HackBerry keeps growing
Creativity and technology combine as students show off their prototypes to the community.
You can find a little bit of everything at a HackBerry Lab prototype show, from a historically accurate toy sword suitable for whacking your friends with to a tube that shoots fire in time with music to origami as a mathematical and artistic concept.
The most recent Prototyping Open House at HackBerry Lab on Berry College’s campus Tuesday, was showcasing 90 students’ ideas, more than 200 different prototypes, according to Zane Cochran, HackBerry founder and Berry College instructor.
“We have prototype fever here,” he laughed. “This is twice as many students as we’ve ever had and there is a wide range of ideas.”
The seniors showing off their projects have the most creative technologies experience, as well. Creative Technologies is a relatively new major at Berry that came along with HackBerry Lab, Cochran said.
“This is our biggest class graduating with a creative technologies major, seven students,” he explained. “Many of our students are going into a creative field, or perhaps on to graduate school.”
The major encourages students to build to solve a problem or create a Kristina Wilder / RN-T
Berry junior Portia Delano shows one of her water marbling projects, a coffee cup.
new way of looking at something, constantly thinking outside the box.
Hunter Tracy, a junior, had just finished his Rubens’ Tube, a sound wave visualizer created by a piece of pipe with small holes along its length. The pipe is attached to a speaker on one side and when music is played, flames come out of the little holes and dance to the music.
“It looks great at night,” Tracy said. “I sent a picture to my mom and she wants me to make one for her firepit at home.”
Convenience is also a major motivator in the HackBerry Lab, evidenced by Mason Mancuso’s Echo Dot Robot.
“The Amazon Echo Dot is voice-activated and plays music, provides news and sets alarms, things like that,” he explained. “But sometimes it is too far away in the house and you have to yell. The robot helps it move around.”
The Echo Dot fits into the robot Mancuso made, and travels through a house, drawn by light sensors, he said.
Safety is also a concern, according to Jay Foote, who created a historically accurate toy sword.
“My friends and I like to fight each other and we wanted something we could whack each other with without hurting each other,” she smiled. “A friend of mine who is a history buff inspired me to make it as historically accurate as possible. It looks a bit like Percy Jackson’s sword now, but that’s OK.”
Ashley Rutkowski created origami using mathematical concepts and found that it applies to her love of theater costuming.
“I do a lot of pattern making,” she said. “When you are dealing with folds and pleats and shapes, it really does apply. For instance, in a stage play of ‘Cinderella,’ Cinderella’s dress magically changes to a ball gown and that is done by folding and pleating the fancy ball gown under her ragged dress.”
Ron Taylor, a Berry professor, said he encouraged his students to think about modern origami.
“The old paper art makes animals such as cranes, but modern origami takes on mathematical concepts to create structures,” he said. “I wanted them to come to the open house with their work, because they’ve created some wonderful work.”
The art of origami has a meditative aspect to it, he added, and while many students may find the first couple of works difficult, once they start getting used to it, it is very relaxing.