Ryan Jenkins's Blog, page 2
June 25, 2025
Tinkering with AI Prompts and Cardboard Construction
Over the past few months I’ve been experimenting with adding AI tools and topics into tinkerable explorations of art science and technology with NEXUS Experiments at University Freiburg and other partners. As I’ve been exploring new ideas, I’ve been trying to keep the learning dimensions of tinkering in mind so that I can evaluate for myself and workshop participants how AI affects the process of developing new ideas and prototypes. I’m trying to push the projects so that alongside AI, learners ...
June 23, 2025
Cabinets of Curiosities in Freiburg and Bologna
From the early days of the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium, the space always featured some sort of cabinet of curiosity which served as a demonstration of the wide walls of tinkering activities. These exhibitions often feature a mashup of participant made projects, in-progress prototypes, behind the scenes artifacts and artist creations. These displays were inspired by some of the earliest museums, collections of treasures and oddities collected and displayed by eccentric aristocrats, cura...
June 6, 2025
Innovative Automata Investigations
Recently I’ve led two very different automata workshops that have each shown the ‘wide walls’ of simple mechanical explorations with everyday materials like cardboard, wire and collaged images.
A couple of weeks ago I hosted a ‘cranky contraptions’ workshop at the Carl-Schurz-Haus, a local center for German-American cultural exchange. We had a full group of families working for about two hours on some really interesting automata designs. Along with some more basic crank slider models, I introduc...
May 27, 2025
More Toddler Tinkering Dispatches
Over the past years I’ve been trying out lots of small scale experiments with tinkering projects alongside my now two-and-a-half year old son. It’s been really interesting to see what tools, materials and ideas make sense for him to explore and how coming back to these projects affect his thinking. At this point he’s really fascinated with questions like “how is it working?” and “can we fix it?”. I’m practicing following his lead and co-designing explorations that lead to new and unexpected idea...
May 19, 2025
Forest Tinkering with Sky Trams
This past weekend I collaborated with the Natur Werkstatt in Breisach am Rhein (a city on the border of Germany and France) for a tinkering workshop in the forest with ...
May 13, 2025
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April 29, 2025
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April 15, 2025
Art Machine Prototyping with an AI Chatbot
Several years ago I led some summer camp programs and professional development workshops where we built “twisted turtles” or programmable art bots. These machines take ...
April 12, 2025
Chair Marble Machines School Library Takeover
Last week I had a really fun mini-residency as part of the European book tour for “The Tinkering Workshop” at the International School of Prague! It was a fun day full ...
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