We are taking the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit underwater in a project in collaboration with MIT Medialab, the New England Aquarium, City Year, LEGO Education and MIT Sea Grant. We are working towards a kit that can be used by high school students as part of the National Geographic Summer Expeditions at MIT. During two days they will use the underwater robot to do scientific experiments to research the state of the aquatic environment.
Read more about the project

Marcel will be sharing the story of and key learnings from the Transparent Charging Station project at Primer Conference in San Fransisco. This conference, organized by Speculative Now, is about speculative and critical design.
Read more about the event

To spur innovation in professional education, the Dutch Creative Industries Fund commissioned an open-ended research project to explore the opportunity for digital physical tools for the classroom. Our goal was to discover how we can support students and teachers at the entry-level of vocational school in the Netherlands. After half a year of research at ROC Mondriaan in Delft, we presented a concept for "Je Eigen Ding Doen" (Do Your OWn Thing). A more elaborate update on this project will follow soon.
Read more about the presentation

In April, the new program board of ClickNL was instated. The Incredible Machine is proud to be part of this effort to strenghten the Dutch creative industry through meaningful collaborations between industry and academia. The board, existing of researchers and entrepreneurs from the creative industry, will guide the continual development of the Knowledge and Innovation Agenda that will strengthen the sector. “This bow on the marriage of science and the creative industry is a very important moment.”
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What if your voice assistant was transparent about the interests it is actually serving? Interacting with IRIS reveals the underlying network of stakeholders that seek access into our personal lives. IRIS is an interactive prototype commissioned by SETUP medialab (http://www.setup.nl) for the exhibition Devious Devices at Dutch Design Week.
Check out the video on our Vimeo channel.

As of January, The Incredible Machine will operate from both ends of the Atlantic. Marcel will temporarily relocate to the Boston area and explore opportunities for collaboration with US partners. In July, Marcel will be back in Rotterdam.

Our Fairbike project got mentioned in an article on sharing bikes in the Christmas special of the Economist. A very informative article, examining the history of the sharing bike, starting all the way at the white bicycle plan of Provo in Amsterdam, through the Chinese startup explosion, ending with a glimpse of hope for the future with our Fairbike project.
Read the article here (paywall)

Our yearly highlight is ThingsCon. The conference about ethics, design, and technology. As partner and co-organiser, we are proud to see that over 300 people from across the world made their way to the Volkshotel to engage in two days of collaboration and inspiration.
See the recap

Eindhoven’s mayor John Jorritsma today formally unveiled a prototype of a transparent charging station during the annual Smart City Conference. The transparent charging station is a response to the growing importance of algorithms in our daily lives, making visible their invisible logic using a display that shows how the electricity is allocated between the cars being charged.
Read more about our project.

This fall, LEGO House opened its doors to the public. Four years after we joined this incredible project, we can finally show the world what we have been secretly working on. We were invited for the partner opening in August. To some of us, it was the first time we could see everything coming together - and it looked amazing.
Read more about our project.

Late 2016 we set out to learn how responsible IoT could be realised in the Shenzhen maker and manufacturing ecosystem.In collaboration with Peter Bihr (the Waving Cat) and Michelle Thorne (Mozilla Open IoT Studio) we produced a documentary, and a series of publications about the opportunities and peculiarities of this intriguing city. Now this project has a website.

The Dutch consulate invited The Incredible Machine to talk about their work at the Path Festival in Sao Paolo Brasil. Harm gave a lecture about ethical dilemmas in the realm of connected products.