Apart from giving an artist talk at the OFFF Festival 2016 in Barcelona, we held a typographic robot crab workshop. Participants could design their own racing crab and give it a typographic twist on top. The goal was to built the fastest most awesome looking crab the world has seen: “The cream of the crabs”. The bar was set pretty high by the RMIT students from Melbourne who built their crabs a week before at the Berlin workshop. (Check the review!)

Thanks to RMIT & OFFF we had partners for the development of our new “type & tech release”. Amazing aswell, that we were supported by Marion Schroeder and her student friends from BTK, who taped everything and made this review for us! (Big shoutz here!)
Have a look!

 

Based on a caribbean holiday trip where crabraces have taken place, the idea and concept was initiated and creatively directed by Bärbel Bold,  who also brought the team together: Thorsten Tahoma and Manni Monospace did an intensive job at developing the software, hardware and mechanical construction kit for the crabs. Ingo Italic, Shifty Capzlock and Alejandro Abéce shaped the live game show format and workshop unit.
– Racing means optimizing! But speed is not everything, when it comes to robots! Technically: There is a 3D printed construction kit. A simple chip is controlling the three servo motors that move the six legs. Also lights could be attached to the mainboard. Ontop of the crab chassis the workshop participants could design almost anything. Typographically approached or not.

No game, no fun! So, the third and most important part of the workshop was to participate in an interactive crabrace. Our crab club crew “Calamari-Sunshine” hosted a audio-visual live game show led by goldkid Drifty Crabsrock. See and read our full review on the Offf-Festival Wrap up here!

Some of our participants with their crabs:

Two of our lucky winners: Alexander Scholz, editor in chief of Holo Magazine and Creative Applications…

and Nancy Numlock with her crab Disco Dina:

Insights of the crabs and the race by Drifty Crabsrock interviewed by Alejandro Abecée: