At Dinacon: I will be bringing some biosensing hardware to record data from Dinasaurs to experiment with the different kinds of vital signs that can be derived from PPG sensors. I am interested in Environmental sensing, and have an idea for a ‘sensor in a bottle’ project for measuring ocean information. I will also be helping to document other Dinasaurs projects.
Bio: Joel made kinetic sculpture for years before he became an electronics design engineer. He taught physical computing at Parsons from 2006 to 2014, and has participated in several successful crowdfunding projects since 2011 when he co-founded World Famous Electronics, makers of the Pulse Sensor: an open source heart rate monitor. In 2014 he co-founded OpenBCI, a company that makes high quality low cost EEG amplifiers for science and education, and was President of the company until 2018. Most recently, he has created and co-developed Tympan, an Open Source hearing-aid development platform. Joel also owns the technology consulting firm, Flywheel Lab. Joel lives and works in Troy, NY.
At Dinacon: At Dinacon 2025, I’m interested in exploring the development of 3D photogrammetry techniques for mapping coral reefs. I’ll be building workshops related to computer vision, sensors, and motion control. I’m also hoping to extend these topics into exciting art projects!
Bio: Kyle Chisholm is a roboticist and engineer with a passion for human-robot interaction. Currently, he is developing robot arms for medical, industrial, and assistive applications. As a DIY enthusiast and creative maker, he loves to build public art installations and participate in community-driven open source projects. Kyle has actively engaged in STEAM education through initiatives like “Let’s Talk Science,” “FIRST Robotics” and currently serves as a board member at “Radio Snack” in Montreal, Canada.
At Dinacon: During Dinacon I’ll make a cargo bike using some of the ideas I’ve worked on while testing some new ideas. Concurrently, the whole endeavour will also be a hands-on intro to flux core welding, a practical, useful, and overlooked skill to add to your repertoire.
Bio: Formally I’m a mechanical engineer, but I switched to software, then switched again to electronics and robotics, then got into conservation tech, and now after a brief stint making pizza, I’m experimenting with bicycles in an attempt to make cycling more practical and relevant.
At Dinacon: I plan to bring my musical system WeCanMusic, which makes it easy to turn found materials into silly electronic instruments that play well together. In the spirit of Dinacon I’ll explore how the materiality and life forms of the coastal environment can be met in dialogue with the electronic sensors of WeCanMusic to create a musical experience that blurs the lines between performer, audience, and instrument. It’s my hope that this process will be highly participatory, drawing from local experts and Dinacon attendees alike. I intend to host workshop that demonstrate the system, explore materials, and co-develop creative narratives and interaction models that reflect the experience of existence in Sea Communities. I’d like this process to culminate in a performance/installation that will be documented and shared.
Bio: Don Undeen is an artist, designer, educator, and facilitator working at the intersection of maker culture, collaborative design, sociability, nonsense and messiness. He has built and managed makerspaces at Georgetown University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and consulted with the Vatican and museums around the world, helping them imagine new spaces for collaboration with innovative communities. He likes making wireless things that talk to each other.
At Dinacon: (1) Data Sensing Toolkit: this is an architecture that am developing for sensors to stream data into Adafruit IO, for use on the web with the MTTQ protocol. I’ll teach workshops on how to build your own sensors and get started with getting data sent onto the web and how to develop and front-end website that shows how to do this. I imagine that we can do things like sense water quality, plant data and many more things at Dinacon in an effort to share the data from the natural environment.
(2) Solar Boat prototyping:
I will be building a small solar-powered boat (2 feet x 1 foot) equipped with a variety of water sensors, which I will deploying in the sea. I will develop some of parts and prototypes ahead of time — the boat itself should be functional by then, but not the sensorsThe sensors will capture invisible data and transform it into musical soundscapes. This builds upon work that I have done for the last several years around revealing invisible natural phenomena.
Some possibilities for sensors
— a combination aerator and dissolved oxygen sensor. The boat would stir up the pond, creating more oxygen in the water to promote healthy algae growth with the boat capturing live data of pockets of oxygenated water.
— a sonar sensor to capture the measurements of the bottom of the waters, revealing the underwater topography
— a turbidity sensor that would capture the murkiness of the water at various depths, revealing how aquatic life might navigate the waterways.
— water quality sensors (pH and EC) that sample the water at various points.
The solar-powered boat would include a remote control for steering it as it collects data, as it glides slowly across the surface of the water. Viewers could then listen to the results at various data points of the waterway, learning about the waterways through music. The boat would be a performance vessel and I would improvise the musical arrangements from the data.
