Tag Archives: creativity
THS G8 Seaweed Farm Design, Build & Deploy
Tech Know Wise @ THS – rocked Grease Jr
The Harbour School musical Grease Jr was the first musical production run by a newly created Tech Know Wise [TKW] student tech crew.
I am very proud that the Tech Know Wise crew dedicated themselves to designing, setting up, tuning, operating and derigging all Sound, Light & Projection systems.
Weekly after-school training sessions fueled the team’s knowledge, skill and experience growth.
The team worked tirelessly after school and on weekends for three weeks to be ready to control the entertainment technology systems as required.
And they did so very well.
In recognition of their accomplishment, The Harbour School leadership have complimented the TKW crew for their creative and quality work.
With their first production behind them, the TKW crew are ready for more.
The Harbour School – Audio in the BBT
Now that Covid interruptions seem to be lessening, I am happy to say that I have been getting ready to work with The Harbour School’s Black Box Theatre’s audio systems.
Yesterday was a few hours getting to know the installed system. A few adjustments were made to align some output levels. The Audinate’s Dante provides great, though complicated, remote manipulation over digital processing options. Very cool.
Yahama MIxer
Renkus Heinz Loudspeakers
LabGroupen Amplification
BiAmp Tesira Processing
Crestron Processing
Shure ULXD MIcrophone systems
Extron Matrix system (HDMI)
Clearcom Communication systems
Audinate’s Dante AV over IP management
A thoughtful and cfreative system that I look forward to getting to pl;ay with over time. It will be able to do great things.
The aim will be to get students in the know too 🙂
From the skip to upcycled furniture – THS Gr 8
The Harbour School’s grade eight students were required to design and build rooftop furniture from an eclectic collection of wooden pallets.
The Foundry ‘Intensive’ project focused on developing leadership, design, engineering, social knowledge and skill.
Two students represented the grade level meeting with teachers to clarify project details.
Four teams crafted two seats and a table whilst the fifth team created the cushions for the seats.
Teams had to communicate their individualised product dimensions to the cushion team on time to allow enough time to cut, sew, zipper and finish all seat covers.
Teams designed, selected, measured, cut, secured, drilled, hammered, nailed, screwed, recut, glued an eclectic collection of pallets into usable seats and tables.
All furniture had to be sanded, varnished, left to dry, resanded and revarnished. Teams pushed to apply at least two coats of Marine Varnish to all surfaces.
Friday afternoon saw the last brush of varnish applied and the teams celebrated with a feast of snacks and drinks.
The group spoke proudly of their teamwork, effort and experience.
Their work lives on.
A shout out to the Grade 7/8 and Foundry Teachers plus TCI support at The Harbour School.
Brilliantly supported all.
Enjoy a collection of shots below.
Servo hands in THS Foundry
The Harbour School’s grade 6 students furthered their awareness of the human hand functions through crafting a team built servo-driven robotic hand.
Aiming toward solidifying a human body system knowledge of the hand, a paper-based version of a moving hand was crafted in paper.
Next step – Scaled and Robotic.
The six-day project boosted their engineering design awareness, constructional technique knowledge & skill, collaborative approach and resilience. All essential to steam towards a successful build.
Students ideated how to replicate a scaled hand, knuckles, tendons and finger sections.
With larger-than-life fingers crafted, the challenge became to connect the fingers to the electronic servos to cause motion. Mr Wouter’s designed Arduino-based multi servo control board activated the servo units.
An extension was available for students to program Microbits to control the Servo units.
Students reacted to the project with smiles on their faces and enthusiasm in their words:
“It was really hard to connect the fingers section together”
“I am pleased that we got all the fingers built”
“There were a lot of challenges but we overcame them”
“It was great fun”
“The measuring and scaling took us a long time”
“The cutting of the fingers was hard”
“I used a lot of hot glue”
It was great to see the students collaboratively focused on developing the finer details of their projects and working together to get the job done.
It’s also refreshing to see the variety of approaches to how one might craft a hand.
Well done to the grade six.
The Harbour School Foundry – a new adventure
I am excited to have begun a new adventure: working at The Harbour School – Foundry in Hong Kong.
The Harbour School’s Foundry is a purpose-built maker-space – a learning environment designed to encourage students to build, experiment and prototype inventions as they engage deeply in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.
The facility is available for all grades to develop their interests, passions and skills.
The Foundry materials and tools include; wood, acrylic, cardboard, fabric, metals, 3D printers, robotics, electronics, sewing machines, laser cutter, bench saws, routers (including CNCs, drill press, sanding stations, all hand tools imaginable, and more.
I am thankful to work within such a well-resourced workspace.
I have now been at THS for three weeks and have already supported week-long ‘Intensive’ projects with grades one, three, five, plus the recess visitors from all grades. All grades are scheduled to visit throughout the year.
I am excited to see how I can help establish and support even more opportunities for creativity in The Harbour School.
