A4:Whisker Evaluation

Evaluation of Andre, Gaby, and Maya's Whisker

Nissa

What I see it as: A cat that makes noise when you flick its whisker and makes other noises when you poke its eyeball with stuff.

What I imagine it becoming: A mouth that nibbles at stuff, delighting everyone nearby with its musical mastication; though, how whisker-like is that really?

Andre, Gaby, and Maya’s sound-making whisker has changed a lot since A2. It is now much more compact, which makes it much more portable. However, I think it has less presence before. There was also something a bit charming about its rawness in the first iteration. Now, I think it’s in an uncomfortable place between raw and finished, but it is a work in progress. The whisker now has a face and is recognizable as a creature head. I think that it was interesting that the group chose to make their whisker into something recognizable. The laser cut pieces look very nice aside from a few rough edges. I think it is interesting how adding the face has changed the interaction. People are less likely to poke at the gears through the eye sockets to make different noises, but the creature is sensitive to physical output and reacts in a way a real creature might.  

 

Chinwei
The new compact form factor and portability is the most obvious change in this iteration. The next obvious change is that this whisker is starting to resemble the eyes of a face, with the nose being the primary sensing organ and the eyes being the primary feedback. Aside from the fact that this it is now less convenient to stick something into the moving gears, there is a resistance to wanting to stick something into the "whisker's" eyes, as if someone could potentially hurt it by doing that.

Somewhat lacking in this current iteration of whiskers is a proper platform for it to elevate itself to a certain height to more convincingly appear like a face. In its current state, the entire mechanism is too low on the ground to be accessible to humans touching it. Also, the sensors (the nose) is a bit small considering it is acting as a touch sensor for the rest of the face.

Despite that however, once the mode of interaction becomes clear, feeding the gears with various materials and playing with the 'nose' to produce a sound is both exploratory and experiential.