Ode to Barelas: Interactive Mural at Working Classroom


Years: 
2022-2023


Collaborators: 
Alyshia Bustos, Nani Chacon, Alyssa Johnson, Leah Buechley, and student collaborators.

Publications:

Alyshia N Bustos, Nanibah Chacon, Mia Shaw, Fiona Bell, and Leah Buechley. 2024. Interactive Murals: New Opportunities for Collaborative STEAM Learning. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641987

Alyshia Bustos, Nanibah Chacon, and Leah Buechley. 2023. Interactive Murals: New Interactions and Educational Opportunities for Diverse Youth. XRDS 29, 4 (Summer 2023), 42–47. https://doi.org/10.1145/3596932


This project is led by graduate student Alyshia Bustos and muralist Nanibah Chacon. In collaboration with the non-profit arts organization Working Classroom, we are designing and building large interactive murals. This entails developing technologies and applications for large outdoor painted interactive surfaces. These are constructed from a combination of conductive paints and inks, conductive tapes, custom hardware, and traditional paint.

We are also developing educational activities to introduce electronics and computing through the collaborative design and construction of interactive murals.

The 10′ x 32′ mural shown above was designed and built in the summer of 2022 by Hand and Machine PhD student Alyshia Bustos, Nani Chacon, and a group of middle and high-school students. It can be seen on the exterior of the Working Classroom building at 423 Atlantic Ave. SW in Albuquerque.

Students working on the mural
Interacting with the mural

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2006524.