Interactive Architecture Lab

We've extended our deadline to 1st May. If you're an IALab alumnus and haven't filled in your expression of interest yet, now's the time. After nearly two decades of the lab and over 300 alumni, we're putting together an edited book: Architectures of Interaction. Contributions can take many forms — a short text on a project, an essay on your current practice, or anything in between. Expression of interest form in bio. Photo: IALab Field Trip to EISCAT in Arctic Circle 2012

Flashback to 2012 visit to EISCAT European Incoherent Scatter Facility [HAARP] where giant electrical arrays stimulate the upper atmosphere while lasers shot out into space. We arrived late, so late that the staff were heading home. But the lovely scientists just gave us the keys to the place and left. This rather undermined the internet's conspiracy theories about a weather weapon!

Calling all Interactive Architecture Lab alumni. We're making a book bringing together the diverse research and design practices that have emerged from IALab and we want to hear from you. You are warmly invited to contribute to the publication and to take part in an upcoming exhibition/book launch and symposium in 2027. All we need now are expressions of interest. Details can be found here shorturl.at/nqBkp

Calling all Interactive Architecture Lab members and alumni. We're making a book and we need you in it. Get the full details of the call at shorturl.at/nqBkp

Looking back at our physical shows over the years. • Design for Performance & Interaction | Fifteen show 2019 • Fifteen is a @bartlettarchucl public exhibition celebrating fifteen months of innovative work by graduating Design for Manufacture, Design for Performance & Interaction and Situated Practice Master’s students. Our exhibition from 2019 was focusing its attention on the climate crisis and was inspired by circular economy strategies to minimise material waste developing a modular reusable and reconfigurable system that will grow and change with the programme over the years to come. The exhibition featured student projects in a video format, while also incorporating furniture components that served as a linkage between the towers and used the same modular design principles.

Looking back at our physical shows over the years. • Design for Performance & Interaction | Fifteen show 2018 • Fifteen is a @bartlettarchucl public exhibition celebrating fifteen months of innovative work by graduating Design for Manufacture, Design for Performance & Interaction and Situated Practice Master’s students. Our exhibition from 2018 presented 24 students project in a video format, in an arrangement of 8*3 modular units, creating individual cocoon space for each project. The exhibition as looked from the side appeared as a forest of trees inviting visitors on a journey throughout the ground floor level of the Bartlett’s Gordon Street campus.

Project title: Have We Met? Student names: Qi Qi, Adam Ray Braun Tutor names: Parker Heyl, Stephen Gage, Ruairi Glynn @havewemet_installation What does it feel like to meet a robot that seems curious about you? “Have We Met” is an interactive art installation that centers around Isaac, a continuum robot that is suspended in space. With no capacity for verbal communication, Isaac's world is shaped by its flexible body and sparkling lights, designed for fluid and organic motion. Wriggling movements are the means whereby Isaac expresses emotional states of pleasure and pain to its new acquaintances. Four motors actuate Isaac’s four degrees of freedom, while microcontroller PCBs sit inside each vertebrae embodying touch inputs and light outputs along Isaac’s body. Isaac will try to entice anyone who enters its body space to touch, because touching allows Isaac to perceive the detailed reactions of participants as they poke, stroke and tickle the robot surface. When spending time with Isaac one can experience a sense of strange intimacy that is lost in contemporary Human/Machine interfaces. “Have We Met” encourages exploration not just of novel human-robot interactions, but specifically situations where movement and touch are used to create a shared language.

Project title: Have We Met? Student names: Qi Qi, Adam Ray Braun Tutor names: Parker Heyl, Stephen Gage, Ruairi Glynn @havewemet_installation What does it feel like to meet a robot that seems curious about you? “Have We Met” is an interactive art installation that centers around Isaac, a continuum robot that is suspended in space. With no capacity for verbal communication, Isaac's world is shaped by its flexible body and sparkling lights, designed for fluid and organic motion. Wriggling movements are the means whereby Isaac expresses emotional states of pleasure and pain to its new acquaintances. Four motors actuate Isaac’s four degrees of freedom, while microcontroller PCBs sit inside each vertebrae embodying touch inputs and light outputs along Isaac’s body. Isaac will try to entice anyone who enters its body space to touch, because touching allows Isaac to perceive the detailed reactions of participants as they poke, stroke and tickle the robot surface. When spending time with Isaac one can experience a sense of strange intimacy that is lost in contemporary Human/Machine interfaces. “Have We Met” encourages exploration not just of novel human-robot interactions, but specifically situations where movement and touch are used to create a shared language.

