en torno a la silla | dossier in english (march 2016)

8/19/2019 En torno a la silla | Dossier in English (March 2016)

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Dossier | En torno a la silla

March 2016

Contact info

URL: http://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com

E-mail: [email protected]

Facebook: www.facebook.com/entornoalasilla

Twitter: @entornoalasilla

CC BY NC ND 4.0 International En torno a la silla, Barcelona, March 2016

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Objectives

En torno a la silla

is a Spanish non-profit association operating from Barcelona.

In

En torno a la silla we co-create and fabricate collaboratively between people with diverse

knowledges and modes of functioning with the aim of transforming and intervening urban

environments, seeking to improve the conditions of accessibility, inclusiveness, and care in the

urban world. We need these ideas to permeate and to articulate our environments. Hence, we

design with and for diversity, seeking to create participatory design processes with the objective

of building truly enabling spaces: stimulating, joyful, and restless.

The name is a pun in Spanish that might be translated as “revolving around the wheelchair’s

environment”, from “en torno” –around/on–, “entorno” –surrounding– and “silla” –chair, in this

case wheelchair.

En torno a la silla ’s objectives as a non-profit association are:

- Fostering the integration of functional diversity in the design of low cost technical aids, to

promote full accessibility and independent-living. This entails the promotion of user

collaboration in all steps of the fabrication process, and not only either in the initial or in

the testing/validation phases. That is, users are the main protagonists of the solution,

being involved in the conception, fabrication, and testing of the different prototypes,

choosing possible materials, formal and aesthetic aspects and informing of the basic

requirements the gadgets should fulfill.

- Promoting the production of open hardware and open-source designs, published using

different free/libre open licenses. For this the association seeks to foster the

experimentation and production of documentation of the process and outcome of the

design process in different formats: mostly video-documentation (in digital and

interactive formats) as well as tutorials and how-to manuals.

To meet these ends, En torno a la silla

undertakes the following activities:

- hosting participatory events, workshops, and leisure activities, be it for the sake of

fabrication or learning;

- organizing, taking part, and collaborating in publications, conferences, debates,

workshops, public dissemination campaigns in the media and the press, and exhibitions;

- providing side-services to the prototype users;

- freely licensing the documentation produced in the fabrication process, making it

accessible.

Team

En torno a la silla is composed of eight people: Marga Alonso Guevara; Alida Díaz; Xavier

Duacastilla; Nuria Gómez; Arianna Mencaroni; Pepe Rovira; Tomás Sánchez Criado; and Rai

Vilatovà. Our skills and activities are as diverse as our bodily functionings. In the collective there

are makers, filmmakers, architects, anthropologists, documentators, and independent-living

activists, four of them using wheelchairs.


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Main projects | 2012-2016


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1. “En torno a la silla” kitDecember 2012-June 2014, Medialab-Prado Madrid.

In 2012 ‘En torno a la silla’ submitted a project to Medialab-Prado Madrid’s

Functionings: Open design and social remix call.

We aimed at designing and building three objects of a wheelchair kit: a portable

ramp, a folding table, and an armrest-briefcase. Our idea was not only that these

gadgets could make life easier and more comfortable to the users, but also that they

might enable different modes of relating to others and of interaction with the

environment.

One of the elements of the kit, the portable wheelchair ramp, displayed and

used to ‘assault’ different spaces in different performances and explorations,

allowed the group to turn into a reflective and performative group, seeking not only

to report inaccessible spaces but also to displace the problem to the people in

charge of those spaces.

Different prototypes of the elements of the kit have been produced for

different users, allowing us to experiment not only with different materials, solutions,

and collaborative design methods, but also with open documentation formats.

Links (in Spanish)(1) The original project: https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/el-proyecto-original/

(2) A reflective blog post:

https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/de-que-va-en-torno-a-la-silla-octubre

-2013/

(3) Video of an ‘assault’ with a voice-over reading L. Cohen’s ‘Any system’ poem (with

English subtitles):

https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/cualquier-sistema-octubre-2013/

(4) Open documentation of the group’s inventions:

https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/documentacion-abierta/


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2. “Tinkering Spring” eventJune 2014, Can Batlló, Barcelona.

The “Tinkering Spring” was an event organised by En torno a la silla to show, know

and share free, open and low cost design needs and solutions: that is, gadgets,

hacks, technical aids, technical appliances, smartphone apps, clothes, games, etc.

conceived from and built to promote the diversity of functionings.

The event consisted of 19 project presentations, a fair, and a final debate,

where resources, ideas and discoveries emerging from that day were shared. This

event joined a great diversity of actors: designers, craftspeople, users, artisans,

makers, hackers, illustrators, welders, etc.

As a result of that day the idea of an expanded community started to grow:

the Tinkering Network, mobilised by En torno a la silla, that would allow these

different actors to share knowledge, resources and spaces where collectives and

individual users might meet, be it to start auto-fabrication projects or to start a small

collaborative economy around the commissioning of objects.

Links (in Spanish)(1) Event info: https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/primaveracacharrera

2)Video-summary of the event:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duki8vkBtr0&list=PLyqej6Dvgxgcs0MXFCxOxH7PTs

ZzKCi46

(3 Tinkering Network’s blog: https://redcacharrera.wordpress.com/


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3. “Tinkerthon” co-creation workshopPreparation: July-September 2014. October 11 2014, Can Batlló, Barcelona.

