UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – A tiny machine powered by a hobby motor and AA battery wiggles its way across a tabletop covered with paper. Handcrafted from objects easily found in a kitchen junk drawer — masking tape, rubber bands and a plastic berry basket — the contraption balances on a pair of legs made from highlighters. It whimsically revolves around the table, leaving fluorescent pink and blue trails in its path.
While the marks the machine makes are captivating, the act of designing the robot is the real lesson for the students who create them, according to Aaron Knochel, an assistant professor of art education in the School of Visual Arts at Penn State.
As an artist and technology enthusiast, Knochel has been tinkering with these scribbling robots — or scribble-bots — for years, and more recently began using them in art education classes he teaches at Penn State.
For future art teachers and their students, Knochel says scribble-bots not only have important implications for learning about the design process, but for blending both art and science in one engaging lesson.
Knochel will lead a hands-on scribble-bot workshop at Penn State’s Art of Discovery booth at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. Participants of all ages are invited to stop by to play with and build their own robots from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, July 14, at the booth next to Willard Building. The workshop will be one of many free hands-on activities hosted at the booth by Penn State educators highlighting the art of science and science of art.
“I’m excited to have the opportunity to bring scribble-bots to the wider community, and I think the Arts Festival is a great venue to showcase this technology for people of all ages and backgrounds,” Knochel said. “I’ve seen everyone from 8-year-olds to 80-year-olds be intrigued by these jumpy, jittery things, so I use that curiosity as a jumping off point for getting people interested in learning about art and technology. The machines themselves are simple, so it’s really about the ingenuity of how to put the machine in motion that’s the most interesting part.”