If there’s one thing that I learned the value of this week, it’s physical constraints. I anticipated this issue when beginning the class, but now when I’m stripped of the convenience of my digital workspace, I get to truly experience an entirely new realm of improvisation and iteration.

Initially, my concept had taken the form of a glove that the user would wear. With it, they would make contact with each digit to their hand’s respective thumb, manipulating the animation in some way. However, I quickly realized that I did not have enough wires for such interaction and that my skills in physical crafts were nowhere near capable of creating a glove (that would nicely hide wires) in such a short time.

As a result, I decided to go back to my brainstorming concepts and revert to a stationary handprint that the user would rest their palms on and press their fingers onto the inputs. Additionally, to make it more accessible I forked the connections and made handprints for both lefty and righties, allowing for maximum ease. This doubled in effectively creating a space to hide all of the wirings and the MakeyMakey all within the wedge’s volume, and covered with decoration.

I struggled with what I wanted to decorate the interactive piece with, debating between printing and taping on screenshots of failed shaders that I had messed up or writing phrases with a permanent medium. Ultimately I had decided to collage and cut up images of art from a newspaper that I had purchased through Kickstarter years ago (2014!). I have been holding the contents of that art piece for a long time, bringing it with me everywhere I had lived. But now, it only collects dust, hoarded with artificial material value. Seemed a little too holy for my liking. Snip snip.