douglas irving repetto

foal

wood, hardware,
motors, electronics, battery
(2005/8/9)

FOAL-MANIA at MoMA!!!!!
04 DECEMBER 2009!!!!!!!

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When the organizers of Festival Rümlingen 2005 asked me to bring the horse table to Switzerland, I decided instead to build a new version of the table, this time in the form of an awkward foal. The foal knows even less about the world than its parent, and spends most of its time blindly moving its legs every which way in a largely futile effort to explore the world. It's not easy being a walking table, but the little foal is doing its best!

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In the spring of 2007 Make Magazine invited me to bring the foal to their Maker Faire in San Mateo. My friends/wackos from Machine Project were there as well, and they were kind enough to share their space with me and the foal. Since the foal was already built and could happily wander around the expo hall on its own (sort of), I thought it'd be fun to spend some time building a little friend for the foal with help from Maker Faire attendees. So I spent most of my time at the faire sitting at a table building a flying birdhouse with parts that people brought to me. I had a piece of paper on the table with a list of materials that I was hoping to use. People brought me those and other neat things as well, and by the end of the faire we had a nice friend for the foal! Pics & video of the foal and little bird friend at the Maker Faire over there -->

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In the fall of 2008 Machine Project invited me and the foal to be a part of "A Machine Project Field Guide to the LA County Museum of Art". We said, "TOTALLY!"

Thus:

Foal Army (Budget Cuts)
America's premier foal army gallops triumphantly* across the BP Grand Entrance, celebrating 101 years as "America's Favorite Fighting Foals".
*due to recent budget cuts, miniature, underpowered foals may teeter, limp and/or struggle. Triumph optional.

We spent the day at LACMA building simplified (using only one motor and a crankshaft, instead of the four motors in the original) foals with lots of nice visitors. We had a basic foal plan, and everyone was invited to start with that plan (or not) and build away! In the end we made six working/walking foals. A small, but potent, army.

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Two foals were included in the summer 2009 "Shared Robotics" show at RoboDays at the Brandts Museum in Odense, Denmark. Some cute video of them walking, over there -->>