IDA Down Under

After our respective 30+ hour flights we were ready to start our new adventure in the southern hemisphere. First step was an introductory week that would orientate all the Exchange and international students who were here for one or more semesters. These orientation days were nothing like we are used to back in London. You can feel that RMIT is a massive university and could fill a 500+ capacity auditorium with all the exchange students.

There were a lot of presentations and events over the course of three days. The were various talks about Melbourne and its history, Australian customs and culture and obviously university related subjects. There was even lunch provided every day. Although we did have to go through a series of embarrassing ice breakers it was very useful and educative. On the final day there was a gathering and drinks were served, with the final chapter being a party that was thrown in the old geol which is part of the RMIT campus.

C+A

At Jared’s Embodied Interactions class we are looking at the relationship between the human body and robots (or robotic elements). Today we made little prototypes with Arduinos mimicking human behaviours and characteristics. Friedrich Kirschner - artist, co-founder of the Society for Cultural Optimism and professor for digital media in Puppetry at the University for performing arts "Ernst-Busch" in Berlin - and his students from Berlin joined us for the class. 

This morning I met astrophysicist David Parkinson at the University of Queensland who gave me a brief introduction to dark matter, dark energy and black holes. 

 Watch the "space" 

Great Ocean Road, July 2015

I went on one of the RMIT organised trips, it’s not something I would usually do... but I’m glad I did.

Found this in a vintage bookshop in Brisbane. Very IDA.

Hello and welcome to IDA’s Australia blog! 

This is the first year of the INTERACT exchange programme between London and Australia and this blog will be the place where we share our thoughts, experiences, stories etc.

IDA has sent three students to explore the other side of the planet: Carlotta and Alejandro are studying at RMIT in Melbourne and Michel is studying at QUT in Brisbane.

Let the madness begin!