I held a workshop to retrieve information without the use of a computer. Using everyday materials, we focused on the fundamental structure of a search engine and applied it to real life, such as tidying up a room and arranging paper in order. I would like to introduce some works we actually did in the workshop. The participants played a game I called ‘Search Game’, in which they are introduced to some images from a google image search and then their task would be to guess the keyword. It is to give the participants the idea of tagging information. After the game, they assort those images into groups and select about 20 out of 300 images. They again assort those selected into 4 or 5 groups, such as a group of images showing plants or a group with architecture in the background. After that, the participants tag those selected pictures with the name of the group to which they belong, decide the color for each tag, and draw pictures on paper for each of them. A radio controlled car with a wireless camera is driven around the images and a display shows pictures according to the color the car has selected. For example, the tag ‘sky’ is represented as a color of blue. As the remote controlled car runs over a sheet of paper with a blue drawing, the display show the images that have been tagged as ‘sky’. Although the workshop was successful, I faced a struggle when children were interested in the remote controlled car too much.

Daito Manabe + Motoi Ishibashi + Satoshi Horii