director of The Godfather trilogy andApocalypse Now, has set-out to create self-written, self-financed, self-produced, and self-distributed films with his own intimate crew. Developed through personal experiences, a love of American Gothic, Edgar Allan Poe, and Coppola’s own trials as a horror genre author.

Working within their own self-financed restraints and freedoms, the team behind Twixt had the unique experience of researching and building sets in and around Coppola’s home in Northern California. Many of the sets were built in Coppola’s backyard, while some required the small town backdrops of Northern Napa and Lake counties. In keeping with the original spirit of American horror, some scenes were created with intentional kitsch, while some dream sequence were shot with highly-detailed, ornate sets and original post-production work.

For TWIXT sc. 83, members of Twixt‘s tiny tiny Art Dept, (Jimmy DiMarcellis, David Hopp, and John Paul Goorjian) will be rebuilding the set of the film’s dramatic climax sequence, scene 83. The center of the gallery will feature a remake and stand-alone installation of the film’s clock tower, shown in the film as an impromptu 3D experience. Also on display fromTwixt, will be bat and birdhouses from Nice, California artist John Hathaway, whose front yard/gallery/shop “The Woodpecker”, was a key set in the film. TWIXT sc. 83 will also feature a series of other pieces from the film’s set department that were found around different locations in Northern California and in the Coppola archives, as well as behind the scenes photography by the film’s executive producer, Anahid Nazarian and set photographer, Kalman Mueller. The gallery will run trailers of the film, along with other enhancements to bring Twixt‘s horror scenes to life.

Article found at http://www.upperplayground.com/blogs/fifty24sf-gallery-american-zoetrope-present-twixt-sc-83

Text edit by K. Vidal Alfonz

Soñando lo Mismo desde Puerto Rico

Todos queremos paz, amor, felicidad, seguridad, estabilidad etc. pero muy pocos hace algo por el motivo y mucho menos el hecho. Aquí nuestros amigos de ESPAÑA: Madrid, Caterina Amodio, Pablo Madrazo, Barcelona, Leticia Rita, Enrique Santos, Bilbao, María Loroño, Canarias, Besay Fernández, BRASIL,  Erika Faria, MÉXICO,  Rossana Rojas, PUERTO RICO,  Gabriela Puig y el mundo. Están haciendo mucho más que la palabra hacer, ellos están creando, y no solo a nivel artístico, también en lo cultural. Aquí les presento un Video de nuestros amigos en Puerto Rico. Todos merecemos un cambio y una oportunidad a vivir mejor.

Michel Gondry as the Taxi Driver

Always a Plus for Michel and  his creative hilariousness!