After the great success of the Tinkering Spring, and in order to foster the creation of the Tinkering Network we cooperated with CoCreable (a co-creation studio) to host a co-creation workshop

that in the participatory preparation process –populated by most of the presenters and attendees

to the Tinkering Spring– was named Tinkerthon (

Cacharraton ), since it was to be a marathon of

tinkering of 8 hours where at least mock-ups or first prototypes of different gadgets or urban

interventions should be produced. After a long process of sharing and comments in CoCreable’s

digital platform, four “challenges” were chosen to be built during that day: (1) an autonomous

urine bag voiding system for wheelchair users; (2) a wheelchair’s rain and sun protecting device;

(3) forms of accessible clothing; and (4) accessible spaces workshop’ seeking to think how the

Tinkering Network might be placed in Can Batlló’s facilities and what would be needed for that to

happen. These challenges were chosen because they had variegated levels of difficulty and

implied different material, organizational and design challenges, hence entailing an exploration on

what a Tinkering Network could be making together in the future. For that day we would work in

four groups of minimum three people each, with people in them having the following roles: ‘master builder’ (in charge of the continuity of the prototyping), ‘host’ (in charge of explaining the

state of project to whoever might approach), and ‘gossip’ (in charge of visually documenting the

design process with his or her smartphone). The day proved to be a very nice experience with 20

people working in groups to develop and showcase the prototypes. However, in the following

months and due to the precariousness of many of the makers there present, most of these

prototypes were discontinued, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to emplace the Tinkering

Network in Can Batlló’s workshops. This failure proved very interesting to reflect more accurately

on the infrastructural needs that such a network might entail.

Links (in Spanish)(1) Event info: https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/cacharraton/

(2) Video-summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7SavhPYAq8


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4. Digital fabrication prototypesFrom July 2015. Ateneu de Fabricació de Les Corts, Barcelona

After the productive failure of the Tinkering Network we started searching for appropriate means

to make such a network happen. Hence, in 2015 we started learning and working on new

prototypes within one of the nodes of Barcelona’s brand new Network of Digital Fabrication

Athenaeums, property of Barcelona’s municipality. These spaces are being experimentally

developed as publicly accessible district- or neighbourhood-related fablabs, focusing on specific themes or topics but interconnected between them. Conceived as a public equipment they have

as main aims: empowering citizens through the use of digital fabrication technologies; and

making available and open all the different projects there generated fostering practices of ‘social

return’ in the use of these equipments. With the help and technical aid of the professionals

managing the node we have worked in (Les Corts), we started learning digital fabrication

technologies (3D printers, laser cutters, modelling software, etc.). After this, several prototypes

have been produced: for instance, Nuria’s foldable table, or a ‘rampometer’, a tool with a laser

pointer used to measure and to visualise the length needed by a ramp, making available to chose

between different degrees of inclination. The rampometer is the first piece of a new urban

accessibility kit we would like to build, consisting of a removable and portable plywood

wheelchair ramp made out of detachable parts, allowing different degrees of inclination. Beyond

this, we plan to continue developing the foldable 3D printed table –this time for Laura, a potential

new member–, and we have started working on an accessible harness to join Ismael in his mountain strolls.

Links (in Spanish)(1) Presentation of the first outcomes in a blog post, mostly Nuria’s new foldable table:

https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/formacion-en-fabricacion-digital-en-el

-ateneu-de-fabricacio-les-corts-julio-2015-enero-2016/

(2) The rampometer: https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/rampometro/


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5. Webdoc project “Vidas fuera de catálogo”In the making since May 2013. Madrid & Barcelona

There is a need to think of more empowering ways of designing gadgets and objects for

wheelchair users to the existing rehabilitative and medical corporate appliances, distributed in a

closed dispensary or ‘catalogue’ by the public administrations. These objects turn users into

passive subjects. Thus, we need to incorporate the knowledge and the experiences of the people

who use those gadgets to live independently in a diverse world. This aim entails a transformation

in the assigned roles of people –experts and end users– and objects –technical aids, usually

embodying the expertise of the former over the experiences of the latter–. In En torno a la silla we

design and fabricate collaboratively: there are no professionals separated from users; there is not

an isolated body we need to rehabilitate, or pathologies to cure. Furthermore, we do not build

perfectly finished objects. Instead, we build ceaselessly according to need and desire seeking to

go ‘out of the catalogue’.

However, we have sometimes found very difficult to explain the whys and hows of such

process. Hence, as part of our exploration of open-source documentation formats Vidas fuera de

catálogo (Lives out of the catalogue) is a webdoc project seeking to document – exploring

different digital video, multimedia, and interactive hypermedia visualisation formats – the

collective’s and other similar fabrication processes. For this, footage of different activities of the

group and of more than 20 interviews to relevant actors in the field of low cost open design for

independent-living in Spain has been gathered. After this we started trying out different

interactive displays. The project is still a work in progress. A first beta and local prototype has been shown at Medialab-Prado Madrid’s “Objects in Common” exhibition from October 2015 to

March 2016.

Links (in Spanish)(1) Presentation of the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLSlxuNp230

(2) “Objects in Common” exhibition (available in English):

http://medialab-prado.es/article/objetos-comunes


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en torno a la silla | dossier in english (march 2016)

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