Bits and Bytes: In Conversation with Helen Leigh

hello everybody welcome to bits and bytes this is uh cci's non-threatening gentle and lovely introduction to creative technologies with people that i think are both inspiring and interesting in the field and i'm super excited to introduce you to helen lee today who is fantastic uh helly stern um it's gonna be exciting and fun and she makes absolutely beautiful wearables and instruments she's worked with creators such as emojian heap and the bbc to produce things that are really amazing she's also made tons of really beautiful electronics like a disco ball thereman and insect-like creatures that have capacitive bits coming out they're just like metal bits that stick out and you can touch them and it makes noise and one of my favorite projects is your cuddly toy that you hug that helps you feel less anxious uh so i think it's gonna be really interesting for you all to hear from helen because she's written several books in creative technologies and she's at a point in her career now where i feel she has hit a really successful place like she's writing for hackspace and make magazine and everyone else and now i think you're kind of inspirational to others who are getting started and that must feel really cool and really fun and i think you have a lot to share with us today okay i hope to live up to that introduction all right so i'll start with my first question i want you to tell me how you got into creative technology and how you ended up here that's really interesting because i don't necessarily see creative tech i mean that's the thing that most people would describe me as a creative technologist right but um i don't really necessarily see myself as a creative technologist just you know i don't see myself as an and like a proper engineer whatever that means and just means different things in different countries and different systems um i would say that i use technology as a tool um rather as my um my it's not like technology isn't the thing that gets me up in the morning right like i do enjoy technology a lot it's some it's um it's really fun but i would say that my primary purpose is not using technology understanding technology or manipulating technology it's simply using lots of different technologies almost like a um a fun buffet of things that i can try and be like oh i'll try some electronics from here i'll try this artistic practice from here so for me technology is one of many many different skills um that that i employ in my work and so um yeah i guess i wouldn't um i would not describe myself as a creator technologist i have done that but as i'm talking to other technologists i think it's really important to say um that very much that um i would say i'm about about 50 with the technology the rest of it is um is other skills and these these skills that are less less valued by some but um greatly valued by me and it's a collaboration between the the different kind of spheres of influence in my life of which technology is a cornerstone but as to how i got into technology um it's a very different story to the one that's typically told around people in my field like in the hardware hacking field and you often hear interviews with people and you say when i was four i had this speaking spell and i broke it apart and i smashed it apart with my with my baby screwdriver you know like i've been hacking and i've been coding i've been making since i was a little baby it just came natural to me like i love to make and break things take things apart blah blah blah you know that wasn't me at all um i was actually super into literature and languages when uh when i was young and you know and part of that is you know like that um i didn't grow up you know like technology and where i grew up was you learned how to type in school right there was no like no such thing as interesting technology studies back then it was like can you make a flow chart and can you touch type and frankly i wasn't particularly interested in in in the creative possibilities of either of those things so i'd say that it wasn't until we were into until post arduino i'd say was when i first started doing creative technology because i really that was the point at when it was possible to start doing creative technology for people who weren't already engineers so um in the years that i've been practicing like that i've been working with technology in my practice um it's become just so much easier even during the time that i've been working with it so um yeah post arduino um when i was um i got involved in a hackerspace in london and started fiddling around with the laser cutter and i was very excited to see how something that seemed very daunting was actually incredibly simple to use and that was my i guess what you'd call a gateway drug right it's the gateway drug for a lot of makers is kind of learning how to use a laser cutter and going actually this isn't that hard and i can do lots of really cool things with this there's lots of applications there um so yeah through hacking through making but also um i got into creative technology very much through the microcontroller world which was made possible by the success and the increasing ease of arduino and platforms such as arduino so that was a fairly long rambling um question and answer to your question but yeah so um microcontrollers and laser cutting and my gateway drugs well you brought up so many interesting things i'm like how where do i even go where do i even start i think the most interesting thing for me that you raise there is process and how important process is to you and like how important it is for you to be able to think about your process and think about how that