Last summer Giles and I created a set of eight StoryCubes for the Maverick Machines exhibition curated by Richard Brown. At a size of 20cm x 20cm each, these were far larger than the diffusion Generator StoryCubes. For precision they were produced using a laser cutter and made out of mount board. As a result of their size, people’s interaction with the cubes can be more sociable and collaborative than with the smaller StoryCubes. These cubes have to be grasped and manipulated using two hands and people can work together more easily to create landscapes.

The images on the StoryCubes are drawn mainly from Pask’s own work and show the projects, Musicolour, Colloquy of Mobiles, SAKI (Self-Adaptive Keyboard Instructor), Entailment Mesh and Eureka, as well as photographs of Gordon himself. Other images show work by Richard Brown inspired by Pask’s work with electro-chemical computing. Gordon Pask was a cybernetician who worked across disciplines including education, art, architecture, theatre and analogue computing and the StoryCubes aimed to illustrate this diversity of interests.

Pask Parallels written by Richard Brown to accompany the exhibition has been published through the diffusion Generator and is available here, while the eBook A Manual for Maverick Machines describes the selection of images on the StoryCubes and can be downloaded here.

Images on the StoryCubes copyright and courtesy of Richard Brown, Paul Pangaro and Jasia Reichardt.

Maverick Machines ran from 24th July to the 10th August 2007 at the Matthew Gallery, Edinburgh School of Architecture.

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 1Mb

About : Pask Parallels charts over a period of ten years, a series of Richard Brown’s art and research experiments which move between the analogue and the digital, resulting in the discovery of the work of Gordon Pask and culminating in the Pask inspired exhibition Maverick Machines. The title reflects a series of research and experiments that bear striking similarities to the electrochemical work of Pask yet were created without any knowledge of Gordon Pask or his work.

Published January 2008

Richard Brown has a BSc in Computers & Cybernetics and an MA in Fine Art (RCA) and creates interactive artworks using multi-media technology, computer programming, electronics and interfacing. Between 1995 and 2001 Richard was a Research Fellow at the Royal College of Art, in the department of Computer Related Design, where he created and exhibited 3 major interactive works Alembic, Biotica and the Neural Net Starfish. In 2002-03 Richard was an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the VCA and Melbourne University, and artist-in-residence at the Natural History Unit in the ABC, he is currently Research Artist in Residence in Edinburgh Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Richard’s work has been supported with awards and grants from Intel, Arts Council England, Wellcome Trust (Sci-Art) and in 2002 was awarded a two-year fellowship grant from NESTA (the National Endowment of Science Technology and the Arts).

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 757Kb

About : The Maverick Machines exhibition, curated by Richard Brown, displayed projects inspired by the work of Gordon Pask. Giles Lane and I created a set of large StoryCubes to illustrate various themes found in Pask’s work. This eBook describes those themes and the images contained on the StoryCubes.

Maverick Machines took place at the Matthew Gallery, Edinburgh School of Architecture in July 2007.

Published December 2007

Karen Martin’s work focuses on the interactions and inter-relations between people in urban environments, and the social, spatial and technological networks these form. Karen is currently an EngD candidate at University College London where she obtained an MSc Virtual Environments from the Bartlett School of Architecture in 2003. www.prusikloop.org