Social Robots

The CONTROL workshop
By Roger Ibars
ENSAD, Paris (France) November 2005
From Monday the 28th November to Friday 02th December

This workshop was inspired after my previous one (The GIANT workshop, with Sam Buxton) where we set up a online betting system to engage the participants to bet for the success or the fail of their final project, which goal was to build a 10 meter high GIANT. For the CONTROL workshop, I push a bit further the idea of taking CONTROL of the workshop outcomes and I proposed to the students that, at the end of the workshop, they're going to auction their projects on eBay. Beyond the simple idea of just "selling students projects" on eBay there was the goal of brainstorming strategies on how to do that, how somebody might be interested in bidding, how students might use the money of their projects, if any: maybe buy some electronic material for their future projects, maybe send it to a charity, maybe fund another electronics workshop) The possibilities were endless but we had to cancel the "eBay idea" for reasonable college regulations. Instead we did a GREAT exhibition.
Ok, then the CONTROL workshop consisted in coming with an idea for an electronic product, design it and build it in one week. And, at the end of the week, exhibited it. I brought to the workshop three types of low-tech electronic components to "connect" to existing electronic devices: a LIGHT SENSOR, a TILT SWITCH and a (bonus track for two lucky students) a SOUND TO LIGHT kit. I gave one to each and we started to brainstorm!
This workshop was about to create interesting and "auction-able" context and meaning for existing electronic devices. This new re-contextualized devices will, by the end of the workshop, react to the environment through LIGHT, MOVEMENT or SOUND to perform their new features.
23 lovely product/industrial design students (yes, a lot for myself only!) took part in this workshop and I have to say that they worked endless hours and were exited with the workshop right from the beginning! Theirs projects in the coming posts!

Really Special thanks to Anna Bernagozzi, for her endless support in organizing more than everything and kind hosting. Also thanks to Patrick Renaud and Florence Doléac

NB: Nice picture of a light sensor, one of my favourite electronic component.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 08, 2005 at 11:32 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.