Special Holiday application deadline: 26 December 2015

Regular application deadline: 1 January 2016

[email protected]

schoolofma.org

In this four-week program* Coming Soon, led by Andrew Friend and Sitraka Rakotoniaina stemming from the RCA in London, the School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe, using a hands-on approach, will investigate the creative and expressive possibilities of Internet of Things technologies, electronics and sensors, and gain a foundation in digital fabrication and design fiction methodologies.

Inhabiting a fictional narrative, students will dream up inventive ideas for new smart objects and with the aid of our instructors and other professionals, learn the proper tools and processes needed to create and communicate their own vision of the future.

Starting with basic prototyping through to advanced fabrication techniques, making use of the latest digital fabrication tools within the Officine Arduino community facilities, we will work through the entire process of design from initial narrative and conception through rough prototyping. At program’s end, we will present a fully documented performance and exhibition of our final objects in Casa Jasmina, the connected home of the future conceived by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling and Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino project.

The infiltration of smart devices into our lives is coming soon. Currently, corporations and even governments are investing billions to fund research and manufacture up-and-coming networked objects designed to “make our lives easier”. But what are the implications of this?

Throughout the program, we will collectively construct the mythologies and belief systems we inhabit, as a means to speculate around the possible impacts contemporary exploration may have on future society.

*This is a special program in partnership with Officine Arduino, Fablab Torino, and Casa Jasmina and will take place at their facilities in Turin, Italy.