WORKSHOPS

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XML Workshop: Activating a Media Lab
  • Duration
    • 1hr
  • Aim
    • This workshop is a way to activate and investigate media libraries. Media collections and museums often fall into a passive state where the devices that still work are not used for long periods of time. This is not an urgent issue that needs to be fixed, however utilising this passive state, we can transform the functionality of the collection and try to break down barriers which keep us from experimenting and repairing old devices. The warranty is invalid and the hard plastic shell will be unscrewed :)
  • Structure
    • Before the workshop, I introduce a list of things that need to be logged about the devices in the media library. After C3's request, I added 'does it turn on?' to the list which changed the entire workshop in a very positive way. After looking at the form, we go inside the media library and choose a device of our liking. We log its information into a (wiki) page. At the end of this workshop we had a brief show and tell about all of our devices. Some people were less enthusiastic than others but overall the media lab workshop felt like a success.
    • The log template looked like this:
      1 TITLE OF THE DEVICE (ex. Canon Typestar 220)
      1.1 Name
      1.2 Model
      1.3 Does this thing turn on?
      1.4 Quantity
      1.5 Year of Release
      1.6 Origin Country
      1.7 Manual
      1.8 Hacking
      1.9 Misc Links
      1.10 References
      1.11 Gallery
  • Documentation

Link to the initial workshop page and device logs