Tag Archives: @wagongrrl

February 27, 2022 · 12:42 pm

Gathering my notes and tweets from yesterday’s mycelium workshop at @GenspaceNYC (organized by @STEMteachersNYC)… #STEMintheCITY #scichat #STEMed

Yesterday, I met up with Tracy Rudzitis and Don Buckley for a workshop at Genspace in South Brooklyn. Here’s some info about Genspace copied from their website:

Genspace is the world’s first community biology lab — a place where people of all backgrounds can learn, create, and grow with the life sciences.

Since 2009, we have served the greater New York area by providing hands-on STEAM education programs for youth and adults, cultural and outreach events for the public, and a membership program to support New York’s community of creatives, researchers, and entrepreneurs. Our programs demystify scientific processes, provide a platform for innovation, and cultivate the next generation of life sciences leaders in emerging global technologies, such as biotechnology, neuroscience, epidemiology, genomics, and many more.

The mycelium workshop yesterday was organized by STEMteachersNYC as part of their annual STEM in the City initiative. Here’s some info copied from STEMteacherNYC’s website’s About section:

STEMteachersNYC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting a community of STEM teachers across the NYC region. Our mission is to cultivate excellence in STEM teaching and to promote deep understanding and success for students through innovative, teacher-led professional development. Our weekend workshops are offered during the school year and multi-week workshop intensives occur in the summer, led by master teachers. We welcome and encourage teachers from across the globe, the US, and the local New York City area!

** Here is more info about the STEM in the City initiative and some upcoming opportunities: https://stemteachersnyc.org/category/stem-in-the-city/

I am totally grateful that STEMteachersNYC organized yesterday’s site visit! Tracy and I are self-proclaimed PD addicts, and while we have participated in many online offerings over the past two years, we much prefer being in-person, exploring together, and continuing the conversation at a local watering hole. When we entered Genspace’s lab, we were able to examine a bunch of materials and projects laid out for us. Don and I particularly loved the examples of leaves imprinted with artwork to highlight the process of photosynthesis(!!). I always appreciate an opportunity to explore a lab/makerspace to see how supplies and works in progress are organized — and I’m now considering ways to hack my tables to include storage below. Also on display at Genspace was the OpenTrons Project robot liquid dropper that began as an independent exploration in the lab but is now commercially available!

Mycelium is a biodegradable fungal material, and during a brief presentation before the hands-on portion of the workshop, we talked about how mycelium is used to create shipping packaging (in lieu of plastic or styrofoam), faux leather, building material, art objects, and more. I know many maker friends who have been integrating mycelium into STEM and STEAM projects (Corinne Takara, Erik Nauman, Chris Sweeney, Tracy Rudzitis…), but I have never experimented with the mushroom spores, and I’m excited to start! Tracy brought some 3D-printed plastic molds designed by her students in Tinkercad to fill with the mycelium mixture; She was inspired by Corinne Takara who has experimented with biomaterials for years and espouses growing materials rather than simply purchasing or consuming non-biodegradable materials. You can read more about some of Corrine’s work in this post: https://grow.bio/blogs/grow-bio-blog/giy-maker-spotlght-corinne-takara

Here is a tutorial for getting started (thanks for the link, Tracy!): https://grow.bio

Here are some tweets posted during yesterday’s workshop:

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November 13, 2017 · 3:18 pm

Thanks to @Dfenjves, I can finally finish the @p5xjs code for #SingingFaces shared by @sofisagarcia_! #CCfestNYC #STEAM #ArtEdTech

Yesterday was another incarnation of CC Fest in New York City hosted at NYU ITP, and I’m proud to have attended all of their NYC-based events. It’s such an awesome, friendly, and welcoming way to delve into p5.js for both novices and advanced coders. [Per the p5.js website: p5.js is a JavaScript library that starts with the original goal of Processing to make coding accessible for artists, designers, educators, and beginners.] CC Fest has recently launched in Los Angeles and may branch out to other cities. My friend Saber Khan (@ed_saber) is a founder and organizer of CC Fest and an incredible thinker, thought leader, and educator. On their website, CC Fest describes itself as:

A Celebration of Creative Coding for Teachers and Students
CC Fest is an opportunity for students and teachers to engage in creative coding. Come spend a day making interactive and engaging digital art with the p5.js library. Teachers will work on bringing p5.js projects to their classes. Students will learn the basics of p5.js and build their creative coding portfolios. Read about the first CC Fest at NYU ITP in October 2016. We hosted a second CC Fest at NYU MAGNET in Brooklyn in April 2017. And a third at UCLA in September 2017. Checkout the tweets at #ccfestnyc and #ccfestla.

After a keynote from Cassie Tarakajian (@hellothisiscass), there were two sessions of learning opportunities led by educators, designers, tinkerers, programmers, artists, and other awesome volunteers. For my first session, I joined Danny Fenjves to learn about integrating microphones to alter shapes (Danny is the founder of Upperline Code.) In this workshop, I finally learned the shockingly simple code necessary for making mouths open/close along with music, thus solving a mystery that has been troubling me since March! I loved the wonderful compilation of Singing Faces (see video at the top of this post) shared by Sofia Isabel Garcia at a previous #CCfestNYC in March of 2017. These animations were created by girls in Grades 4-12 taught by Sofia as part of Code/Art in Miami. I never understood how to get the mouth shapes to dilate and contract along to the music, and I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even try to locate a solution on my own. Thank you, Danny! Here are Danny’s shared links:
1. Starter code: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/p5-sound-base
2. Finished code: https://glictch.com/edit/#!/95-sound-1-solved
3. And here’s the code I wrote that helped me dilate an ellipse based on mic.Level:

var mic;

function setup() {
createCanvas(800, 600);
mic = new p5.AudioIn()
mic.start()}

function draw() {
var micLevel = mic.getLevel() * 400
console.log(micLevel)
background(20, 30, 150);
noStroke();
fill(255);
ellipse(width/2, height/2, micLevel, micLevel);
fill (0,255,0);
ellipse(100, 200, 40, 40);
fill(255, 0, 0);
ellipse(micLevel, 300, 75, 75);
}

For the second session, I attended Serena Parr’s introduction to creating a Photobooth with p5.js using video capture from your camera’s webcam. It was awesome and made even more fun since I sat with three amazing ladies who inspire me daily with their ideas, insights, prototypes, and creative solutions: Maureen Reilly (@MaureenrReilly, Erin Riley (@eeriley99), and Tracy Rudzitis (@wagongrrl)! Serena’s super fun session helped me feel so much more comfortable about exploring Processing and p5.js libraries for more filters. Here are Serena’s shared links:
1. Serena’s presentation: bit.ly/photoboothsITP
2. Serena’s button photobooth program: bit.ly/buttonBoothITP
3. Serena’s emoji photobooth code: bit.ly/emojiBoothITP
4. Here’s Erik Nauman’s code for a Photobooth! Thanks, @openblackboard: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-IMQ38H3Y5GQJF6rGVfSItE7dXezlrzEWBYASeOXPTI/edit
5. And here’s my code for the project:

var capture;
var button;

function setup(){
createCanvas(320, 240);
capture = createCapture(VIDEO);
capture.size(320, 240);
button = createButton(‘Say Cheese’);
button.mousePressed(takePic)
capture.hide();
}

function takePic(){
image(capture, 0, 0, 320, 240);
// filter(‘INVERT’);
}

function draw(){
// background(255);
}

I had to leave after the second session and missed out on the sharing at the end of the day and the closing keynote by Todd Anderson (@toddwords).Here are some of my tweets from the day (I was too busy learning and shmoozing to share more):

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