Roborigami at Bristol Mini Maker Faire

Roborigami, an installation I work on involving giant origami foxes and hidden robotic elements, was featured as part of Bristol Mini Maker Faire in the foyer of Birstol's most recent museum, the M shed.

Maker Faires are a worldwide series of events associated with the 'maker movement', who are people who make things. This is championed by Make magazine, who prominantly featured Roborigami in a write up of the event.

As the focus of the event was on making we decided that we would create the installation 'live', so attendees could watch the process of cutting, folding and adding electronics to the origami foxes. By the end of the day we had 10 foxes, as shown in this video.




These new foxes are made of plastic, rather than card, making them water resistant. Here's a couple of photos from the event.

We've also started making our own stickers to give out to interested people. Much more fun than a business card :-)

Puppet Place Open Day Video

Here's a video from a recent 'open doors' day in Puppet Place, the studio I rent with other members of the creative technology collective RustySquid.



A bunch of the stuff on show was from people who work in the studio, though we had a good number of guest pieces too. You can find out more about each piece by clicking on it in the video.

Keen eyes will spot the Haptic Lotus at 0:42, which was present for hands on demos. Because I couldn't blindfold people or black out the lights as usual (far too much stuff to trip over) I had people follow me around while holding the Lotus. It fully blossomed when they approached the tea and cake stand. Pretty much everyone, robots included, likes tea and cake.

Writing for Guerilla Science

Here's a link to an article I wrote for Guerilla Science on the haptic lotus installation I did with them at Secret Garden Party this summer.

 

 The article will be stored in their archives here: http://guerillascience.co.uk/archives/2490

Haptic Lotus at Secret Garden Party

A couple of weekends ago I took the mobile Haptic Lotus rig (and a couple of assistants) to the Secret Garden Party festival, at the request of Guerilla Science, an organisation that brings science to music festivals.

Over the course of 4 or so hours we created an interactive installation where festival goers could use the haptic device and sound effects to be guided to target cannisters containing sweets. We had about 40 people pass through the installation, many in fancy dress:

 

I've demo-ed the Lotus at conferences before, but a music festival, where people are just passing through while looking for a good time, or something unusual, is quite a different experience. One thing we tried was getting people to race each other in the dark. That was fun!

Here's the blurb for my Thursday evening slot (which featured in the festival program):

 

THURSDAY: ASCENT

17:00-22:00 Blind Robot’s Bluff: Adam Spiers Navigate through darkness with the Haptic Lotus, a cybernetic instrument that manoeuvres through space with engineered grace. Use the unfolding petals to guide you to your destination, and ponder the meaning of light in the dark.

More information on the event can be found on the Question website with some extra pictures in the Guerilla Science Flickr album.