The ‘Why Move?’ Workshop and Seminar series traces a conceptual and practical thread from puppetry and automata in the preindustrial age to electrical hardware, sensors and coding today.

 

It takes Marshal McLuhan’s assertion that “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” as a lens to look at the feedback between Technology, Society and Politics in Arts and Media. 

 

Each workshop uses this as a core to investigate different technical processes such as linkages, gears and mechanics of automata, as well their relationship to industrial machinery and the body. We also look at logic gates, transistors and other elements of electronics through gothic horror, galvanism and cybernetics.

 

Through a sustainable approach to making (using recycled materials) Students then apply covered theories and skill sets to create physical manifestations of their ideas ranging from prosthetic automata to embodied interactive games controllers.