After following the Birds Aren’t Real movement on social media and news, despite the movement seeming to gain momentum it is still an uncommon and underappreciated belief amongst people. For my Interactive Touch Project I thought it would be funny and interesting to explore this idea that birds aren’t real and are rather government spies and drones.
To display this idea, I will be creating an interactive diagram of the pigeon-form of these government drones. I plan on painting a simple pigeon in gouache, but then using recycled computer parts/electronics to put on the diagram as my conductive materials (as they often contain some sort of metal on them).
When users touch these recycled parts, a short animation showing how birds use these parts to spy on us will be shown.
For this project I was inspired by E-Waste artists and thought it would be cool to incorporate recycled electronics in my piece somehow.
Artist Question: What computer/electronics parts would be most interesting to see on the diagram? Also any ideas/places as to where to get some used/recycled electronics and computer parts?
One place that you can look is in Higgins Lab, where there are areas of free stuff. I was just browsing and saw a bunch of left-over circuits that you could desolder. One opinion I have about the different parts is having a circuit that represents how the bird flies.
Some electronics parts that would be neat to see on the diagram could be keyboard parts, batteries, calculators, old flip phones.
Great Idea! It would be cool to see some more weird components for surveillance. Like a Bluetooth connection to snoop on peoples phones, motorized wings for flying, a secret service laser or something.
Computer chips are by far the most interesting looking objects you could use for this (especially since you’re using a CPU), so I’d say go for some kind of wild looking chip. Personally, I think it would be important to establish the visuals; namely what they will involve other than the pigeon itself? Perhaps you could zoom in on the pigeon depending on the location of the technology piece, so you could demonstrate what each component does.
Will the camera have a flash and how will the microphone be interacted within the project?
I think it would be fitting for the microphone to be a lapel mic, and those should be relatively easy to find I think. You could always reach out to LNL and see if they have any dead equipment they need to get rid of or reach out to the ECE department.
With all the building renovations, there have been a ton of things that are left to the side for people to pick up.
Using the makeymakey kit itself could be a clever and compact way to show this “exposed spyware”.
I think it could be neat to have LEDs connected to the wires so that they could light up when certain things are touched. It would add a little more interactivity and might look cool!
As an answer to the artist question, I would find it really funny if there is one very random electronic part that serves the most random functionality there in parallel with those common computer parts. Great sketch of that pigeon by the way!
Having the pigeon be the physical interface would make the art very humorous. Are you planning on making the pigeon look like a normal pigeon or do you plan to make it look more like a machine? I can almost imagine a pigeon that looks like the terminator, with the glowing red eyes.
I really enjoy your concept! I have an suggestion with the use of medium. When I think of gouache, I think of charcoal and darker monotone pieces. So when I envisioned your Pidgeon painting, I thought of a “schematic” looking painting where it looks like it was stolen from the government. I think incorporating “a stolen pigeon drone” might be fun and add to the humour of the piece. I’m excited to see your final!
I’m very much appreciating this truth.
If you go to the Computer Shop in the sub-basement of Fuller and ask really nicely, they might let you dig in the e-waste recycling bins.