Project title: Have We Met? Student names: Qi Qi, Adam Ray Braun Tutor names: Parker Heyl, Stephen Gage, Ruairi Glynn @havewemet_installation What does it feel like to meet a robot that seems curious about you? “Have We Met” is an interactive art installation that centers around Isaac, a continuum robot that is suspended in space. With no capacity for verbal communication, Isaac's world is shaped by its flexible body and sparkling lights, designed for fluid and organic motion. Wriggling movements are the means whereby Isaac expresses emotional states of pleasure and pain to its new acquaintances. Four motors actuate Isaac’s four degrees of freedom, while microcontroller PCBs sit inside each vertebrae embodying touch inputs and light outputs along Isaac’s body. Isaac will try to entice anyone who enters its body space to touch, because touching allows Isaac to perceive the detailed reactions of participants as they poke, stroke and tickle the robot surface. When spending time with Isaac one can experience a sense of strange intimacy that is lost in contemporary Human/Machine interfaces. “Have We Met” encourages exploration not just of novel human-robot interactions, but specifically situations where movement and touch are used to create a shared language. @bartlettarchucl

We are so pleased to announce graduate Kachi Chan has been awarded honorary mention at the Ars Electronica’s Prix Ars 2022 in the Digital Communities category. Jury Statement "The imagery of a social structure—be it a community, society, or institution—makes us think that it cannot be destroyed once we build it. But a religion without people practicing the culture, a democracy without people going to elections, or a community without participation means that structures perish. Therefore, we cannot take any social or societal achievement for granted. Social life is a recurring process of creation and destruction. This installation speaks to this very fundamental idea. Moreover, it highlights the unruly role of powerful forces seeking to destroy institutions dear to us. But the piece also contains a hopeful message: Even if the foe is powerful, we should not give up. Instead, the people persistently maintaining, re-creating, and re-building what they hold dear can persevere." Director, roboticist: Kachi Chan Project developed at: @interactivearchitecturelab , @bartlettarchucl Project advisors: @ruairiglynn , @parkerheyl , Phaedra Shanbaum Research: @flyingpig.pat Creative technologist: @niravbeni

We are so pleased to announce graduate Kachi Chan has been awarded honorary mention at the Ars Electronica’s Prix Ars 2022 in the Digital Communities category. Jury Statement "The imagery of a social structure—be it a community, society, or institution—makes us think that it cannot be destroyed once we build it. But a religion without people practicing the culture, a democracy without people going to elections, or a community without participation means that structures perish. Therefore, we cannot take any social or societal achievement for granted. Social life is a recurring process of creation and destruction. This installation speaks to this very fundamental idea. Moreover, it highlights the unruly role of powerful forces seeking to destroy institutions dear to us. But the piece also contains a hopeful message: Even if the foe is powerful, we should not give up. Instead, the people persistently maintaining, re-creating, and re-building what they hold dear can persevere." Director, roboticist: Kachi Chan Project developed at: @interactivearchitecturelab , @bartlettarchucl Project advisors: @ruairiglynn , @parkerheyl , Phaedra Shanbaum Research: @flyingpig.pat Creative technologist: @niravbeni

We are so pleased to announce graduate @kachi_chan has been awarded honorary mention at the Ars Electronica’s Prix Ars 2022 in the Digital Communities category. Jury Statement "The imagery of a social structure—be it a community, society, or institution—makes us think that it cannot be destroyed once we build it. But a religion without people practicing the culture, a democracy without people going to elections, or a community without participation means that structures perish. Therefore, we cannot take any social or societal achievement for granted. Social life is a recurring process of creation and destruction. This installation speaks to this very fundamental idea. Moreover, it highlights the unruly role of powerful forces seeking to destroy institutions dear to us. But the piece also contains a hopeful message: Even if the foe is powerful, we should not give up. Instead, the people persistently maintaining, re-creating, and re-building what they hold dear can persevere." Director, roboticist: Kachi Chan Project developed at: @interactivearchitecturelab , @bartlettarchucl Project advisors: @ruairiglynn , @parkerheyl , Phaedra Shanbaum Research: @flyingpig.pat Creative technologist: @niravbeni