photo by Felicity Crawshaw from Into The Wild, the MV Works showcase

And, after all the work of a gallery show and an install, the relative calm.

Week 180 was a long week, all about Twinklr: exhibiting it at Into the Wild. I spent much of the weekend with the box, and got to see a lot of people playing with it. It was a really great experience: some good questions, some lovely feedback from musicians and peers, but also a lot of people just playing it and enjoying it for what it was. I played it a few times as small performances during the showcase: once on Friday, effectively to myself, and then in a longer demo on the Sunday afternoon, and it turned out to be as playable and dynamic as I’d hoped. It was definitely best as a controller for more involved sound-sources – but Twinklr, a monosynth and a delay pedal led to some wonderful sounds and textures.

After the show, a breather.

I have spent the weeks after getting really stuck into Selworthy again to hit a next milestone for the project. Whilst I’ve been away, our new developers have taken that ball and started running with it, and the past two weeks have seen a great amount of progress – to the point that I’m mainly thinking about tech strategy and the odd feature, rather than being sole developer.

I made good progress with Staplehill: a personal hardware project that’s spun out of Twinklr and that I’m hoping to take to Brighton Modular. I’ve ordered the 1.00 circuit boards for it, and made decent progress on the firmware; it’s very much going to come together at the last minute – the boards arrive two days before I might be showing it – but if it does, it could be very good. Regardless, it’s a project I’m going to continue to pursue.

I spent and excellent day with Alex, Peter, and many excellent folk thinking about The Good Home in a workshop, which was a great boost for the spirits: good to spend a day to think, sketch, and challenge each other (and especially so after the hecticness of gallery install).

And, as ever, a spate of meetings and coffees, some casual catch-ups, others exploratory chats with new faces. Beginning to think about what’s next in my schedule, and to look for other projects. If you think there’s something interesting to be done together – be it consultancy, workshopping, or R&D and prototyping – then do get in touch. There’s work to be done.