Cabaret Automata at Phaeno Wolfsburg
This week I helped with the opening of the latest exhibition from Cabaret Mechanical Theater at Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany. This collection of beatiful and complex automata built by seven artists was arranged around the theme of “machenmachinen” (fairy tale machines) that included poisoned cats, mermaids, pirates and a amazing organ automata by Paul Spooner featuring angels, demons and magaret thatcher.
In the lead-up to the exhibition I led several workshops with the Phaeno floor staff on three hands-on extensions to the exhibition where kids and adults create their own contraptions. These include a more drop in, low facilitation activity in the gallery - the Fire the Inventor ensemble kit and two tinkering workshops (cranky contraptions and cardboard automata) for school groups or weekend workshops.
Over the course of three days I led a series of workshops with explainers, teachers-in-residence and other support staff giving them the chance to try the activities as learners, reflect on the experience and share ideas around facilitation.
There were some really cool explorations and discoveries made by the group. I was impressed by the energy that they brought to both the tinkering work and the conversations.
It’s so cool to see the range of new ideas that the group discovered while building their machines. One of the participants had a really great idea for securing the box. She cut a half circle in the flaps on one side and folded/glued them to make a really beautiful frame. It was so cool that we’ve been doing automata for so long and this was a new innovation.
As well I got inspired by a challenge from a participant to make a spinning motion on the cardboard automata. While normally we use the wood and wire automata for crank slider mechanisms, this time I added a simple cam mechanism which worked pretty well. Next I constructed a version of the automata that uses both cam motions and the sliders.
On friday we led an experimental prototyping session with a core group of educators and designers around the concept of adding programming and computation to building automata. For the workshop we investigated controlling gearmotors and servos with Micro:bit and Moto:bit.
It was really fun to explore the possibilities for these types of creations. I took some inspiration from Rob Ives and Josh Burker to create a little motorized running-man excersize buddy automata controlled by a wristband.
On Saturday the exhibition opened to big crowds who watched a presentation by Sarah Alexander from CMT, carefully observed the intricate art pieces and tinkered in the creative studio making lots of personalized creations.
It was so much fun to work again with Cabaret Mechanical Theater as we continue to develop the hands-on extensions to the exhibit and the team at Phaeno were wonderful collaborators who I’m confident will continue to explore these ideas over the next several months.