Robotics workshop at Bishop’s Court

These are some of the many questions posed by a two-day workshop entitled ‘Trashbots’, to be held at Prague College’s studios at Bishop’s Court on 5 and 6 October.  Led by Yair Reshef from the Shankar College of Arts in Tel Aviv, and Denisa Kera of Hackteria.org, the workshop invites students to combine analogue circuitry with electronic and other trash to explore the BEAM (Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics and Mechanics) robotics paradigm and the limits of empathy, but also the uncanny sociality between robots and humans.

In the workshop, participants will explore the uncanny sociality of emergent hardware by using leftovers and trash found in and around their homes and city. They will build primitive bots and probe various emotional connections with these animated lifelikes. Through the personal experience of building and destroying their bots they will look into various issues of synthetic emotions and machine ethics to understand the behaviour of artificial, moral and aesthetic agents, but also larger issues in ecology, evolution and history.

This event is open to Prague College students only. If you are interested in joining the BA Interactive Media programme, please contact admissions@praguecollege.cz