Interface Club presents: Folk Computer Barn-Raising
Hey! Read the update* below before you decide to come to this.
Our neighbors at Folk Computer have created a room-sized spatial computer that anyone can build and modify. We're going to set one up at Fractal Tech so people in the space can be thinking and tinkering towards a future of embodied, communal computing.
We don't know exactly how to do this, but we have all the equipment (we think), advice from people who have done it before, and courage. We could use some people to help debug and slog through the weird technical issues that might come up. It'll be fun. There will be Thai food.
We'll start at 9am and work until we're finished or dead. Please come as close to the start time as you can (but don't let lateness keep you from coming)!
[Also a workshop at 11am—see below.]
This event is hosted by the Interface Club, a research group exploring new forms of human-computer interaction.
* Update—Friday 8/8
Here's what to expect:
1. We've achieved partial setup and we're working to get to a usable baseline by tomorrow, but we don’t know if we will. This event could easily look like a small handful of people doing hard technical debugging while the rest sit around and twiddle their thumbs. Or we might get lucky and have people playing and making software by noon. Expect nebulosity! Only come if you’re comfortable keeping yourself occupied.
2. Bring a laptop. You'll want it to be able to write and contribute programs if we get that far.
3. For the thumb-twiddlers, Andrew will be running a casual workshop for people to think together about what spatial computing might mean and dream up many potential uses for Folk. It'll be a chance to talk freely with other people interested in this stuff, and we'll document our ideas so that some of them can actually get made. That will start at 11am and go until lunch time—please be on time if you want to take part.
4. In coming weeks, the Interface Club will host a separate event for people to learn and hack on Folk once it's fully set up. If what you really desire is hands-on engagement with the system, you may want to wait and come to that event instead of this one (or in addition). We won't be offended if you cancel your RSVP.
5. We're inviting contributions for lunch (Thai food). Please send $10-20 (or more if generous) to Liam at @liamdoofy.
About Folk:
- "Towards a folk computer": https://folk.computer/notes/tableshots
- Folk is a continuation of Dynamicland, an experimental community computing space in Oakland. The best place to start is this 6-minute video: https://dynamicland.org/2024/Intro/
- Inspiring vision of a communal science lab with spatial computing: https://dynamicland.org/2024/The_communal_science_lab.pdf
- Some things Folk can do: https://folk.computer/guides/what-folk-can-do
- Become a sponsor to Folk: https://github.com/sponsors/FolkComputer