Workshop Statement Also Artists Talk
FREE SUNSHINE! is an intervention and installation comprising of a temporary electronics lab offering free solar-powered robotics workshops to the public. The project has formed in response to Eskom and The National Energy Regulating Authority of South Africa’s drafting of rules requiring all small scale energy generators under 1 kilowatt to be registered; a process which also involves a fee. As this includes sustainable energy systems such as solar and wind power, the swarm of sun-powered G☼ggaB☼ts made during the workshops will be used as demonstrators against problematic energy regulation and service, by attempting to register all of them in an absurd spam protest. For ISEA2018, the Free Sunshine Lab will be occupying the KZNSA gallery and surrounds, transforming the art institution into a space where school children and members of the general public can learn and tinker with electronics, create mechatronic art works, and have their voice heard regarding their relationship and access to electricity in the South African context. freesunshine.org
- Miranda Moss is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Cape Town, South Africa, whose practice toys with the representation of Nature as a pure and extra-cultural phenomenon. Largely preoccupied with tensions around artificial / natural, the land is used as a medium to explore how personal, political, economic and visual value structures are projected onto exterior environments. When not conducting “research”, she often employs a process that could be described as techno-alchemy; her works combining sublime, magical elements with everyday, banal ones by frequently incorporating found objects, recycled, accessible technologies, and ephemeral, natural processes. mirandamoss.wordpress.com
- Oliver Walkhoff is a Mechanical engineer, Master in Industrial Design and Maker based in Zurich, Switzerland. A co-founder/early board member of the FabLab Zurich, and active member and maker in other makerspaces (among them the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society’s MechArtLab), he has extensive experience in organising/facilitating workshops in the fields of Arduino, microcontrollers, 3D printing, general makery, Rube Goldberg machines, and so forth. He is interested in and concerned with interfaces between humans and machines, between disciplines and between cultures, how technology affects our behavior and our ways of thinking, and minimalist experiments with electronics and microcontrollers. oliverwalkhoff.com
Free Sunshine! is made possible with funding support from The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Substantial assistance and contributions have been made by the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society, Uwe Schüler and Jördis.