Our official opening for the COLLOQUY 2018 Project was May 24th with 75 colleagues, students, and donors in attendance. Rick Rogers, President of CCS, and Bill Shields, Interim Provost of CCS, attended along with many faculty and staff from other departments. There is a Facebook video clip of the exhibit (4 minutes) and a “thank you” video on Facebook with reflections on Gordon Pask’s intentions and the importance of Colloquy (7 minutes)—which misses the beginning of the opening line, worth including: “Good evening everyone, friends of colloquy, colleagues, students, collaborators, generous donors, all interactive entities human and nonhuman.” (Here is the full text of delivered remarks.)
The most important “thank you” goes to TJ McLeish, who designed the full-scale replica from the historical record and created the installation in all of its dimensions (with the exception of the making of the female forms, beautifully executed by Building Brown Workshop, from TJ’s digital models).
Public promotion included a piece written by Lillien Waller with an eloquent description of the project, concluding with a beautiful quote from Amanda, one of Pask’s daughters and advisor to the project. There is a video review of the installation process, student work, and the exhibit (4 minutes). In the exhibit we also ran a video slideshow based on a paper written with TJ McLeish, containing segments on cybernetics, Pask’s prior machines, Colloquy itself and Pask’s influence on design (18 minutes).
A future post will go deep into the educational value of our project.
If you wish to come to see the installation before mid-August, please write to colloquy2018@gmail.com. But we are not quite done…
The female mobiles are complete in their final form, with operating mirrors and all wiring. The male mobiles are still prototypes made of foamcore, as we finalize their details and functioning. All the electronics are in place and the interactive software must be finalized. We expect to complete the remaining software in the next 10 days. We are still short $6K for this stage of work and are grateful for all donations, large and small. Depending on funding, we will evolve our open-sourced documentation, design symposia to discuss the influence and implications of Colloquy and Pask’s vision, and eventually move Colloquy to other locations as many have invited us to do.
See opening night invite here. Review blogposts about the project here. See next update here.
