Chinese artist Ai Weiwei had a bulk order for building blocks turned down by Lego, which has plans for a Legoland amusement park in Shanghai, China, and a new factory in Jiaxing.)Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei says Lego refused his request for a bulk order of blocks to build a freedom of speech exhibit for Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria.Weiwei has now established collection points after hundreds of people offered to donate their Lego to him.In an Instagram post, the artist wrote that the company said they “cannot approve the use of Legos for political works.”According to the message, the museum in Melbourne contacted Lego to place an order, only to receive an email response that apparently stated Lego “cannot be used commercially in any way to promote, or name, the art work.”The message stated that any works involving Lego “cannot contain any political, religious, racist, obscene or defaming statements.”Weiwei said the decision was “an act of censorship and discrimination.”
He later posted an image of Lego blocks in a toilet on Instagram with the caption “Everything is awesome,” mocking a song in the 2014 Lego movie.A statement from Lego spokeswoman Amanda Santoro said they “respect any individual’s right to free creative expression, and we do not censor, prohibit or ban creative use of Lego bricks.”However, Santoro added that the company refrains from “engaging in or endorsing the use of Lego bricks in projects that carry a political agenda.”Hundreds took to social media to voice their opposition to Lego’s alleged refusal to fulfill the order. IT consultant Dave Hall posted an image of hundreds of Lego blocks with the caption: “@LEGO_Group this is about 10% of our #Lego collection. We won’t be buying more. @aiww you’re welcome to borrow it.”Twitter user @iamwunderwmn, a graphic designer from Kentucky, wrote: “As a designer, artist, and concerned citizen, I’m ashamed of @LEGO_Group for denying the free-expression of @aiww.”The artist, who tweets from the @aiww account, has previously used Lego in his work for an exhibition at the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay.Lego’s decision arrives at a time when Merlin Entertainments has announced plans for a new Legoland amusement park in Shanghai.
, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.You don't have permission to access /p1093418.htmlNate MacDonald and John Schuster spent more than a decade in schools looking to teach students some basic principles of circuitry and engineering — but realized that just giving them a battery and a motor and saying “go” wasn’t enough. So the two have started Tenka Labs, a new company that designs small blocks that operate as parts of circuits that they can connect to LEGO bricks. There are three units: a battery, a motor and a light, all of which can be connected to build creations like cars — and even a creepy moving stuffed rabbit that MacDonald showed me — in an attempt to teach kids some of the early principles of engineering. The company has raised $2.1 million in seed financing for its launch. “Students we were teaching about basic circuitry didn’t really understand basic circuitry,” co-founder Nate MacDonald said.
“When you got to people soldering, they were just blindly soldering. We wanted to find a product that would help teach them basic circuitry. Eventually as it progressed we kind of had a product. We didn’t want to just go after the teachers, we wanted it to be available for all kids and parents. We took that big concept of the block and two nails and brought it down to this size.” The blocks operate exactly like you’d expect with units of a circuit — connecting them in sequence gets a different result than connecting them in parallel. They have small pylons on the corners that automatically snap to other units to create a circuit. For now, the company is focusing on those three elements, but it’s natural that some other basic parts would come down the line (like a resister, for example). The idea here is that Tenka Labs wants to catch students and give them a better foundation before they graduate to something more sophisticated like a protoboard and start building more advanced circuits.
MacDonald wants to target both teachers and classrooms — which will likely get some kind of bulk discount — in addition to just parents. For now, everything is sold in kits, like one that uses all three to create a car. The kits retail at around $60. Each is designed to be just the size of LEGO blocks and snap into various creations beyond the kits that they’re offering. The kits are available for reservation and pre-order right now. “Kids are familiar with it, they’re comfortable with it,” MacDonald said. “Every kid has a pile of LEGOs.” Schuster also said that the company isn’t necessarily looking to compete against what he calls “screen time,” when a kid might be playing with a smartphone or tablet. But there has to be a place in the day where they’re away from screens and using their imagination to build things, he said. “We know that we’re not against screen time, I’m not opposed, but there’s a balance,” Schuster said. “But we think with the maker movement there’s a drive toward tactile play, and being able to make mistakes.
The awesome thing about making creativity, you’re gonna have 6 kids building 6 different things.” Tenka Labs is, of course, not alone in trying to build these sort of early engineering training products. There are other companies like LittleBits building similar tools to teach STEM basics to students before they start graduating to more advanced concepts, and that company raised $44.2 million in June on 2015. Schuster wasn’t shy to say that there will definitely be competition going forward, and now the company’s next step is to show off the units at the New York Toy Fair to get things started. “We want it to be analog, we want this to be something the kids need to learn the basics before they go to a digital product,” Schuster said. “They need to understand motor and gears. We integrate with the most common building block so we can build in three dimensions. We work with kids enough to know that you have to really ramp up the play factor. We want to help them go on this adventure.