Imagining a contribution device for fablabs
Totems was born in 2017 from a graduation project that Riwad Salim carried out with Valentin Socha and Quentin Laloux. This modular device, designed for fablabs and makerspaces, lets the people who use the place share what they make and interact through signs.
These spaces are often poorly known to the public. Totems therefore first takes the form of an MDF kiosk set up at the entrance of a fablab, with a screen, a joystick and an arcade button, giving visitors a first contact with the place. Its application runs on a Raspberry Pi, so the kiosk is easy to set up and move. Everyone is given a totem sign, a pictogram drawn on a grid of sixteen dots that serves as their identity. They then wander among the members' projects and place their sign to open a project page or answer the community's calls, such as choosing the next introduction workshop.
The kiosk relies on a back office where a project page is put together by assembling blocks: description, machines used, makers, resources, licence or calls for contribution. The pages can also be viewed remotely, read-only, to show the activity of the place without taking the device away from where it belongs.
The project was meant to spread. Its source files, the code of the kiosk and of the Arduino controller, as well as the documentation of the process, were published under the name of the Corinne B. collective, so that others could modify it, repurpose it or adapt it to their own places and contexts.
