In this rapid 2-day workshop in École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris the students took a taste of Arduino by creating an interactive ‘black box’. The black cube carried different components on each of its faces including LEDs, light sensors and piezo elements. The whole cube could be rotated by a servo motor attached at its bottom face.
Each of the 4 groups of students built one cube and developed their own codes which determined how the cubes would behave on their own as well as together with the other 3 cubes around them.
This ‘physical cellular automata’ exercise was intended to introduce the basic principles of physical computing, encourage the students to think of and design different behaviours and to see each cube as part of a family of objects rather than an isolated entity. Ultimately, the goal was achieve all the above together with having fun in the same time!
Photos by Ieva Saudargaitė.
the ‘black box’
and the ‘physical cellular automata’ interplay