I look forward to it.
Design time – what this time?
Today involved preparing some wooden railings onboard Alhambra for re-varnishing. Having become quite the veteran at doing that, my mind was drifting to other things, not to mention the reality that the Hog Kong Observatory had just issued the amber rainstorm warning.
I knew I needed to check inside a hatch containing a load of wooden scraps mainly being Teak and Pine.
At that stage I knew this was the launching of a new project. A platform for the Ottoman.
The question is what might that look like and how am I going to go about playing that game.
I feel grand joy when developing project possibilities. Whether playing with audio track automation details, clarifying lighting focus options, dimensioning wood work possibles, exploring Epoxy Resin options, or crafting video storyboard details.
It matters NOT.
So this lot:
This lot, shall become something useful and hopefully neat.
The process of considering what might be and keeping an open mind is the best bit.
All sorts of sketching tools help clarify what things might look like. I believe there should be no hurry in developing ideas and associated details.
Projects deserve time.
Personally I use Gingerlab‘s Notability and Microsoft‘s One Note – both are great for note taking & marking up imagery.
As with most situations having access to required technologies makes the process so much easier and enjoyable.
My first stage at this point has been to soak the whole lot with Biocycle to ensure bugs are minimized.
Who knows what’s next.
Time will tell.
More later.
HKIS MS ‘Tech Know Wise’ step up in odd times
Saturday 21 November 2020 iwas the final day of our Hong Kong International School Middle School [MS] drama production.
I have once again had the pleasure of leading the MS Tech Know Wise crew in their design, set up and operation of all Entertainment Technology supporting the original MS drama performance connected to education in an unusual time, inspired by Covid 19 and it’s impact on our lives.
Masked and socially distant, the kids carried on.
They ROCK.
As a prestigious international school HKIS are blessed with outstanding resources resulting in the technical systems being plentiful and offering huge potential.
With Covid 19 precautions being maintained, and with parental and administrative approval three dedicated MS students stepped up to support the production and live the entertainment tech.
Two weeks of 3 – 5 after school every day to design, set up, program and practice resulted in another creative, detailed, entertaining production.
The entertainment tech includes:
Audio tech
Black Box Theater PA system
Additional set up
Makie 16 input audio mixer
2 x JBL Eon full range speaker
iMac with QLab V4
Lighting tech
Black Box Theater Lighting system (98Kw of lighting option)
Worth a mention
ETC Element 2 mixer
2 x High End System SolarSpot 1000 moving-head LED
iMac with QLab V4
Projection tech
2 x Epson projectors
Mac with QLab V4
The student’s took ownership of the show, refined their operation, remained resilient in the fine tuning and ongoing updates. And, as always put on a great show.
Well done, all of us.
Be safe
Production Design – SIMPLE and effective
I last posted around the planning and designing of the Drama School Hong Kong’s production of Frankenstein.
Let me continue by saying that I tend to lean towards wanting access to the highest quality technical systems that can meet all, well almost all, entertainment technologies creative possibilities. And lots of it.
I am fully aware that such a mindset is optimistic and frequently unrealistic. To date I have been lucky and have been privileged with the systems presented to me.
I know fantastic-ness can be done with very little too.
In addition to designing what we would do with the technology, this project required sourcing and selecting lighting systems that would meet our production needs – as increasingly aware, budget was a major consideration as was simplicity.
A trip to Sham Shui Po, a few hours and we got what we needed.
The Director – excited 🙂
Me thinking – eekkkk, we can do this 🙂
A lot of the time when working in different venues , the technical systems are predetermined by the venues used. This is not the case with this venue. The ‘Studio’ we use is fundamentally a photographic studio so the available lighting, is present but very different in it’s control options. We needed to design around this so we could achieve our program ideals.
We began set up at the Hive Studios in Kennedy Town on a Thursday early evening, quickly getting the set up established and the production control content programmed.
Our technical team included Yiru Niu on lighting, Daniel Marino with audio, and myself directing the technology usage.
Lighting Tech
1 x Fiveupstar DC-1216 DMX mixer/controller
2 x Philips LED (RGBW)
1 x Colour LED (RGBW)
1 x Prophoto D1 1000 Air 1500 watt
Collection of tripods and clamps
Audio Tech
1 x Makie 12 i/p MIxer
2 x Makie Full range speaker
Collection of cables
2 x Apple Macbook Pro
QLab software
Various production libraries of Sound effects
Though we had basic technical systems available to us, the creative and collaborative dialogue brought us effective and creative technical support for the program.
Once again, I benefit so much from being a part of a creative adaptable, creative process. I am optimistic that my experience and passion for these projects positively impacts those involved. They say it does 🙂
We thoroughly enjoyed the use of chocolate gels.
Frankenstein worked and the show was a great success. The actors responded to the lights, smoke and sound to entertain us all.
I look forward to the next adventure.
Dean Lea 