Optomat Workshop at Tinguely Musuem

Last weekend I had the chance to participate in the wonderful Optomat workshop at the Tinguely Museum led by two artists that I’ve been following for a while, Nicklas Roy and Felix Fisgus. They created a mini workshop on the museum floor among the monumental kinetic sculptures of Jean Tinguely with tons of tools, materials and inspirations. Each of the participants built an element of a collaborative sculpture to generate optical effects using small LED lights, shiny materials, colored filters, motorized mechanisms and more. They ran the workshop over three days and each participant added their creation to a sturdy frame.

It was really interesting to see the way this project felt compared to the “light play” activity that I helped developed at the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium. There were many similar elements and effects but with much more freedom and unpredictability. It was really interesting to see how each participant or group came up with an idea, chose a scale and built a working prototype in just a few hours.

Here are a couple videos of some of the elements in action in the in progress machine. Check out Nicklas’ webpage for a diary of the experience and many more photos and videos. I’m really glad that I got to take part in the workshop in such an inspiring environment for tinkering.