about me
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niklas roy
Hello! I'm Niklas Roy, an inventor of useless things. As you can find a lot of information about what I do on the left - I think I don't need to write too much about myself here.

If you want to get in touch with me, you can find my contact details here. In order to stay up to date, subscribe to my RSS feed. For realtime news, follow me on Twitter. And if you like my videos, subscribe to my Youtube Channel as well.


projects

Cardboard Plotter

The cardboard plotter is a mechanical device for drawing digital images.

Roboter Reiniger

Roboter Reiniger is a little household cleaning robot which I released in Brasília.

Perpetual Energy Wasting Machine

Perpetual Energy Wasting Machine is a rope and pulley mechanism which moves an elevator continuously between the 1st and 2nd floor of a building. The system is powered by the sliding doors of the elevator.

Ping Pong Ball Suction Constr.

Ping Pong Ball Suction Construction is a pneumatic delivery system which sucks ping pong balls, visually appealing, through transparent pipes, in order to release plenty of them, at one point, right above ping pong playing people, while they do listen to country music.

Lumenoise

Light pen which turns any cathode ray tube Television into an audiovisual synthesizer.

Developed at La Gaîté Lyrique.

Wasserklang Modulsystem

Entirely mechanical sound installation where a huge water wheel drives many mini musicboxes in an expressive setup. Built together with La belle Imira at the Technikmuseum Berlin for Berlin’s museum night.

Electronic Instant Camera

An instant camera that prints directly on thermal receipt paper.

PING! - Augmented Pixel

A 70’s style videogame ball is playing with a video signal.

My little piece of Privacy

A small robotic curtain that tries to protect my privacy by being smart.

Privéfonteintjes

A series of small private fountains that are driven by the hydropower of a large public fountain.

Erstwiderstand

A constant air stream as a first barrier in the entrance of an art space.

Vektron modular

Vektron modular Vektron modular is another experimental synthesizer. Listen to some strange zoundz after the click.

WIA < > WIA

wia wia “WIA < > WIA”, short for “Water in Africa < > Water in Austria”, was a commissioned work for Ars Electronica. The installation, however, was a hoax. I made Ars Electronica believe that an African artist, “Melissa Fatoumata Touré”, would have connected the public well in the Mali village “Koulouninko” via the Internet with a public toilet in Linz.

Gallerydrive: The Grand Illusion

the grand illusion GD/TGI is an instant art museum machinery. The installation utilizes the Gallerydrive and Robotik Room technology in order to create a monumental mechanic environment through which the visitor is processed.

PSP - Pocket Sound Performer

pocket sound performer Pocket Sound Performer is a hand held, all-in-one, highly versatile sound and music production device. The instrument dissolves the boundaries of discrete music production units like samplers, synthesizers and sequencers.

Flora and Harmony

flora and harmony Flora and Harmony is a technoid, kinetic indoor jungle, built out of common electric household devices and a structure of stage equipment.

The installation was produced in collaboration with Wojtek Kucharczyk and commissioned by Club Transmediale.

Autohonk

autohonk Autohonk proposes an elegant and simple way to clear messy traffic situations by honking automatically, whenever the car driver has to push the brake pedal.

The work was funded by *.artlabs.

International Dance Party

international dance party The International Dance Party is a self transforming party in a box. While the piece appears first as a plain flightcase, it transforms itself to a disco machine if visitors start to dance.

In collaboration with Adad Hannah, funded by Interstices.

Robotik Room

robotik room Robotik Room is a self transforming machine which sets up a white cube exhibition space within seconds. The temporary room surrounds its visitors and makes them feel like they were in an art museum.

Gallerydrive

gallerydrive Gallerydrive extrapolates the technical capabilities of an audio guide system in order to achieve an art perception experience at a maximum level of convenience. While the system drives visitors automatically through the exhibition, it also provides great possibilities for art makers to control their audience.

Dokumat 500

dokumat 500 Dokumat 500 is an autonomous documentary robot which produces hobby videos from scratch. The robot absorbs not only the technical side of film production, but also the whole creative process which often leads to unexpected results for the viewer of those automatic produced documentaries.

Grafikdemo

grafikdemo Grafikdemo is a physical wireframe model of a teapot inside a vintage computer cabinet. The model can be rotated by pushing keys on the keyboard. Sophisticated lighting of the model makes it hard for the viewer to distinguish whether he sees a real digital model or a fake computer screen.

Pongmechanik

pongmechanik Pongmechanik is an electro mechanical version of the early electronic tennis game Pong. It translates the virtual game back into reality. The game is controlled by a relay computer which makes every computation visible.

Teleflipper

teleflipper Teleflipper is a closed circuit video installation, that emulates a virtual pinball game with a real 1974 Star Trek pinball machine.

Trigon

A short feature about a man who gets lost in the media.
workshops

Cardboard Computer

A workshop at the School of Art and Design Offenbach, about building mechanical computers out of cardboard.

