Dublin’s first ever Mini Maker Faire was a massive success! Thanks so much to our infinitely creative makers and hardworking volunteers. We’ve had a great response from both participants and visitors and can’t wait til next years event!
We have a few pictures from the even posted here, and please send along any that you took yourself you’d like to share at info@makerfairedublin.com!
Just to note: Dublin Mini Maker Faire t-shirts are still for sale in the Science Gallery shop for €10!
Buildbrighton is a hackerspace from Brighton, in the UK. They will be bringing along a variety of group and individually created projects to showcase what can be done at your local hackspace .
Their showcase project will be ‘Scalexercise’ – an experiment in fitness, using actual human power – via exercise bikes – to drive slot cars around a Scalextric track. There will be fun and games along the way!
Build Brighton Hackspace is a 1300sqft communal workshop and collective of like minded people who love to build stuff with electronics, crafts, engineering and technology. The main purpose of the hackspace is to provide a space and tools with which our members can gather, beaver away on their own projects and take part in exciting group projects, in an playful and friendly environment.
We also promote maker-culture whenever possible, doing workshops at various festivals like White Night and Coastal Currents, and even organising our own events, like the huge Brighton Mini Maker Faire.
Tarraing anáil invites you to rethink the most natural of all tasks: breathing. Step into the darkness and become the composer of your very own personal sound and light show. This intensely intimate bodily function is amplified by a smart corset, that unlike other corsets, allows you to breathe fully. It is embedded with electronics including sensors and fibre optics. The respiratory breath sensors measure your breathing behaviour and translate it into sound and light.
Tarraing anáil from jiann on Vimeo.
This work is the collaboration of Shirley Coyle, researcher and designer in the field of wearable technologies and smart textiles, and Jiann Hughes, interactive artist and researcher.
Read more at http://jiannhughes.com/?p=1546
Carolyn Rutherford presents ‘Hooked,’ a crochet collection and workshop that will inspire the granny in you!
Learn how to crochet at this wooly wonder workshop. Enter the ‘How Hot is Your Pot’ tea cosy design competition for the opportunity to win a Le Crousset Pot and to work with Hooked to crochet your unique design to life! Or why not learn how to make your own square and donate it to ‘Project Squared’ a giant patchwork blanket that will be donated to charity.
Click here for the ‘How Hot is Your Pot’ design entry form!
If that doesn’t tickle the granny in you then why not dabble in some yarnbombing? Check out some street art crochet designs and brainstorm for ‘Get Your Knits Out’, a project that endeavors to spread crochet beyond your lap to your room, house, office, school, community- wherever your stitches take you!
Meet TOG, Dublin’s hackerspace. TOG will be showing off a wide range of electronic and craft projects on Saturday as well as running the “learn to solder” area.
We love Sugru. Sugru loves makers. Simple 
Check out the video below to find out what Sugru is all about.
As an added bonus Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh the inventor of Sugru (which TIME Magazine named one of the 50 best inventions of 2010) will be giving a talk during the faire (4-5pm, in Paccar theatre, Science Gallery). Jane will tell us why the future needs fixing and how the hacking and making culture could help sustain the planet. She will also be talking about the importance of good product design. The Sugru team will even bring along a “gift hack” for everyone in the audience. Like the Faire, the talk is absolutely free but you’ll need to book tickets in advance here
Sugru is the exciting new self-setting rubber that bonds to most other materials. Form it by hand into any shape and overnight it turns into a strong, flexible silicone rubber. It’s been embraced by a growing community of over 100,000 gadget lovers, outdoor types, designer-makers, car enthusiasts, photographers and home-improvers all over the world to improve and repair their stuff. sugru.com
Breandan Lane will be exhibiting Dreampunk at Dublin Mini Maker Faire. I think the video of his “reimagineered robo carousel” speaks for itself.
Alma is an ensemble of easy to play musical instruments, a piece of music, a group music project and a way for people of all ages and musical abilities to work together to create something they couldn’t do alone. Ed Devnane has been developing instruments and techniques since early 2012 for this project, which will see its first public outing at the Dublin Mini Maker Faire.
ALMA Dublin Mini Maker Faire Promo from Ed Devane on Vimeo.
For the Maker Faire I will demonstrate how to make some simple instruments such as drums and whistles, which will be played in addition to the permanent instruments by the audience at the end of the day.
It is my intention to build on this project over the coming months, adding new instrument types, music games, visual scores and giving workshops in instrument building and group music making. With ALMA I wish to involve people who may not have played music before, by making the instruments numerous (strength in numbers!) and accessible enough (single pitch instruments, played by either blowing into a tube or hitting with a stick) for anyone to play.
ALMA uses a five note Pentatonic scale and colour coded instruments. So far these instruments consist of tube chimes, reed pipes, wood blocks, single note whistles and percussion instruments. Slide whistles and various types of string instruments are in development.
Check out the video below from the Storymaker team – creative technologist Duncan Gough (http://suttree.com) and digital producer Leila Johnston (http://finalbullet.com). These fun folk are interested in exploring the relationship between performance and technology. With puppets!!!
Storymaker from leila johnston on Vimeo.
“We’re turning the tables on the Faire – we want to get the visitors making. We’re interested in theatre, circuses and magic – places of misdirection and illusion but also of fun, where entertainment is the goal. There are clear parallels with consumer technology today, where design decisions obfuscate reality, manipulating a user’s attention and magnifying excitement, and where nothing is quite what it seems. Theatre can inspire creativity through the sheer confidence it has in its own weirdness, and we’re hoping our puppets will bring out some good stories in the people who visit our stand, by intercepting the awkwardness of staring straight into a camera. We hope to find out how some of these geeks became the makers they are today. By inviting people to remember some of their personal experiences of computing, we’ll celebrate the excitement of encountering devices that needed your input before they could speak, machines that asked for an investment of imagination and personality from the user. The maker community has always understood the importance of these kinds of machines, of course, and you only have to look at the explosion of popularity of arduinos etc in recent years to see that we really want our tech to fire the imagination.” – Leila and Duncan
How big do you like your drums? It is 14ft diameter or nothing for Dublin Mini Maker Faire. It is just how we roll. Luckily the talented maker Bounce has met our strangely exact dimensional whims. Here is a video of it being warming it up and body & soul ahead of July 14th.
A 14ft diameter drum designed and built by artist Bounce. It is made from 90% recycled/re purposed material. Fuinneamh (Irish for energy) is for all to play ,a communal drum No experience of drums is needed, its all about having fun together Mel and Keith our drummers will be on hand to show some rhythms and encourage all to join in.
