About Steven Smethurst

Steven Smethurst is a Vancouver based maker, hacker, and installation artist. Steven primarily works with light and technology. Light changes everything around it. It’s messy and bleeds into and over everything. It is loud and demands attention but its effects are temporary. Remove the light from the environment and the environment returns to its natural, unaltered state. Steven’s technological background adds unique interactive elements to his work. His work reacts to people, inviting them to touch, play and interact with his installations.

Exhibitions

• (2022) Flocking AI, Eastside Culture Crawl
• (2020) City of glass, Luminescence V Deer Lake Gallery
• (2019) Illuminated Stained Glass Tetragonal Trapezohedron, Vancouver Maker Faire 2019
• (2019) Stained Glass Windows, Luminescence IV Deer Lake Gallery, Vancouver Maker Faire 2019
• (2018) Stained Glass Windows, Vancouver Culture crawl.
• (2018) Edge lit lantern, re-vision Granville Island vancouver
• (2018) Pillar of Tetris, Sh’Bang festival
• (2017) LED Pillar, Vancouver Mini Maker faire
• (2017) Thunderstorm cloud, Luminescence Deer Lake Gallery, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire
• (2017) Laser Kaleidoscope, Luminescence Deer Lake Gallery, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire
• (2017) Fairmont Pacific Rim Bike Carousel, Chapel Arts and Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel
• (2017) Asics cloud project, HFour Studios
• (2016) Heart of Mount Pleasant, Vancouver Foundation
• (2016) Branchy light box, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire, Burning man
• (2016) Ball of life, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire, Basecoast, Burn in the forest
• (2016) CNC Zen Garden, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire
• (2016) Make the night, Absolute Make the night
• (2015) Pocket Universe, Burning man, Burn in the forest, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire, SHHH25
• (2015) The 100 Day Project, The Great Discontent
• (2015) Mapping fairy Doors, Vancouver
• (2014) Thread map of vancouver, Maker labs
• (2014) The Giant Claw Game!, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire
• (2013) Glowing Vest, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire
• (2012) Tornado art, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire
• (2012) Teeth - Hot One Inch Action

Awards and Grants

• (2018) Lookout Arts Quarry grant - Pillar of Tetris
• (2016) Vancouver Foundation grant - Heart of Mount Pleasant
• (2015) Vancouver Foundation grant - Fairy doors
• (2015) Black rock city (Burning man) Honoraria - Pocket Universe
• (2015) Greater Vancouver Interactive Arts Society (GVIAS) grant - Pocket Universe

Talks

• (2020) Pecha Kucha Burnaby - Creative Progression: 100 days challenge to a 1 year project
• (2020) Vancouver Creative Technology - Creative Consistency: An Illuminating Process

Projects

See projects page for a full list.

• (2023) 100 ideas - 100 project ideas, a new one each day.
• (2022) Monthly Habit Tracker - A monthly habit tracker inspired by Simone Giertz “The Every Day Calendar”
• (2022) Flocking AI - Generating bird images from Mid Journey
• (2021) Vancouver Bird playing cards - A deck of playing cards featuring photos of birds from around Vancouver
• (2021) Lighthouse Liquor Cabinet - Converting a Lighthouse Redemption Machine into a liquor and glassware cabinet
• (2020) Vancouver City Parks - Visted every Vancouver city park during COVID-19 for a selfie
• (2020) Tender Threads 2 - Short movie about the feelings of a puppet
• (2019) Illuminated Stained Glass Tetragonal Trapezohedron - Illuminated Stained Glass Tetragonal Trapezohedron sculpture
• (2019) Illuminated Stained Glass Sixteen Segment Display - Illuminated Stained Glass Sixteen Segment Display
• (2018) Stained Glass Windows - A series of hexagon stainglass windows
• (2017) Thunderstorm cloud - A interactive lamp that mimics thunderstorm cloud.
• (2017) Laser Kaleidoscope - Moving lasers which generate twisting fractal shapes
• (2017) LED Pillar - A game using a single strip of LEDs as a display. Made for Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2017
• (2017) Fairmont Pacific Rim Bike Carousel - A custom electric bike carousel installed at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel downtown Vancouver.
• (2017) Asics color changing cloud project - A series of color changing clouds for Asics New York popup shop.
• (2016) Map of intersting places - A constantly updated map of interesting places from around the world
• (2016) Heart of Mount Pleasant - Origami style hearts hanging from a tree in the Heart of Mount Pleasant.
• (2016) CNC Zen Garden - A Zen garden controlled by a CNC XY platform.
• (2016) Branchy light box - Laser cut silhouette of branches in a tree, illuminated with color changing LEDs
• (2016) Blinky the fox head mask - A low polygon fox head mask with an array of LEDS create patterns on the faces.
• (2016) Ball of life - A Wooden icosahedron with LEDs used for festivals as a marker
• (2015) The 100 Day Project - A series of single day projects.
• (2015) Pocket Universe - Mirroed dome
• (2014) Thread map of vancouver - Laser cut map of vancouver with GPS heat map of a years worth of travel.
• (2014) The Giant Claw Game! - A large claw game made for Vancouver Maker Faire 2014

