■ PHOTO 5. “Professor Conrad”
(a.k.a., Marvin Niebuhr) adjusts
one of the instruments from his
Screaming Babyhead Band.
( Photo by James Delaney.)
was a bunch of sketches and a
development board (Figure 6) for
the RoboSpinArt machine that was
hastily glued back together moments
before I was scheduled to talk (Figure
7). When I was done speaking, I got
a hearty round of applause and was
then peppered with questions about
the demo board and how I
envisioned the final project taking
shape. When we brought the finished
machine back for a later show (Figure
8), the crowd was very enthusiastic
and many folks came up to ask
RESOURCES
■ Dorkbot: http://dorkbot.org
■ Dorkbot Austin:
www.dorkbotaustin.org
■ Cafe Mundi, Austin, TX:
www.cafemundi.com
■ The Robot Group:
www.TheRobotGroup.org
■The Thereping: www.thereping.com
■ The RoboSpinArt Machine:
www.robospinart.com
■ PingPongPrinter: www.youtube.
com/watch?v=8Ep5OC3E02I
■ Poster artwork by Noel Waggener:
www.subculturepress.com
■ Workbench Design Contest:
http://forum.servomagazine.com/
viewtopic.php?t=8180
■ PHOTO 7. A ceramic, wood,
and light bulb sculpture by
Denise Scioli.
■ PHOTO 8. “Gator Girl” animatronic
sculpture in aluminum by Brooks Coleman.
(Photo by James Delaney.)
72
August 2008
■ PHOTO 6. The SanDraw kinetic
sculpture by Rick Abbot and Paul
Atkinson. (Photo by James Delaney.)
about details of the mechanisms and
how we had solved some of the
problems mentioned in the first
presentation.
The fact that the folks behind
Dorkbot don’t really run Dorkbot
so much as set the stage for it to
happen makes for an interesting
dynamic since there are none of the
typical trappings of a managed event.
The folks who show up are the ones
who get up and talk. The presenters
swap places with the audience and
there is plenty of opportunity for
interaction and collaboration. In
order to be featured at Dorkbot, all
you have to do is sign up via email
and tell the Dorkbot folks what you’d
like to do — kinda like a grown-up
■ PHOTO 9. Paul Atkinson checks out
the POV display at Dorkbot SXSW.
