For a Design of deformation

Anna Schaeffner

"For a design of the Deformation" is a creative research project, as part of a practice-based PhD, carried out at ENSADLab, in the Reflective interaction research group, Paris and at the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« in Berlin. Through the methods of design, the subject of soft robotics is explored, in its materiality, its dynamism and the possible functions that result from deformation. Looking for new modes of creation and material agency. The project seeks to develop interactive devices, which question the conditions that allow a soft robot to adapt to its environment. That is to say its capacity to create a form of symbiosis with its milieu by its deformation.

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Anna Schäffner is Pre-Doctoral Candidate in the SACRe doctoral program at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and at the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« in Berlin.

Her research focuses on soft robotics, and the design of deformation as a vector of movement, as a capacity for dynamic material adaptation and expressiveness. Through the practice of design, she explores hybrid forms of interacting advancing the relation between robotic objects and their environments.