For my particular project, I decided to go with a very basic form of connection, that being the base sensation of touch. It’s the most simple connection a human being is capable of, and it holds quite a lot of power. It’s used to perform athletic feats, it allows the user to interact with the world, it allows people to interact in a very personal manner, and much more. There’s so much to the sense of touch, and I believed that I could use that sense as the central idea to my project. This concept, along with my original MaKey project based on the idea of a hand, inspired me to create gloves one could use to make art. This project would have two primary points that I would focus on.

The input would be in the form of winter gloves, which were modified with foil strips to provide connections to a MakeyMakey board. I also fitted them with foil bands around the fingers, with the intention of improving the conductivity by the glove touching itself. The wires would then be sent into the computer, where it would be processed by a Max Patch. This patch combined the Makey inputs with the Cycle-delic template, a program capable of creating wild, psychedelic designs with ease. The Makey inputs would be hooked up the the color and the position of the pattern, allowing a user to add some input and create unique and hypnotic patterns. Additionally, this would allow one person to use two gloves, or two people to wield one glove each. One glove is directed the color, and the other glove directed the position.

The output is the Cycle-delic itself, which had been further enhanced by the use of some visual effects, and the use of inputs that cycle through a selection of values before feeding into the program itself. Thus, a user can make a variety of weird, hypnotic spirals using nothing more than their touch, and a bit of curiosity.

Thus, this project project has taken shape, making for a weird and wonderful bit of customizable art. Thus, a user can bend their very senses to whatever they wish.