relates to like the creative possibilities you come up with so maybe i think the thing that i thought um from your work that is got to be really process driven is your bug your tentacled spiky creature so this is um my pet tentacle and it's entirely made of plush if you open that up you'll see a couple of wires but it's mostly um like the insides of a teddy bear um and i made it i made this version of it back at the beginning of the pandemic when i was feeling very anxious and i haven't seen anyone for a long time and i just wanted to cuddle somebody so i made a giant um plushy tentacle nice and smooth soothing and sweet it's very squishy as you can see but it interacts so basically when i'm stroking it or if i'm squashing it or if i'm you know lightly stroking or really giving it a squeeze it reacts in different ways um the first thing i put on there um is um i wanted it to be like quite personal experience so i put headphones into into my little tentacle here and listen to them and then when i stroke it softly it purrs to me so it's like this really comforting bassy purr um but in terms of the process of this this was um [Music] this was actually this actually started life as a study for a much larger piece and so this was actually quite different to the process that i would normally take for for my from my other things and i was just playing around in fact this one you know what no it isn't it's exactly the same what it is is i find a material that i really enjoyed right so there's two materials that i really like here i saw this in a fabric shop because you can't necessarily see it it's a lovely textured cotton and it feels really nice and then the other thing here is there's um this is this this this uh zigzag stitch here this is what gives the creature like the tentacle its shape gives you its hugging shape but what it also is is i've used a particular type of thread in this which is conductive thread so this functions as a capacitive sensing input and but i just bought this new type of thread which was um which had just been made and available to me um but the thing was special about it is that um normally when you're using threads and conductor thread like the old fashioned old-fashioned threads which i'm sure you know a lot of them were very bad you know like very hairy it was like short circuit city or they would snap or you couldn't use it in the in the sewing machine blah blah blah but i got this new stuff that i use in my tentacle that was like super nice like super nice like a really nice material you can use in the top thread and the bottom thread of the sewing machine so it worked really really nicely super smooth just like sewing with normal thread no no nothing line so i had these two things i was like this beautiful pillowy cotton and then this really interesting new tool right it's essentially it's a new way of using conductive thread and so i decided to start knocking around with it and see what happens and i made this thing and i thought it was just going to be a steady for a much larger piece that i had in my mind but i took that thing the original prototype of it not this particular one and i took it to um so there's a hacker festival and outside for length called ccc that happens well ccc's the organization the name of the festival is called congress it happens every year i mean not this one but every year between christmas and new year's and it's this huge like thirty 000 hackers in a conference center having an amazing time you must go it's fantastic but i took it around to that and everybody loved it so much like just people were queuing up to like touch it like it just seemed to and people were actually getting emotional about it even um and par and part of that was because i refused to let anyone put a speaker into it so it's a very personal experience i actually don't play the science of the pairing outlined you can only hear the pairing if you put it into your ears and you stroke it you know because it's a very personal experience it's supposed to be an intimate experience and something about that intimacy and the softness and the way that the tentacle called you was extremely popular and with people at this conference um even though i didn't think it was going to be anything so i thought maybe there's something in this and i started i started making a few of them to test out the different huggability of them the difference you know the different and different functionality that kind of stuff but really yeah it was born of me having some interesting materials which is often how i start my process is i will i'm very guided by material like i'll go into an art shop or like an architecture supply shop or a like a like a hardware stop shop or whatever places that you wouldn't necessarily buy electronics and i'll go in with my multimeter and i will check to see if things are conductive or how conductive things are and i will like a little magpie i will just collect interesting objects that are conductive that i can consider using in something later on um and then just like with this like i had this nice material i had the nice thread and i started to in my mind it was very materials led and the same with my giant circuit sculpture creatures i'm always very materials lead in that way um so yeah i start with the materials i make a couple of prototypes i take it out i let people use it and then if people love it then it's a win if people are like oh okay cool then it's it's a dirt but um but yeah i guess materials prototyping and then i'm just i'm looking for an emotional reaction um to the work that i do very much like an emotional tactile um reaction so um so yeah i think actually i didn't think that was a very good