Afroditi Psarra (Athens, 1982) is a multidisciplinary artist and a PhD candidate at Complutense University of Madrid, in the field of Image, Technology and Design. Her work explores the boundaries between traditional handicrafts, pop culture and science fiction. Her artworks include a wide variety of media, from electronic embroideries and wearables to interactive installations and sound performances. She has presented her work in numerous media art festivals and she has worked as an intern at Disney Research in Zurich.

Nowadays the physical computation, the electronics and the new technologies every time have more presence in the architecture. Some items, like the systems of optimization of energy, the light installations that increase architectural elements with the use extended of the LED, or devices that extract information of the environment and apply it in a creative form to the buildings, and sensitive spaces that react to the persons, they are some examples of applications of the technology in this field.

Open source electronics such as Arduino and online communities have helped in the generalization and democratization of knowledge in the last decade. This technology has endowed architects, designers and artists with cheap, powerful tools, as well as being incredibly easy use towards the development of ideas in a rapid and efficient form without the need of contract the services to external companies or investing big quantities of money in environments of development that are expensive and inflexible.

Using these techniques the students presented their projects consisting in the design and development of a physical module with common elements creating an interactive application together, as well as a modular and scalable system.

At the entrance of the Mobile Barcelona Festival booth (3C28 in hall 3) organized by mLove; IaaC and Fab Lab Bcn, together with MID and Hangar.org, features the Smart Citizen platform.

Smart Citizen is a device to generate participatory processes of people in the cities. More info here.

Come visit us!

The project has been directed by Alfonso Borragán, with the help of Guillem Camprodón and Cristian Bettini.

To see the projects click here

To check the participating Fab Labs: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2013/labs/index.html

To check student’s personal websites: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2013/students/index.html

To access to the video archive of the class: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2013/videos/index.html

To access to the Fab Academy 2013 content: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2013/schedule/index.html

Fab Academy Barcelona first Class from Fab Lab Barcelona on Vimeo.

If you have any enquiries about the Fab Academy, please send us an email to: coordination@fabacademy.org