Prototyping Telepresence
Designing experimental communication tools

The students developed devices that can communicate subtly with each other subtly over large (and small) distances. People in different locations can send each other nonverbal messages. For example, if I stroke the carpet at my place, the carpet hairs stand up 50 km away. Or: I blow on a pinwheel at my desk and my friend's pinwheel starts to turn on her desk. But the desk is not in Halle but in Copenhagen.
With this project, the students developed skills in product language and prototyping. We paid attention to successful and and elegant processes as well as the choice of materials and the quality of production corresponding to the model stages. With an input on product language, psychology and semantics, criteria and foundations were laid for the joint critique.
In addition, there was an introduction to creative coding and rapid prototyping in the digital workshop. In the first week, project participants learned the basics of physical computing and thus quickly able to playfully design their first telepresence prototypes quickly and playfully.

Students: Desire Bach, Emili Blum, Emil Frederking, Franz Kauffmann, Bruno Bleschke, Malin Trepel, Emilia Imberger, Paul Wesser, Luci Schwingen, Pelin Bilger, Namju Kim, Mia Hennig, Simon Höfer, Merle Nau, Daniel Sauter, Matthias Franzen, Janina Gastauer, Leon Schumann