Umbrellaphones

A workshop at Prototype Festival São Paulo, about building umbrella based wind turbines which produce music and soap bubbles.

In collaboration with Kati Hyyppä.

Bastel Labor

At the street fest in my neighbourhood I offered a diy electronics workshop. Visitors were building Drawdios, oscillators and little vibration motor robots.

Surprise Control

Surprise Control In the workshop, the participants have built little “Surprise Machines”, based on the “Surprise Controller”. This was a preprogrammed microcontroller with a vast variety of possible behaviours. Depending on which peripherals are connected to which pins of the chip, it always behaved a little bit different.

Spaziergalerie

Spaziergalerie At this workshop, that I gave at the Art School Kassel, we were building a mobile gallery that we carried through Kassel’s downtown. With our little white cubes, we were catching people from the street and entertained them with our playful art.

Mechanic Sound Workout

mechanic sound workout Club Transmediale invited me to give a workshop about building little electro mechanic synthesizers. An old strowger switch from a telephone distribution unit was used as step sequencer to let the mini machines play a rhythmic pattern.

Mechanic Arcade Workout

mechanic arcade workout Lab.30 Festival in Augsburg invited me to give a hands-on workshop about building video games out of cardboard.

Electro Mechanical Bar

electro mechanical bar Berlin University of the Arts’ Students organization Interflugs invited me to give a workshop about electro mechanics. The result was a play- and useful bar, stuffed with an automatic DJ machine, a cheers device and many other freaked out gadgets.

Reinventing Television

reinventing television Valand Art School in Gothenburg invited me to give a technical allround workshop, where the students learned to use gears, motors, microcontrollers and cranks to turn old televisions into new storytelling machines.

Reconstructing Relay Logics

reconstructing relay logics Microwave Media Art Festival in Hong Kong asked me to teach the basic principles of relay computing logic, such as boolean algebra and 1-bit memories in a hands-on workshop. What might sound a bit dry, lead to a catchy result: The autonomous art tank robot.
old_stuff

Auto in Berlin

cruising in berlin The old cyberniklas.de navigation is a game in itself. By driving around with the car, you can access the different sections of the webpage. All items are located in the geography of Berlin and an extra feature waits when you crash your car into the TV tower. Steer the car by moving the mouse to the left or to the right.

Egoshooter

egoshooter Try to kill me in this exciting first-person shooter. My former appartement in Berlin-Mitte is this games’ stage. But watch out – I’ve got an army of my clones which will fight hard against you.

Peter Henlein Game

peter henlein Peter Henlein is not only the inventor of the pocket watch – he’s also the star of this 2D jump-and-run. Your job is to find the missing screw and to put it back in position to get the clockwork running. This game is 100% family friendly entertainment with an educational touch.

Cyberniklas OS

cyberniklas os Here you have a minimal operating system which features all the entertainment applications that you expect from a contemporary OS: A music production suite, realtime image processing, a handy set of tools and adaptable skinning.

D.I.Y. for dummies

diy for dummies This application aims at people with two left hands. It offers the great posibility of perceiving the overwhelming positive emotions when you have built something nicely. The program lets you fold a flat surface into a three dimensional cube – just by operating sliders.

Klaus Comic

klaus comic Dive deep into the soul of a messie when reading this comic. Klaus does really exist and I have accompanied him for a while in order to draw this documentary comic.

Archive

archive You have found the hidden backdoor to the superold content of the cyberniklas server. By searching in the archive, you can find out about the roots of cyberniklas.de – back in 1999 – including useless information about my different body parts.
newsfeed

Популярная механика

Friday May 17, 2013


Today I got funny post from Moscow!
It is the latest issue of the Russian Popular Mechanics which does not only feature insightful reports about pedal powered quadcopters, guns and tanks, but also quite a long article about my work. Even though I am thrilled about this media fame, unfortunately I don’t understand any word of the article.
In case you do understand some Russian, here are the scans.

Gone.

Friday May 10, 2013


I’m editing the video documentation of the painting machine project right now. And while doing that, I found this photo of our remains on that shop window in Katowice on my harddisk :)

Public Painting Machine in Katowice

Monday April 22, 2013


I’m in Katowice right now, where I’m presenting the brand new “Public Painting Machine” which I made in collaboration with Kati Hyyppä. Our installation is running since yesterday as part of the Katowice Street Art Festival and the locals obviously enjoy it a lot!

If you are in the area, come over and try it out! You can paint every day from 11AM to 1PM and from 2PM to 7PM. Next Saturday at 6PM we’ll finish the installation with a big art auction where we’ll sell all the paintings. You can find us here.

News that there’s happening something exciting spread rather quick across the city. The local TV station also heard about it and today they showed up in order to interview us. You can find the video here.

Stay tuned – a more elaborate documentation will follow soon!

Sneak Peek

Tuesday March 26, 2013


I’m currently working on a new machine which will have its world premiere at Katowice Street Art Festival next month. Yesterday, it was time for a first test in the workshop:

All about cardboard

Friday February 22, 2013


Last week, I had the honour to teach the electronic media class at the School of Art and Design Offenbach. I proposed the students to build computers out of cardboard, not knowing at all where this will lead to.
You can find a complete documentation with a nice video here.