example of my process but actually now i've said it outliered it is quite a good example of my process that is such an interesting process and i've been thinking a lot recently about method and i as you know i'm doing this phd and it basically weirdness that would be the way i'd put it if somebody had to ask me what's your phd about i'd be like making weird game controllers that bring me joy and they'd be like you're not an academic you're a weirdo artist and i'd be like but i wrote a lot of words about it and i figured out a way to talk about it and you know it's this like total dance of like selling yourself in like all these different ways when you're an artist so i've been thinking a lot about how artists we really all generate methods and methodology every single time we work and we all have these like methods that we've been using for a really long time and they are what i i hear from you when you're speaking about your work is that the tactileness of it is really important to you so you let the tactile materiality really drive the creative outcome which is super different than like a painter who's like i'm going to make a painting about the mona lisa as an artist and as a professional in your field you do like mature and you do go through stages right and i still do feel i mean when we first met i was very much like you know a freshman you know i was making my first sense i was you know making my first like diy kids didn't really know what i was doing i didn't really have the skills that i do now um and i i've become a little bit more aware of my own learning journey both as an artist and as like that as a hacker and i do feel like i'm getting more intentional with the stuff that i make i'm making a lot more stories around the stuff that i make when you first start out you make a lot of projects that are literally just like essentially trying trying out how to use the sensor right trying it you're not really thinking about the beauty or the message or the originality of it and that's you know like that's part of the learning process and i feel like i've come out of that beginner stage first for for sure and however i still do feel very much um it was really interesting to me to hear you introduce me at the beginning of this i was like oh yeah i signed really cool and i was like all of the things she's saying they're actually true um so it's just kind of like i guess i'm in that that like middle stage of like oh yeah i have i have got some good skills and i have done some really interesting work and some really interesting projects but the way that my mind is at the moment i'm suddenly i'm starting to think like where can i take this next i feel so intermediate um in all of these things but i think that's like partially a journey you take if you understand what i mean is like part of your life's creative process um like yeah i i don't i don't feel like my process is fully honed yet but i do definitely feel like i'm establishing one that's for sure it was an interesting thing for me to um to consider is that yes i do have a process but in my own mind it's still like it's still so far for me to go both in terms of my skill attainment and also in terms of my um my artistic thoughts i would say and because i'm not a trained artist like you know i'm not trained artist and so i do feel sometimes that i um i could be more mature in in the objects that i'm creating around the thought processes around them um but yeah i guess that's part of the process in itself reevaluating your work and the more you get into you know the more you get into a subject area the more you're um the more you're aware of the work of your peers i guess and then when you get to a point where you understand what your peers are doing suddenly your your first your first phrase into art making it seem like crude mark making compared to the masters but of course you're comparing yourself to the masters who you now know exist yeah i guess what i'm trying to do is say please don't ever change the way that you approach things because you're you're generating knowledge through process right and i think that that's actually really valuable because the knowledge you generate out of that process is very very valuable to like creative research and also beyond that like you can de-prioritize what has traditionally been valued in western culture which is this like kind of cognitivist way to go into things like you know how i think needs to be this like analytical because knowledge doesn't come about that way like it that that's a rapper i think that gets wrapped around knowledge often because like you listen to really good scientists talk and even if they use like scientific method it's never i have had an idea you know it's like i was futzing in the lab and then my scalpel slipped and knocked over a while and you know like it's so much more like that kind of thing right it's a lot more organic it's a lot more organic than than you'd think actually yeah it's true it's true yeah i mean all of my best ideas have been kind of somewhat accidental but then you know the the the process that takes you to the finished version of that that's the thing that's not accidental that's the thing that's intentional but a lot of the ideas that i have are informed by just daydreams accidents mismarks i think that's one of the joys of having of doing like mixed media stuff right um as opposed to like if i was just just like an electronics engineer there's a lot more of a path right you want this thing you've got to do these things but because a lot of the things that i'm working on i mean like there have been to my knowledge no other um singing tentacles that's sense when you touch them you know like