'3rd Annual Boston Inventgenuity Festival,' Arlington, March 2 & 3

Boston’s 3rd annual Inventgenuity Festival, presented by Beam Camp, fills the Arlington Center for the Arts with fun and engaging hands-on activities. With public projects and workshops led by Beam Camp’s faculty of artists, engineers and big thinkers, kids will playfully and productively investigate the common DNA digital technology and manual mechanisms. In two days of hands-on workshops and on-going collective projects, led by expert makers and manipulators of sound, image, electricity, and motion, kids will explore this year’s theme, "Digital by Hand." In the weekend’s big project, “The Physical Video Processing Unit,” kids will become the bits and bytes of a room-sized video machine creating filters and video effects with their bodies and a VHS tape. Participation in the project is free. Attendees may also sign-up for one of the rotating slate of 45-minute workshops. Scheduled workshops include "Hand-Powered Animated GIFs," "Crazy Cursor Bots," "Origami LED Pixels," "Embroidered Emoticons," and "LED Fortune Tellers." As a free, drop-in workshop, attendees can explore early animation and image devices with deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum’s new summer program, "The Hive: Connecting kids to art, ideas, and nature." Other activities include interaction with zoetropes, vintage projectors, and simple tools to alter visual perception/the way we see the world. Sat., March 2 & Sun., March 3, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Admission to the festival is free, registration required. Advance online reservations for workshops ($8.25 materials fee) will be available two weeks prior to the Festival. All workshops will repeat throughout the day; most workshops will be available both days of the festival. Arlington Center for the Arts, 41 Foster St., Arlington. www.beamcamp.com/inventgenuity