Electro­mechanical Workshop

The Electromechanical Workshop was a collaboration with my friend and colleague Darsha Hewitt, who was at the time a Guest Professor for Media Art/Sound at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. The workshop took place in 2018 and was part of Darsha's DIY electronics and sound seminar titled The (Un)portable Media Experiment, which drew inspiration from the cumbersome past of portable media devices. The students had been already exploring some vintage machines in the ZKM archives for inspiration and the workshop focused on building electromechanical experiments of their own.

In addition to motors, Darsha had a pretty extensive collection of electro-trash, including vacuum cleaners, and printers, which we could use as a starting point for the machines. She had also already practised some motor control circuits with the students, so the next step was to look at some mechanical parts and principles. After that we started building and testing mechanism using scrap wood, Fischertechnik parts, tie-wraps, screws, rubber bands, ball bearing and metal rods in addition to the dismantled devices.

The workshop lasted two days, which is not a lot of time to come up with a functioning machine or an installation, but we got pretty far. On the photos you can see snapshots of the works in progress. After the workshop the students continued building the machines. In addition to movement, sounds triggered by various mechanisms were an integral part of the machines.

See also:

• Photo album of Electromechanical Workshop