there's not an established path to get to the thing that i want to create in most cases and you can see my my feral in there behind me my embroidery the hoop microphone like a lot of the things that i do make are quite um yeah experimental i'd say so and it's quite nice to have to like i'd say like i'm i'm i'm you know like a decent sewer i'm doing some uh electronics like a decent lots of little things but i'm not like a one expert at like one thing if you know what i mean but that means that my practice is a lot broader um and it does mean that i'm able to just experiment i'm just able to like take two things that i think are cool like the thread and the fabric or whatever like a disco ball and a there and i just kind of like smush them together and then see if they look cool i'll have some kind of emotional impact or if they do not and sometimes reader they do not sometimes they suck and that's okay that's totally okay i mean it's like a validation criteria right you have a validation criteria for the data you're generating and i i think that's really valuable and really important i read this book recently that i'm going to throw at you and and you you have to go meet this uh this person you have to tell me all about what they're like but it's called critical fabulations and in it they talk about um their process of generating knowledge and how they go about it is so different than like traditional design methodologies it actually kind of comes up alongside them and proposes hey well maybe instead of like standing outside of a community and diagnosing what's going on in it you actually like participate in it and you become part of it and you maybe contribute back to it it just has a wild idea and i think it's like really interesting how like just now writers like that are starting to establish methodologies or like they're starting to write down like hey this is this method that i'm using that let me generate or like come to all these amazing understandings that i wouldn't have come to had i just said okay now i'm gonna make an led matrix what's the next hardest project a lot of people when they're starting it they don't necessarily realize that it's not about having the most features and it's not about having um the best integration of a particular type of technology it's literally about imagination and joy yeah um and having an impact on people um and i would it comes back to the idea of technology as a tool rather than a means to an end right so what are you using this technology for i mean like what a stupid nebulous word technology like what like what are you talking about here like because you know i've got no idea how to run a web server but i can make robot like you know like there's just such a great big broad umbrella of things and it's so impossible to say like that that's the outcome right you you learn those things to to do a thing and i think that's very i think it's because the idea of technology as well as like such a can be such an intimidating concept and i think you're more focused on the nuts and bolts than you are on the actual creation sometimes one year when you're learning these things we've all been there um but it's more it's more exciting and and more useful for humanity to have something that is you know something that brings joy or something that has purpose um or stretches your um creative muscles as well as your as well as your intellectual muscles now that they're opposites or anything but um yeah i think i think that's um that can that can be something that that my students certainly and your students probably struggle with in terms of marrying technology and creativity i think it is definitely something i see particularly new artists that have come into it or new technologists who want to learn art like the new technologists that i have that want to learn art are kind of a little flammoxed they're like what where um and often i get artists that just pick stuff up and like within six to eight months they've gone like way ahead of the technologist because they're just like i'm gonna tack this thing onto that thing and glue this thing and you know and their skills they accrue knowledge in a such a different way and eventually the technology person realizes that they're actually studying like art and design like they have to like really reformulate how they frame things but what i i think this is is more about fictioning right so like what we're doing here is every time we create a piece of work we're proposing a fiction right a kind of way that you could be in the world with this technology and i think that's really valuable i i like to remind people that cyberspace was invented by a novelist not by a technologist in a room so so any of like star trek right our communicator our lovely communicators that we carry around with us uh where did this idea come from oh i don't know science fiction is incredibly important to technology it gives imaginations incredibly important to technology definitely yeah no it's it's it's not it's not it's not easy to overstate that impact i agree i believe yeah so like i i think maybe if i had to ask you what's the story behind some of your works that's weaving together describe for me the world in which everyone has one of these huggy things and everyone has one of your gesture gloves and everyone has one of your like capacitive uh theremin things like what's the world look like where this technology is just everywhere so i don't want everybody to have my technology what i want people to do is to create their own um so i have two answers to this question and one of which is the fairy tale land in which a lot of the inventions that i make live um in my head which is just my my