Monday, September 23, 2013

Whisker Evaluation: Meng, Yang

Evaluation of Amy's Whisker Project 


questions:
  • What is the narrative?
  • What is gained/lost from A2, A3? What is fundamental to the work?
  • Is technology used appropriately? 
  • Articulate purpose(?) and value(?)
  • Is it imaginative?

Amy's idea is very interesting. The whisker could stretch out and draw back using magnetic force. The interaction is similar like the rafflesia to catch insects.  When people come closely with a magnet, the whisker may action like rafflesia.

In A2,A3, the whisker made by more different kind of materials small. Combined with different material makes it seem lighter and easier to interaction with people. Also the change is from deformation of materials and the whole material is conductive. In this version, the whisker made with plastic, cut by laser cutter.  The structure works well. But there is also some space could be improved, maybe more "arms" from different directions. In addition the force of magnet is not enough to make a remarkable change of the shape of those arms. May be it is better to choose another way of input.

At this version, it has many different possibilities. I thought that it may put with real rafflesia in exhibition. While rafflesia catch insects, it can catch the movements of human. It is absolutely imaginative. Also, the device can be made really big as a warning board on the beach. When tsunami comes, it can be activated to wave its arms warning people to run away. The transformation of the whisker is interesting to be put into many applications.

Evaluation of our Whisker


In the last version of our whisker, we try two news things that is new material (acrylic rather than paper) and new shape-change mechanism (mechanical movement instead of deformation). So the narrative is when we pull the whiskers of the mask, the different parts of its face start to move making an expression.

The new project is to try what we can do with laser cutter and also try to amplify the change of shadow before and after whisker is pulled. However, we lost the lightness for the use of heavy materials and also the flexibility we can pull the whiskers. Now the mask seems little dull to users and cannot interest users to try more possibilities by pulling whiskers in different ways. Also, sound output is not naturally combined with the interaction with whiskers.

The idea behind the project is to make something interesting and can interact with people's input(for now is pulling and shaking of the whiskers). We hope it can encourage our trial to interact with it in different ways. We also hope it can teach manners of children to behave properly (still thinking of that).We will keep trying of different materials and also different fabricating technology.(One great idea comes to us is to use mould to make silicon mask and ) Also we are considering not  use only whiskers to be the input. The whole face should be interactive.


No comments:

Post a Comment