Bio: Scott Kildall creates artwork that transforms hidden data from the natural environment, such as water quality, air quality and plant data into sculptural sound installations and performances. He uses custom electronics to create generative, data-driven experiences with uncertain outcomes.
His artwork has been exhibited internationally at venues including the New York Hall of Science, Transmediale, the Venice Biennale, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the San Jose Museum of Art.
He has received fellowships, awards and residencies from the SETI Institute, The Bloedel Reserve, Impakt Works, Autodesk, Recology San Francisco, Joshua Tree National Park, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center and more.
Scott Kildall has been working with art + technology + education for over 15 years. He currently resides in San Francisco, where he runs a residency program from his home called Xenoform Labs that hosts international new media artists.
At Dinacon: In fall 2023, while carrying out research for an exhibition informed by ideas of fermentation as treaty, Shalaka engaged with Astrida Neimanis and Rachel Loewen Walker’s proposition of “thick time”, wherein layers of time stack together, expand and contract. This model encourages a refusal of distinction between the human and non-human world, and instead, embraces an embodied understanding of ourselves as deep archives. Shalaka’s resonance with thick time shaped the exhibition and how their practice unfolds, and in particular, their research re: sound memory, radio methodologies, and considering how conductivity in and around waterbodies may shape answers to the question, “what if we get it right?”
Bio: Shalaka is a writer, researcher, and curator who spent their childhood between cities in India and in Dubai, before moving to a neighbourhood spitting distance from Ontario’s largest mall. Shalaka’s research interests on spatial positionality and critical geographies of grief, public memory, and queer ecologies can be evidenced in exhibitions they have curated in Halifax, Winnipeg, and Toronto. Shalaka has held roles at OCAD and The Blackwood, and is the co-director of Textile, a hyper-local arts collective in Waterloo Region that supports writers and artists through mentorship, publishing, and curation. Shalaka splits their time on Haldimand Tract and Treaty 1 territory and always orders dessert.
In the middle of the Dinacon month I went with some of the Dinosaurs and ventured onto the beautiful Batticaloa lagoon to listen to and record the famous singing fish.
On the boat before recording the Singing Fish (image by Betty Sargeant)
It was a full moon and a super moon, so the conditions were ideal. The ‘singing’ comes from plainfin midshipman, a species of toadfish that glow green during mating times. The fish produce an aquatic frog-like mating call. They are best heard at about 10 PM on a full moon.
Here are some of the recordings, I’ve made these recordings into a kind of greatest hits compilation of the audio that I captured over two nights of the full moon. The recording is highly recommended as an insomniac’s sleeping aid.
To record I used a Zoom recorder and a custom made hydrophone that was submerged to about 6 meters into various parts of the lagoon at night.
Capturing drone footage at the end of the Batticaloa peninsular (image by Luci Dayhew)
I also ventured out to the end of the Batticaloa peninsular before dawn to collect audio and video footage. The casuarina pine forest at the end of the peninsular was well worth the 1-hour bike ride through sand tracks. The forest was planted post-tsunami. The trees are organised in unnatural rows, creating uncanny organic order.
During Dinacon I drew on a variety of audio-visual footage, that I collected over my Dinacon time, to make a series of trash-bag video art experiments. These video works are a commentary on the impact of hyper-consumerism on our natural ecosystems. The image below is a screen grab from one of the video works. It features drone footage from the end of the Batticaloa peninsular, whale baleen (we found on the Batticaloa beach), graphic design, trash typeface design and singing fish audio.
Tali was kind enough to provide video feedback on my Dinacon project.
Tali’s feedback on my project
My Dinacon experiments are being developed into an immersive art installation called DISCO APOCALYPSE. This artwork will have its premier at the 2022 Karachi Biennale (Pakistan). For more project details visit: https://pluginhuman.com/arts/disco-apocalypse/ and @PluginHUMAN.
The DREAMBOAT floating makerspace for Dreamspace academy is currently floating in the lagoon! It’s an art+science field station in the middle of one of the most interesting ecosystems on earth, the baticoloa lagoon! It’s the home of the mysterious singing fish, and even lights up green when it hears the singing fish song (they weren’t singing tonight so we played a recording, but the visuals totally worked!)
We have been working at a super fast paced rate on a tight budget during numerous crises and managed to pull it off!
It will be there to work as an observation post to monitor the interesting creatures like the mysterious singing fish, as well as the destination for tourism! And a floating art project!
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Sid Drmay is a nonbinary queer multidisciplinary artist based in Hamilton, ON. They use textile art to explore growing up online, nosebleeds, queerness and transness and all the weirdness that comes with that. They love weaving, embroidery, screenprinting, their two cats, and sour gummy candies.