But before you click on the documentation, I have a little appetizer for you:

Anne Euler and Carolin Liebl are working on an information distribution knot.
The picture was taken at four o’ clock in the morning.

Carolin demonstrates a prototype for a mechanical NAND gate.


Jonas von Ronströms “Speedway PRO 1000” was the killer-app at our final presentation party.

Because building with cardboard is a lot of fun, I couldn’t resist to construct a device as well. Below is a video of my digital cardboard plotter.
You can find the full documentation of this machine here.

I have a new doorbell

Sunday January 13, 2013


doorsign

My doorbell did not work for seven years. Yesterday I decided to build a new one. It makes laser gun sounds and it includes an animated name sign. My neighbours like it.

6-bit Wobble:

Sunday January 13, 2013


wobble

Critical Making

Wednesday January 2, 2013


Critical Making magazine

Guess what was in my snail mail today! A stack of little Critical Making magazines, all handmade by Garnet Hertz. I contributed to the “Projects” issue. Other authors are:

Mitch Altman (Noisebridge), Marie Bjerede, Julian Bleecker (Nokia), Albert Borgmann (U Montana), Jonah Brucker-Cohen (Parsons), Anne Burdick (Art Center), Daniel Charny (Royal College of Art), Ginger Coons (U Toronto), Critical Engineering Working Group (Julian Oliver, Gordan Savičić, Danja Vasiliev), Chris Csikszentmihalyi (Art Center), Carl DiSalvo (Georgia Tech), Dale Dougherty (Make Magazine), Paul Dourish (UC Irvine), Rob Duarte (Florida State University), Peter Flemming (Concordia), David Forbes, Alex Galloway (NYU), Benjamin Gaulon, Reed Ghazala, Ken Gregory, Esben Hardenberg, Natalie Jeremijenko (NYU), Daniel Jolliffe (U Ottawa), Brian Kane, Denisa Kera (National University of Singapore), Leonard Koren, Stephen Kovats, Stacey Kuznetsov (Carnegie Mellon), Golan Levin (Carnegie Mellon), Silvia Lindtner (UCI), Liz Losh (UCSD), Geert Lovink (Hogeschool van Amsterdam), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, John Maeda (RISD), Roger Malina (Leonardo / MIT Press), Michael Manalo, Matthew Manos, Richard Maxwell (CUNY), Toby Miller (UCR), Monochrom, Rebecca Niederlander, Mark Pauline (Survival Research Labs), Allison Powell (London School of Economics), Fiona Raby (Royal College of Art), Matt Ratto (University of Toronto), Real Rydaz Lowrider Bicycle Club, RideSouthLA (USC), Niklas Roy, Craig Saper, Phoebe Sengers (Cornell), Jay Silver (MIT), Scott Snibbe, Kristen Stubbs, Josh Tanenbaum (Simon Fraser), McKenzie Wark (New School), Patricia Watts, Norm White, Amanda Williams, and Kaiton Williams (Cornell)

What a list.

Roboter Reiniger

Sunday November 25, 2012


I recently built this little household cleaning robot. And then I released it to urban nature. Click here to watch a video where you can see how it discovers its freedom in Brasília.

Prototype festival roundup

Thursday November 15, 2012


Umbrellaphones and construction team
Photo: Gerfried Gaulhofer

The Prototype festival just finished – and it was great fun! Many thanks to Goethe Institute São Paulo, Holger from Bungalow, our workshop participants and Peter who helped us.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the umbrellaphones. The director of the festival venue, Praça Victor Civita, actually liked the installation so much that the about twenty umbrellaphones built during the workshop will remain there. At least until the Brasilian weather will dismantle them, as happened to this poor fellow already during the night before the festival:

broken umbrella

But we replaced the broken umbrella quickly the next morning. Surprisingly, the cheapest umbrellas seemed to be the most sturdy ones!
We filmed our installation during the festival, so you can expect a nice video in a few weeks when we’re back in Berlin. But now we’re heading to Brasília where we have another plan…

One more thing to mention about our adventures in São Paolo: We spent the last day strolling through a district filled with electronics shops and blinking LEDs. It’s like a little Akihabara but cheaper. We instantly regretted leaving our camera at the hotel. So the only pictures of this adventure that I can show you are from an old Brazilian electronics magazine – printed perhaps in the early 80s – that I bought from an older gentleman with big a moustache and a smile:

Brazilian electronics magazine

It turned out that this man, Wilson Malagoli, was one of the directors of the magazine. The content seems to be mainly about digital logics, illustrated with cool speaking LEDs!

happy LED

I also liked the photos in the advertisement on the last page:

Electronics advertisement

Wilson also gave us his business card. Besides his shop in São Paulo, he sells kits online, too. Check out the happy LDR on the front page!

 

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