Water as Medium

Water as power source, control mechanism, cause and effect.
Water as medium upon which to project, to move, with which to act.
Water and machines as possibly antithetical yet intrinsically bound together.

Within this workshop we will investigate the performative and machinic properties of water. Whether we build small fountain objects, water logic gates, Arabian wine pouring robots or autonomous wave riding machines, we will be looking at the interactions of water and machinic systems.

The robotics workshop will fall into several phases:

- overview: getting an idea what motion and movement, controlled and somehow uncontrolled, can do and be used for in artistic practice

- sketch: sketching wild machines, imagining sequences of motion, handwaving explanation of causality of mechanical events

- experiment: seeing if these ideas work: they won't! That's fine, it means we are learning something

- observe: see what does happen, measure, make notes, document

- investigate: in order to see what is happening, add some tracking to the machine: e.g. attaching a pencil to one piece that traces the motion on paper, LED throwie and a camera tracing the motion

- analyse: how the motion differs from expectations, how it surprises and how it disappoints, how this might be caused

- adapt: repair, move away from problematic aspects, enhance the surprises and repeat experiments

- control: work out ways to make the movements controllable, repeatable (within reason!) and possibly "useful" in some sense, e.g. sounding good.

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"It's pure research, which is about creating more problems than you solve." - Marc Pauline, SRL.