We went all the way to Tianjin, China to give an intense 10 day workshop at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. Together with 4 other couples of professional creatives, ranging from Italy to Finland, we gave workshops to 70 students.
The central theme of the ICL workshop was "The human body as a main object" which we immediately transformed into a question that fit our playful design goals
"How can we make our physical body a central factor in our world of digital interaction?"
To enable the students, none of whom had any training in coding or interactive design, to turn their playful ideas into reality, we used Makey Makey and Scratch as an accessible introduction to play design.
The 10 days that followed featured a fully packed schedule where we first had to introduce our 15 students to concepts like design for interactivity, telling a story through actions, prototyping and playtesting, all the way to actually making multiple interactive installations!
The students rose to the challenge of designing fully functional and fun interactive installation in as little as 10 days. Catching on quickly, they came up with genuinely original and fully functioning ideas, all leading up to a successful exhibition in the TAFA museum, where we ended up exhibiting 3 large scale interactive installation, and a connected symposium about the process and the work.
We are extremely proud of them, and also grateful for the inspiration we got in return!
Credits:
iCL - international creative leadership through design practice workshop and exhibition, was hosted by Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts , TAFA Art Museum, curated by Jie Sun ( national distinguished experts, professor at Tongji University Shanghai)