RoboLAB is a sculpture, workshop and gallery for inclusive and accessible art in Cologne’s famous underground culture location Odonien. Here, a group of KISD students worked with artists from the disability community, prototyping interfaces that incorporate the diversity of human perception and action.
The goal was to understand usability not from the point of view of unquestioned normality and the abilities it implies. Instead, the focus was on co-creation, a do-it-yourself and do-it-with-others spirit, and on aesthetics of access for which accessibility does not constitute an add-on, but an integral part of the creative process.
The prototypes were developed with Dodzi Dougban, Tom Auweiler, Verena Auweiler Gerda König, and Amy Zayed, targeting different fields of action: Navigating Odonien in a wheelchair, the visual and tactile experience of music, alternatives to providing information at the bar via text and image, experiencing art though smell or a multitude of subjective auditory descriptions, and a general change of perspective that incorporates points of view (or perception) beyond what is considered normal.
All prototypes are documented on the project website.
Exhibition
August 21, 2021, 5 PM
Odonien, Hornstraße 85, 50823 Köln
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