Matt Gardiner

Matt Gardiner has taken Origami to a place where Origami has never been before. 

Oribotics embraces folding and technology all in one. It shows technology being pushed to a completely different level with a creative idea.

 

Matt finished his Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography in 1997, he managed to get a job at Drome Pty Ltd where Peter Hennessey and Patricia Piccinini taught him. Which supported his art practise; it was where he saw projects come together and getting into animation. Where he worked with Flash and came up with his idea of interactive origami.

 

 Airstrip is a company that is designed on the principle of the code to design and pushing the boundaries of new media. It’s the constant evolving and developing innovative way to teach and inspire young up coming artists. My Trinh Ha and the Gardiner’s are behind this company and the ideas which they push the boundaries in new media arts.

 

His earlier works where around paper folding and making paper move. Increasing Origami was to promote origami to people and promoting the artform into a newer market. Which was showed in the Next Wave festival 2002,it was a large scale triceratops skeleton which was designed using Origami to make.

 

Best key I found that Matt was always thinking, that he was up for trying new ways and new things which I found interesting to see where this took his idea. 

He bought a robot lego kit that gave him the idea to make a robot that looks like origami but is interactive as well.  Where he came up with a design of Orbotics, you touch a button and that flower would move and do something. It would change colour on the mood of the flower blossom that was made out of paper. Which was interactive to the people around.  I found this fascinating because I never seen anything like it before in my life. Actual paper moving around which changing colour by lights and moving in and out like a flower does.

 

Matt spent three months in Tokyo thinking about his idea and improving it. He had ideas such as life and forms like god beings and how the lights and blossom could be more interactive. So he developed Oribotics more and so that when you send an sms a text to a certain blossom it will change and interact with the lights. The blossoms would open with bright lights and when closing go darker like they where breaking in the air. The blossoms were all being animated by information that related to weather information from cities. The projection of the sms instructions would be on a screen and there was an audio which would tell people what to do. Shows people how to speak to the Oribot. There was a performance of drums and live music to go with what was happening with the bots. The changes that were made when it was warm the blossom would move slowly, and when it was cold it would move more quickly and the lights would change with the texts that were being sent to each blossom.

ABC did a story on his Oribots interviewing the young artist in 2005 about his creation.

 

Matt Gardiner has proven by linking industry and design that ideas can come alive and be taken further then anyone could taken a concept to the next level. With hope and belief behind the project makes it so much easy to work and try new ideas. And it just shows where keeping an open mind will take you.