Co-creating technology

As a part of the DigitalWerk project, Media Interaction Lab proposed and carried out a series of participatory events and workshops providing everyday audiences with an opportunity to create a technological future they wish for.

• Improvised Technology at Roboexotica festival, September 2022

• Techno Utopia at NextComic festival, March 2023

• If I were a king/queen … at KinderUni, July 2023

• Odd Interactions at D*seign week, November 2023

Improvised Technology

On September 9th, 2022, a group of people got together in the atrium of DH5. They gathered around one person standing in the middle gesturing them to come closer.

We’ve invited a local improvisational performer Flo Amar to make an impro theatre about robots. Our brief was “People who act as people interact with people who act as technology.” Together with the participants from the festival, Flo created a few scenes reflecting on our interactions and relationships with technology.

They included a conversation with a microwave oven, a TV interview with the inventor of a machine for automatic application of make-up, a conversation at a coffee machine gadgets shop, and an automated production line.

Techno Utopia

In March 2023 a small group participating in the NextComic festival joined our workshop on imagining and prototyping technological utopias.

In the workshop we tried to combine the world of science fiction with the real world. We started by discussing participants favourite sci-fi stories and characters and continued with transporting those ideas into possible futures. The workshop continued with prototyping the objects in the centre of our utopias and concluded with acting out the scenarios in which they would be used.

The proposed techno utopias included a translator between animal and human speech, an micro-dosing fly, or glasses that prevent people from feeling jealousy.

The team (Media Interaction Lab): Thomas Preindl and Sara Mlakar