Workshop Tutors: William Bondin, Dr. Chris Leung, Francois Mangion, William Victor Camilleri, Vincent Huyghe, Ifigenia Lambrou

We’ve just finished an intensive Interaction Design workshop – this time at the Lab’s home city, London. It’s always a pleasure teaching hard working students, alongside hard working staff. The participants are Bartlett M.Arch and M.Sc students, who worked really hard for two weeks to deliver six brilliant projects. So here’s a brief overview of the projects:

Twist
Participants: Asha Ting Ding, Russell Beaumont, Hyoyeon Kim, Yiyi Wang

Twist is a two-degree of freedom machine, equipped with ultra-sonic range finders and powered by an Arduino micro. The cylindrical object averages out the position of four players and twists and wiggles until the players stand in a pre-defined location. Once this happens, the cylinder will glow orange and a new location is randomised to encourage further play. The team’s playful narrative draws on the notion of objects which come to life when unattended.

DUKC
Participants: Bahnfun Chittmittrapap, Menglin Wang, Mohamed Dawod, Geoffrey Bennett

DUKC, short for Dynamic Universal Kinetic Companion, is a kinetic intervention inspired by Vaucanson’s ‘Digesting Duck’. The plexiglass duck is equipped with distance sensors, and seeks the attention of passersby. Similarly to Vaucanson’s duck, DUKC’s intent stems from people’s imagination rather the machine itself.

Lightblock
Participants: Fabio Galicia, Somya Chaturvedi, Norhan Abdelgawad, Siyuan Jing, Chars Song

Light Block is an octahedral module which responds to the proximity of other similar blocks. Each block is equipped with radio frequency transceivers and changes its colour to signal proximity. Inspired by John Frazer’s ‘Universal Constructor’, Lightblock aims to describe an architecture which is continuously changing and evolving together with its environment.

Herd
Participants: Sarah Mokhtar, Juncheng Chen, Lydia Zhou, Charles Fried

Herd is a digital board game with physical avatars. The goal is to lock the swarm of balls into a designated goal area. This can be achieved by co-operating individuals which can physically manipulate attractor and repeller avatars.

Cuple
Participants: Ava Aghakouchak, Takashi Torisu, Daniel Szemerey, Sungchul Park, Thenia Patka

Cuple is a kinetic proposal for a coffee bar, using Braitenberg vehicles to deliver drinks and encourage people to meet each other.

Interactive Orchestra
Participants: Haavard Tveito, Maria Paneta, Oliver Cleveley-Jones, Zchichao Zcheng

The Interactive Orchestra is a collection of rapidly prototyped instruments which generate midi files from body gestures. These midi files are then sent to a laptop to generate a musical score.

I would sincerely like to thank all the participants for their enthusiasm and hard work and my colleagues, without whom this workshop wouldn’t have taken place. A big thanks to our critics for their advice and to B-Made for providing their facilities for filming and fabrication.