Workshops

2022

• 2022/September - Digital Stained Glass workshop for Tools for Women residency at Maker Labs

2020

• 2020/September - Digital Stained Glass workshop for Tools for Women residency at Maker Labs

2019

• 2019/October - Digital Stained Glass workshop for Tools for Women residency at Maker Labs
• 2019/September - Digital stained glass workshop at Maker Labs
• 2019/May - Arduino/ESP8266 Lighting Workshop at Maker Labs
• 2019/March - Arduino/ESP8266 Lighting Workshop at Maker Labs

2018

• 2018/June - Cutting Board workshop at Maker Labs for Chipkin Automation Systems
• 2018/March - Light paiting workshop

2017

• 2017/November - Intro to laser cutting
• 2017/September - Arduino LED workshop - Building a thunderstom cloud

2016

• 2016/July - Overpowered LED flashlight workshop - 100W battery powered LED flood lights.

2015

A goal this year was to run a workshop once a month.

• 2015/December - Oscilloscope workshop - How to use a oscilloscope for debugging projects
• 2015/November - Sew it again - fabric repaire workshop
• 2015/October - Intro to lighitng with the Arduino
• 2015/September - Arduino Binary clock Workshop #IStandWithAhmed
• 2015/August - ESP8266 + DS18b20 + sparkfun
• 2015/July - Fairy door workshop #2
• 2015/July - Fairy door workshop
• 2015/June - Intro to ESP8266 workshop
• 2015/May - Intro to lighitng with the Arduino
• 2015/April - Advanced laser cutter CNC workshop
• 2015/March - Piccolo cnc workshop
• 2015/Febuary - Esp8266 Internet button
• 2015/January - Intro to lighitng with the Arduino

2014

• 2014/November - Intro to lighitng with the Arduino
• 2014/October - Introduction to Arduino blink and E-Textiles
• 2014/September - Learn to solder workshop
• 2014/August - Getting started with Raspberry PI workshop
• 2014/August - Balloon maping workshop
• 2014/July - Getting started with Arudino workshop
• 2014/June - Large LED Maxtrix workshop. Teaching people how to program a large LED maxtrix
• 2014/January - Intro to lockpicking

2013

• 2013/November - Introduction to Home automation with the Raspberry Pi workshop
• 2013/September - Sock Knitting Night
• 2013/September - Getting started with Raspberry PI workshop
• 2013/Febuary - Getting a Raspberry PI to blink workshop

Skill and Experience

25 years of programing embeded devices

• Programing lanuages: C/C++, CSharp, Jave, Javascript, Typescript, Node.js, Python, Rust, Go, PHP, ASP.NET Core, .Net
• Web Sites: HTML/CSS, SCC, Jekyll, Wordpress
• Application frameworks: MFC, Electron, Xamerin, Cordova, Android
• Database: SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, ElasticSearch
• Cloud: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Heroku
• Frontend: Vue.js, React.js, Laravel
• Tooling: Docker, Git, VMWare, CI/CD
• Eletronics: KiCad, Arduino, Atmel, etc…
• etc…

5 years of digital fabrication

• Laser cutting, CNC machining, 3D printing, Fusion 360, Blender, AutoCad