workshops

Bastel Labor

Kiezfest Lichtenberg, Berlin / September 2011

Recently, the organizers of a street fest in my neighborhood asked me if I want to contribute something. As I really like my area and the people living there, I certainly wanted to offer a little diy electronics workshop! So I packed the more important half of my workshop onto my little pick-up truck and drove around the park to the party location.

my little pick-up truck
My ‘car’ (a Piaggio ape from 1979) is loud, it smells a lot, it is shaky and slow (the motor has only 3.5 HP), but a hell of fun to drive. What makes it really useful is that it can carry loads up to 200kg. That’s enough for bringing a table, some chairs, tools, working light and material.

Heavy soldering work during the street fest
Soldering started right after the setup of my workshop desk.

Full concentration required
The visitors were building different things: Little vibration motor robotos, oscillators for creating sound and Drawdios.

It's dark but people are still highly motivated
Actually, building the Drawdios and playing with them excited everyone.

Group photo
Even when it became dark already, my table didn’t get empty. My neighbor Günter (on the left side) helped me throughout the workshop to show the visitors how to solder and how to read circuit drawings.

Drawdio
Here’s one of the Drawdios.

Drawdio circuit
We used Jay Silvers original circuit based on the NE555. That’s a quite simple circuit which is easy to build.

You can find all those photos in a higher resolution here.

And here’s a video of the original Drawdio:

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more workshops

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.