http://lifeproject.spacestudios.org.uk http://openlabworkshops.org http://spacestudios.org.uk

Openlab Workshops and SPACE Studios are excited to present a new type of collaborative workshop project. A collective of 20+ artists, designer, makers, musicians takes on the task of creating an interactive, living ecosystem of machine "life" from April-August 2011 at SPACE Studios, Hackney, London.

The Brief (in brief): Using pervasive technologies such as RFID, Twitter, Arduino, digital sound, and LED lighting, we will create an ecosystem of little machines that live, grow, reproduce, communicate, and die with one another, based on Conway's classic Game of Life. Machines will need tending to by humans ("machine husbandry"), encouraging an evolutionary process of genetic algorithms embedded in the creatures. If left alone, the creatures will die of neglect and loneliness. By interacting with this small slice of digital ecology in a public exhibition, people can draw their own conclusions about our complex and interdependent relationship between technology and the "natural" world.

All code and project notes are open source and available on the project blog at http://lifeproject.spacestudios.org.uk

You will need the following Arduino libraries to make it work:

NewSoftSerial: http://arduiniana.org/libraries/newsoftserial/ Ports: http://jeelabs.net/projects/11/wiki/Ports RF12: http://jeelabs.net/projects/cafe/wiki/RF12