At the start of the year I began developing a prototype for my Tangible Media unit, a subject which I undertook for my final year at university upon which I was then offered to expand upon and partake in the Ars Electronica Futurelab Academy project which pairs QUT with the Ars Electronica Company in Linz, Austria.

Being a part of this project allowed me to work with the Ars Electronica team, two member in particular were a major part of this collaboration as they flew to Brisbane to workshop with the students participating. I also had the opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary team which allowed me to expand and grow as a designer. Overtime I developed many different prototypes and learnt how to use some interesting machinery such as laser cutters and sandblasters as well as learning a bit of software coding for Arduino and LinzerSchnitte which brought me to my final product.

Developing something that would be able to be transported as a flat pack and assembled on site proved to be a challenge but was accomplished in the end after some planning.

A series of five different questions that related to the theme of the festival “Radical Atoms” were developed to allow for a new experience for festival goers each day.

The questioned ranged vastly on a big scale and all seemed to create different response patterns.

At the end of each day I was able to go inside of my exhibition space and see just how much the patterns varied daily.

I enjoyed seeing the responses from the final day the most as not only did people provide a written response to the question, some also drew.

The overall experience from participating in the festival taught me many things about technology, design and teamwork. I was able support and be supported by other students that travel besides me with their projects and experience a new culture. I learnt a lot of things from this project and will now be an international exhibited artist of the Ars Electronica Festival for life, an amazing experience I will never forget.

If you are interested seeing more of this project I developed a blog where I documented all the phases and the festival along the way.