One of the first students to graduate from Experience Design, a two years young course at Sweden’s Konstfack College of Art and Design, Koji now holds a place on the faculty as course leader. “In Experience Design, we are designing time itself, rather than form and content.” The German Japanese designer went from a background in classical graphic design and web design to 3D programming and finally, robots.
"For me, to control the screen with a mouse was not enough", Koji says of his rapid acceleration from graphics to prgramming to 3D and sensors, "so I created a micro controller to control the crseen using sensors, I added particle animation to that."
Robot Garden is his MA research project, actually only one part of it. Entitled Can Machines Have Experiences, the first part looked into the theory behind robotics, what people think, do, predict or speculate about them. "The discourse is from radical thinkers in science and engineering. These radical predictions have ethical issues. Designers or people from creative fields do not contribute to this discourse, so I thought disciplines from the human side needed to take a role in that."
In the second part of the project Koji built the tools for manufacturing, writing a software library to use for prototyping to sketch robotics. The exhibition is the experiment phase, and NEU/NOW Festival gave him the chance to present it 3 times the size it was. "It’s in constant development, for instance yesterday the software was different, today I updated it."
"The most interesting feedback I got was from a girl here yesterday, she said it was very nice, robots and plants etc, but the machines are still not perfect. What would happen if they escape? What if when I'm not here and the machines run away? She was pointing towards the ethical side, it’s a creative and beautiful idea, but there are ethical issues – she understood and formulated it in good words, it was inspiring feedback."
"The best audience are kids and women, men are more interested in the technicalities, they question the technical aspects, but kids and especially older women really have a great response."
Experience Design at Konstfack is run by interdisciplinary course. It’s the most diverse programme in the whole of Scandinavia, the faculty and students are from all around the world, there’s only one Swedish student, so it’s very interdisciplinary. We are still defining it. I am binding the design with science, but there are also product designers, object design, social workers, poets, performers, it’s very diverse, but what keeps us on the same trajectory is the design of time."
The question is, can Koji see people actually living with these kinds of robots?
"Maybe not this, this took a long time as it was all from scratch, the tools especially, now I want to go into the everyday environment, domestic space, and see how to implement this technology into lamps or tables. And to shopping environments. At the moment these are very static."
"Robotics are pervasive, it’s getting cheaper as well, a chip costs €1.50 and it’s basically a computer. We’re living with so much already, like electronic door openers, that we take for granted, but it’s already there."
subscribe with atom
subscribe with RSS