little daydream and populated my by my strange yeah things and i should i should say as well for people who aren't familiar with my work but most of my objects that i make certainly in recent times and are all instruments um of varying sorts but last year i did a residency in denmark and i spent a month um actually thinking about this and and making objects that would populate this but um so it's funny you should mention star trek because um it's actually a very big inspiration of mine particularly the next generation is a huge inspiration for me um partially because um i grew up with it but also because as a technologist yeah you do look to science fiction a lot and for me star trek is the only true utopia um if you see i mean you know like bad things happen right but everybody's got good intentions mostly you know um they've eradicated a lot of the modern uh societal ills um and it's really nice it's i find myself binge watching it when i was having trouble um because it's just really nice to have to like imagine that you live in this world where everything you know like nobody's hungry and you know like a lot of the societal ills that we that we're suffering just don't exist in the star wars universe so i love i love the you take the nature of star trek and i was actually getting a bit annoyed by a bunch of star trek that i was watching that was like macho and like you know like punching aliens in the face i'm like okay cool you know everybody likes a bit about you know um but i was a bit sick of all the dystopias that we have in science fiction so a lot of the work that i make is quite utopian um in nature and and that's with the science and the kind of especially my strange tentacle here we are like it's actually quite good example of this and i i wanted it to be like well-meaning and kind and soft and nurturing and um and and it sounds beautiful like it's all kind of like you're enveloped in the softness and kindness and all of the other creatures that i make all of the other instruments that i make um and like a lot of other signed artists um i don't make discordant things um and i don't mean a lot of the the sounds that i use are not experimental in nature i make um very kind of beautiful and harmonious sounding creatures because i kind of imagine them populating this like world where everything looks a bit peculiar but everything's got wonderful nice intentions and things sound nice and feel nice and are nice to each other so i mean yeah it's like this kind of like slightly plush slightly sparkling science fiction utopia um is is the imaginary daydream world that i come up with that i that i place all my objects in um but but in terms of like the the world that other people would inhabit and if they were to create my so my my core thought around this is yes i love making my creatures i love making this thing but um but this is very much a product of my own imagination right you know like i don't think there's a mass market for cuddly tentacles i mean i might be wrong but you know maybe they're maybe there is but um but but my uh my objective is not for that for everybody to have a tentacle my objective is for people to through the ridiculousness of my creations and the pure flights of fantasy that i let myself get to go on is to remind people that all music is made up right all instruments are invented and i'm making these ridiculous um objects that are experimental musical instruments and you know like until until i guess the 1930s and 1940s there was a lot the homogenization of instrument making um wasn't a thing like you go to a musical instrument um and a museum there's a really nice one in berlin and that i went to and you see like all these houses of different types of like harpsichord right so there's no like centralized like now we think about a violin a violin is a violin it's a violin it's violin right there are tweaks there's like small changes been from manufacturing manufacturer but the truth is like a violin is a violin right whereas um back you know like a couple hundred years ago like a violin was not a violin and like there was a lot more regional variation in between instruments and i think people forget because these instruments have been so established for so long that instruments didn't always used to be the same right um like a middle a didn't used to be 430 440 hertz until like the 1950s when a group of dudes decided that's what it was it used to be different in different countries so there's like the homogenization of musical instrument making is actually quite a recent phenomenon so partially through my instruments i want to be like hey listen you can also make your own instruments and and part of that is the flight of imagination and it's like you know if you want to make it you know say for example you're like super into i don't know traffic homes that's your aesthetic you've got very a traffic cone aesthetic and you also want to make an instrument and you can go on ahead and do that so like partially it's like the the the the absurdity and the extreme hellenists of all my objects every personal right so i wanted to make the point that oh yeah all instruments are inventions so you can do that yourself but also i try very hard to document all of my makes um so that they show how to use these different technologies um so um so for example the the tentacle and the desperable feral men these are behind me and they're actually part of um a larger piece of work that i'm doing um is which is an as yet untitled book on diy music technologies um which which is all about the different kinds of technologies the different types of microcontrollers that you might want to use and to make your own instruments um so yeah