You might have noticed a “table” with a map of the MakerSpace and wondered “What’s this table for? Looks cool, but what’s the purpose?” Well, tomorrow, Monday 16 April, you will have the opportunity to not only find out more about this table, but more importantly, you’ll be invited to interact with it.
How this started?
This is a collaborative project between Maddie Nicolas (CSE), Srishti Kush (IDM), Victoria Bill (NYU MakerSpace Manager) and Anne-Laure Fayard (Associate Professor, Technology Management and Innovation, NYU Tandon). It is part of a research project on the MakerSpace that Victoria and Anne-Laure have been working on the last 2 years. It started with an article that Anne-Laure read about an interactive tangible apparatus built in a Paris FabLab. She shared it with Victoria and Srishti and they loved the idea as much as her: they decided to adapt it for NYU, and they invited Maddie to join them in this adventure. Without Maddie and Sristhi’s hard work (and the help of many MakerSpace TAs), there will be no CAIRN for you to interact with.
But what is CAIRN? What does the word mean?
Let’s start with “cairn” (it comes from the Scottish Galic, carn, plural cairn) which is a human-made mound of rough stones built as a memorial or landmark, typically on a hilltop or skyline.
NYU MakerSpace CAIRN is a flat surface that maps out the different areas of the MakerSpace.
Top surface of CAIRN
It invites all visitors and users of the MakerSpace to take a couple of minutes as they leave the space to reflect on what were their activities in the space and to build an individual cairn.
An individual Cairn
As we all make our individual Cairns, we will be building a tangible representation of all our practices and activities in the space. And that’s what we as researchers are interested in finding about. At the same time, it’s a fun and short activity that will allow us to build together a collective CAIRN for NYU MakerSpace. So please join us. Stop by for a couple of minutes and build your Cairn (s). Feel free to take a photo and share it with others. Let us know if you have questions or if you think we could ask the questions differently. This is only our first iteration so your feedback is welcome!
The NYU MakerSpace CAIRN will officially launch tomorrow Monday 16 April around 12:30 pm.
Thanks in advance for joining the Making Journey of our MakerSpace collective Cairn!
The NYU CAIRN Team
