variable_environment: Sources...

03. 03. 2007 14:18 | 04_Workshop_4 , 12_Curated_posts

Sources...

This set of images (quickly googled, flickred, ...) might look a little bit unfocused to act as a "source of inspiration" for this particular Rolling microfunctions project. But I can give short explanations...
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First image is of course an historic one, a reference that we already mentioned in the context of Variable_environment/: the Walking city utopia of the English experimental architecture studio Archigram. It's in fact rather a small tribute or a wink to their work than a reference as we are working at a totally different scale... (but this is not without reasons). "Sushi on the go" was also an idea we had in mind while working on this project: this way of eating where all the sushis pass in front of your eyes and you pick one when you need or like one. We had a similar idea for the functions, functions like sushis...
Then their are 4 images about dot-matrix fonts (one on paper --FF dot matrix regular by Cornel Windlin & Stephan Muller, 1995-- the other on led screen) and old dot-matrix printers: our small rolling robots could act as simple dot-matrix functional patterns and aggregate themselves under certain rules, like dot-matrix fonts and printers based on a grid system as well.
Finally, ants, curling and snooker have something to do with the behavior and kinetics aspect of the robots: ants for the redundancy of the system to achieve a goal (but this has more to do with the scientific research of Prof. Alcherio Martinoli's SWIS/EPFL laboratory) and curling or snooker for their movements. In particular their relation to dot-matrix systems and the way a configuration can quickly change into another.