i mean i guess i guess at the moment i do i do think a lot about how um the homogenization of of of everything really not just musical instruments of everything so like the kind of globalization and in fact this at this um instrument museum in berlin um it was very empty because you know it was reduced reduced um reduced our um reduced number of people that can come in because of coverage and i got um essentially a private tour by one of the curators who was just showing people around and she went on from this massive rant about globalization and how it destroyed like like all these different like independent piano makers who had all these and it was really interesting i've not really thought about it before um about the history of the harpsichord right i'm more of a synth person you know like i'm a bit more a bit more modern um but she went on this massive rant debate like how her harpsichords were destroyed for political reasons um because they they were um they were popular um with the kings that were all beheaded during the revolution so basically it was considered honestly it was like the harpsichord died out because it was considered bourgeois to have it was considered like upper class to have it and in fact like um one of the beheaded french kings i forget which one probably one of the louise wasn't it and but he um he actually saw a demonstration of the grand grand piano and was like no it's terrible blah blah blah we like the hub scored in this in this and like and then he got his head cut off and the grand piano was seen as like a revolutionary instrument and became really popular with the uh middle and upper class people and all their harpsichords were um were no longer in favor and that's with tangent wasn't it but it's quite an interesting one but you think like about these kind of trends um and then you know not necessarily i actually see that for example that the harpsichord versus piano that was not driven by technology that change which i mean it is a technology right these instruments are making use of technologies and you see like um going back to harpsichords apparently um but so you see throughout the you know the evolution of the different types of heart support that you have right um and then you look at the music that's created and actually a lot of the music that is created is created for the new technology right so like um when you can get like these sharp you know before it used to have to be a little bit more slow and stately because those are the constraints of the tool right of the constraints of the the instruments that they were playing but as the technology got better and better and as the harpsichord got more and more advanced you were able to create much more um like much more like swift and you know like the flight of the bumblebees right that wasn't that wasn't just it was the first time anyone ever thought of doing a lot of notes in one row it was the first kind of time that people you know that the technology was available you know like the harpsichord was good enough to be able to create that kind of music so actually the technology drives the change in music as well as the other way you know so it's it's like it's like um it's not just um it's not purely artistic and it's not fully technological we're kind of like locked in this like but not battle but we're not we're locked in this embrace kind of like struggling our way through the future you know like um increasing like changing changing our art as our technological tools change and changing our tools as it as they um as we need them for our arts as well and i think the harp support is a really nice example of that and suddenly this is this like forward-moving embrace through trying you know like art music art music technologies and is like brought to a crushing halt because some king didn't like the piano and then got himself beheaded like and it's so interesting to me you know that all of this can be like just stopped like all of this progress all of these um all of this knowledge is just is is um is changed by by history and by politics it's very very interesting and actually very relevant i think yeah it is i mean that's kind of why i'm so interested in utopias and i'm interested in fictioning new worlds because i personally think we're we're capitalists thinking is at its end like we're post capitalists now it's just not gonna work anymore and we need new ways to be in the world we need new solutions for like who makes technology what it's capable of doing and we need to really break down a lot of that homogenization that we've seen from globalization and go back to thinking about how we solve the problems around us and who gets to solve them and why we went through such a period of of technology becoming you know starting by like heavily influenced by women including women to this narrowing and and now we're literally at the peak of like fighting for like just basic things like hey can we be here and maybe you won't like leer at us like could we just do that like can we get that far um and like i i think it's symptomatic of the world that's kind of come into to play and like i i think that something like arduino or something like these sensors they're proposing an alternate world right they're proposing a world where technology is not terrifying and like if you've got an interest in making something for yourself you totally can i tell you who's interesting to look at with that is um well they've closed now but um cobra counts you know so um so cobra cat is k-o-b-a-k-a-n-t for those who are watching um and they um worry well are in balloon-based italia for um e-textiles but i don't know if you knew this but the one of the reasons why they