Art Month on Hackster
Learn more about what activities Hackster is doing for Art Month this month and how you can participate.
Throughout November, we’re dedicated to showcasing the creativity and imagination of developers. We’ll highlight the latest news on artistic trends, initiatives, and community activities that enable developers to craft unique projects. We’ll also interview hardware artistswho have created artistic hardware projects, including 3D-printed music videos, magnetic tape echoes, and a sound-reactive rib cage on both Hackster Café and our virtual meetup, "Hangout & Nerdout," hosted with Make:.
A call to share projects
Art is a vast topic that encompasses paintings, sculptures, literature, architecture, cinema, music, and theater. Open source projects can be applied to any of these art forms in an unlimited amount of ways - in as tiny as a small wearable or scaled to large exhibition sculptures. On Hackster, we've seen this spectrum of creativity, ranging from a wall plotter that creates amazing artwork, to a mechanical tulip that changes color, and even a possessed portrait. Be sure to put your ingenuity to the test and share your artistic project on Hackster using any of the following tags:
Remember to promote your projects on social media and use #hacksterio or tag our @hacksterio handle on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We’ll be sharing any art projects you send so post often and show your work to the global hardware development community.
Watch Hackster Café with creative masterminds
Hackster Café is a livestream series with Alex Glow every Tuesday at 10am PST. To join the live feed and ask questions, subscribe to Hackster's YouTube channel and you'll be notified when the link is live.
Prash is a talented creator who’s known for his 3D-printed music videos where lyrics are etched into 3D models to match a song in the background while the 3D model changes and shifts throughout his videos. He has incredible influence in this space, with over 16K followers on TikTok culminating nearly a million likes across his various videos.
Watch our live interview with Prash Makes from October 25th.
Adam Paul(11/1)
Adam is the lead singer with the Cambrdige Band Indifferent Engine and created the Janky Tape Echo, an open source DIY tape echo effect for guitars, vocals and synthesizers. Cassette heads and magnetic tapes create warm, crunchy and warbly echoes for unique sound effects. The parts are readily available and the project is driven digitally by an Arduino Nano board, making it accessible for any developers to recreate and add new designs.
Michelle Sharer (11/8)
Michelle is a software engineer who is passionate about combining her creativity with her development skills to build unique projects. One of these is a sound-reactive rib cage hand-carved out of wood with a heart of LEDs. The lights can react to the music to give a beautiful light show.
We've had a lot of beautifully talented technologists featured on Hackster Café in the past. To feel fully inspired, explore hackster.io/videos or check out a few of our past episodes below:
🎙 Two Bit Circus // Hackster Café
Founders Eric Gradman and Brent Bushnell give a behind-the-scenes look at the LA-based indoor theme park with VR, story rooms, arcade games, and custom gadgetry, as well as the home of multiple nonprofit endeavors supporting STEAM education.
Nick, who has created 3D circuit board art, built amazing cosplay props, and enriched the SparkFun team for many years as a creative technologist and SparkX R&D engineer.
🎙 Garrett Mace, MaceTech // Hackster Café
We sit down with Garrett, a "jack of all trades" specializing in amazing LED shades – worn by celebrities including Muse, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and maker icon Tenaya Hurst.
🎙 Sophy Wong, Designer // Hackster Café
Sophy Wong builds dazzling, practical wearable tech and more, and is a contributing writer for Adafruit and HackSpace magazine (check out her new book!). Learn how a design background has informed her work with Mythbusters Jr. and beyond
🎙 CW&T on Time and Technology // Hackster Café
Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy make up CW&T, a design house bringing subtlety and grace to their tech (and non-tech) products. Many of these beautiful objects help us give shape and intuitive meaning to the passage of time.
🎙 Step Tranovich's Robot Metal Band // Hackster Café
Step, aka Satyra, aka "the heavy metal robot overlordddd", has created a variety of robotic bandmates, including a self-playing guitar and a drum set.
🎙 Looking Glass, ft. Alex Hornstein // Hackster Café
Fantastic chat with Alex Hornstein of Looking Glass Factory, creators of the world's first desktop holographic display! In which we discuss the future of telepresence and 3D modeling... and get way too excited about light fields, lenses, and interactive squishy 3D objects.
Read the latest news on art hardware projects
Spark your creativity for the month by reading our recent articles about artistic hardware projects and technology at hackster.io/news. Here's a bit of coverage to get you started:
- James Brown's LEGO Computer Brick Hides a Fully-Functional, Programmable OLED Display: Created using homebrew injection molding into a 3D-printed form, these semi-functional LEGO computers look like magic.
- The Ruiz Brothers' Little Connection Machine Puts an Eye-Catching '80s Supercomputer on Your Desk: Designed to house a Raspberry Pi 4 as a functional case, or a Raspberry Pi Pico as art, this 3D-printed case is absolutely iconic.
- This Dynamic Piece of Art Responds to Its Picture Being Taken: Tauno Erik's latest project incorporates both old and new into a single, responsive circuit that uses tinyML to detect smartphones.
- Sector 07's "Project LUMEN" Is a Voice-Activated Coffee-Making Sci-Fi Sunrise Simulator: A 50-minute sci-fi film, or a detailed project overview? Sector 07's Austin decided to do both to show off his latest creation.
- This Flying Dutchman Model Hides Arduino Innards to Offer a Convincing Light and Sound Show Too: With full instructions, schematics, and source code available, you too could have a haunted smartphone-controlled ship to enjoy.
- Interactive Physical Map Displays Regional Air Quality: Ahmed Oyenuga created the Interactive Air Quality Map to visualize the regional air quality around Lagos, Nigeria.
- ‘Eye Is Watching You’ Is a Cool and Creepy Art Piece Made with a CRT Viewfinder: To build this creepy art piece called ‘Eye Is Watching You,’ Sideburn Studios used a CRT viewfinder from an old RCA CKC 020 video camera.
Join November's 'Hangout and Nerdout' with Make:
From freestanding circuits to fire tech, we explore the art of electrons and twisted wires. Join our three guest nerds and hosts from Make: and Hackster for a virtual soirée filled with beautiful and boundary-pushing technology. Featuring Anouk Wipprecht, Kelly Heaton, and Taylor Hokanson.