ROBOT-BUILDING WORKSHOPS
In 2007-08, workshops were held at a number of Host Sites.
Some sites used the Canary and Qwerk technologies to create robots. Before they began building, participants explored their neighborhood — the sights, sounds, pollution levels, green spaces, etc. Using Polaroids to document what they saw they imagined robots that could communicate about their community.
Back at the drawing board, teams began to imagine what their robots could do, How would their robot move? Would it make a noise? Would it shake, rattle or roll? Teams worked together to create their final working robot, one that would express something about their community, or contribute to it.
GIGAPAN PANORAMA PHOTO WORKSHOPS
The GigaPan workshops allowed participants to explore and document places that were important to them, or that fit the theme of a particular workshop.
Different Host Sites had different themes, and teams were spread from the tiger cages at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium to the steel mills lining the Braddock riverfront to the colorful murals of the city’s eastern neighborhoods.
They used the robotic GigaPan units and cameras to record the hundreds of snapshots that would form their final panorama. These were then ‘stitched’ together to make the single panoramic image that is then uploaded to the GigaPan website. These panoramas are on the GigaPan website, and can be explored by searching for images with the R250 ‘tag’ at www.GigaPan.org.