found it is it was um their studio that they ran not the studio the pop-up shop that they ran um right was based on a science fiction imagining um which was um that in the future um all that there were the clothes would be um and and electronics would be bespoke right so like there would be like an italian for clothing there would also be an italian for electronics and that was the basis of kobe kent the pop-up shopping girl at the park was imagining the future yeah just imagining in the future that there would be like bespoke italians for electronics and they have done these things displayed on there fascinating like their research is so good if anybody watching is into um wearables or into the idea of conductive fabrics or that kind of thing their website is an absolute treasure-shaped information it's um it's it's it's just it's where it's the wearables is that it's the website where all the wearables people go and like how do you connect this thing to this thing i mean it's a little bit dated now um just an appearance but the the information on there is actually absolutely fantastic yeah so check that out well i think this is all the things that i wanted to talk about in the very first bits and bytes episode we have touched on all the topics of pure goodness the importance of science fiction imagining to the creation of technology the importance of valuing process and process-based methodologies to generate knowledge creative arts not just being about being a technologist but like using technology is just another thing in your toolbox that you can pull out integrate into a thing i this has just been the best conversation and it's reminded me so much why i love talking to you because we can get into these holes and it can go for hours so i feel like i have to ask you now a very light-hearted question because we've been very serious and very philosophical and very very interesting but i want you to explain to me the your welsh which i think is a fun fact to know i want you to tell me three ridiculous welsh words oh wow well the one that everybody really loves is um a pepti pong which is my i love it it's so good i love how much it like says what it does you know i'm not going to use that um so my favorite welsh words i would say can i can i say one sentence and then one word yes you can say one sentence in one word and i'm excited to hear what you choose my favorite just all-round word is bendy gerdig um firstly because it's got the word bendy in there it's hilarious but bendy getting just means excellent so be like you know how are you be like bendy getting um it's just i don't know it's just a really it's a really cheerful this cheerful word um although yeah i know it's really cheerful word but the other really nice cheerful word is kutch um which is cwtch and it means a cuddle um and it's just very specific type of platonic cuddle you can give it to your partner you know your love interest but it's just like a really deep like non-sexual loving cuddle that you might give to your friend at the end of the night it's just like a really good hug like a good hug between people who have love in their heart for each other it's like a puppet that's nice so my favorite sentence um in welsh and never mind like i'm from south wales so i'm not fluent and well she told so if there are any fluent or speakers um out there please don't judge my accent but i really like um retweet school diana which sounds quite lyrical i think but it means i like fish and chips so i wasn't expecting that and i was totally expecting that let very helen i feel like it just went very very hell in there with the the language he chose to uh to love which i i think is delightful and one of my favorite things that i i think that we you and i have gone back and forth on and i think is the final thing i'm going to talk about during this show is a culture of care which i think you and i have done a whole bunch of work with like fostering a culture of care about how the other one is like just eat like we can trade tech types all day and i can write you and be like hey what do you know about this but really it's not what i'm interested in talking to you about even though sometimes we do talk about that kind of stuff um and for those of you who who helen and i were part of the same maker space community for a while which is how we became friends and at that community at that at that space was this culture of care that i think has seeped into our relationship and it just becomes it was such a different space because i feel like it was care first and tech second and i was wondering if you'd like to talk about how care is important to you in your practice i think there's two things that i got from machines room that terms of that culture and they're part i'd say the flip sides of the same coin one is this culture of care and and the other is a culture of sharing um and um i think they're they're very much part of the same thing right so there's there was there was there was an authenticity to the space that we existed in and it wasn't i guess it was it was um yeah we were people first not just technologists i think and i think part of that was because a lot of us came into that space with very different skills and very different talents um and um and we always made the time to teach each other or there was always a culture if you could ask anyone anything and through that was born um like a deepness to the community i want to talk about our relationship here we had a different we had like an extra dimension but just even with the people that i wouldn't interact with that often i would i would still get that same feeling like i would never feel like there was a wrong question i could ask