Ik-A-Sketch
The Ik-A-Sketch is possibly the largest incarnation of the popular children's toy the Etch-A-Sketch ever built. It was built in 4 days in collaboration with Edwin Dertien and displayed at PICNIC 09 as part of the Mediamatic Hackers Camp.
The idea is to break the ice between conference delegates by getting them to engage in a fun activity together. Each delegate at the conference has an RFID tag (similar to an oyster card) linked to their online profile on the conference social network. To activate a dial on the Ik-A-Sketch, it is necessary to touch a tag to it. If two people scan their tags on separate dials, they are automatically friended in the social network. After people have finished drawing, their sketch is automatically uploaded to their online profile. Just like a real Etch-A-Sketch, it was necessary to shake the Ik-A-Sketch to clean it. This was achieved using an accelerometer and led to to lots of jumping up and down around the installation. There was also an "Easter egg" tag that caused the Ik-A-Sketch to become a giant pong game.
A few blog posts mentioning the installation - hackaday.com, oreilly.com, rfidnews.org, mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl.