and nobody would you don't mean like it was yeah it was the least judgy space i've ever been a part of there was like i i felt like i could walk up to ross and be like i don't understand what that does and he'd be like oh it does this you know and i'd be like oh it's so cool like the 3d printing people will be like oh what's this thing and they'd always like this is this is this people would always have time for you yeah i didn't ever feel like anybody pushed me off and and so often i remember when i was learning to cnc and particularly susanna who's in the space and i i was really like as you know i have a disability and i really struggle with like anything that involves strength is basically just like i can't push because i will take a joint out and i've dislocated my elbows and shoulders more times than i can count and i i really just i'm i'm tentative with my body and i was really struggling to change the color on this machine and like i was like told us and um she saw me struggling and she came in with a long tube of like saran wrap and she stuck it have you ever seen her do this before she stuck it on the collet uh on the on the wrench and she attached the collar and she used her hip and i was like oh what is this she's like you don't have to nestle it because you can just lean into it i was like oh my god and she's like yeah i keep this over here and i thought to myself what an amazing moment because like what would it look like if tools were made for hips because we're strongest in our lower body and in our hips and it just the reality she proposed to me there with the thing is saran wrap was just like one of the most delicious realities i've ever had proposed to me in a makerspace tools right you know we like tools no it's a fantastic place and i think i think there was this this culture of experimentation there and a culture of people asking how you were um and actually caring about it i think part of that as well i wonder if that's this is the way that the space was set up to a certain extent as well there was like um maybe it was just a collection of people there i have thought about it often because it you know like having having been part of well over a dozen maker spaces at this point it certainly remains to me um by far the most caring and um and as a consequence informative makerspace i've ever had the privilege of being part of and because you felt safe because people were caring about you you're more likely to ask a lot of questions which i mean you felt safe you felt safe in that moment to be like oh to not feel like an idiot to be like oh no i don't know this thing they're going to judge me um but yeah yeah it's it was a really interesting place really interesting a really interesting space um yeah it was there was this wonderful culture there very much very much enjoyable space i think a lot about ability yeah i think a lot about ability with that space because it's the only space i've ever been in it that was a maker space that had people who were not all exactly the same and homogenous there were so many people with different abilities around this space like who needed different things and the space they just made it happen like for me um they made a monitor hook so on my desk i could hang a monitor which was like one of my favorite things um and everything was up really ergonomically for rachel who was in a wheelchair they built an accessible toilet like they just was like okay so we're gonna build one and we're just gonna put it right here and and people just did that like there was never a question about these kinds of things they just happened it didn't happen there was no discussion there was no wait there was no vote if you want to have access for people it was just okay this happens it was very much everyone just get on with it culture yeah it's like just just do it you know and yeah just just just just put that saran wrap right just just make that and just make the thing yeah just figure it out figure out whatever you need we fix it you know somebody here will help you do it so you just find somebody it will happen there will be someone here who listens and i just remember like with you we you and i fed back and forth like if i couldn't do a thing you'd do it for me i've got no coordination i totally would yeah that's again like when you feel like yeah when you have that community and when you're able to to use that kind of community you get so much more done as well for sure because everybody's got different abilities and you're just like hey do you know how to do x and i'd be like oh yeah i totally know x and i'd be like i can't do y can you do y and you'd be like yeah i can totally do y [Laughter] and that's yeah that's such a nice thing so i thought that would be a really lovely note to wrap on because it really points to all these like things about technology that i think make it better and make a world that we'd want to be in and i feel like so by admonk it's about advancing the sun of human knowledge right and having a nice time before we die having a nice time before we die oh my god please i'm so ready for a nice time i have not i left new cross which is the area i live in for like months i crossed the bridge the other day because i had to go do a government thing and i never thought going to a government office would be exciting but it was like a roller coaster i was like i'm out of my house well this has been wonderful helen thank you so much for your time and i really appreciate your energy and i'll continue to follow your work from afar now that you've moved to the us so thank you so much thank you for having me phoenix bye

2021-02-24 03:21

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