MakeyMakey Fortune Telling Pressure Project

Posted: September 17, 2017 | Author: Bita Bell | Filed under: Bita Bell |Leave a comment »

I knew from the beginning that I want this project to incorporate tactile objects. I felt that keeping everything inside a computer screen does not necesarily incorporate other senses (touch, and space). I wanted to create a personal and intimate experience. So knowing that I needed objects helped me know immediately that I could use the makeymakey.

Unfortunately, since my macbook was stolen two months before, I had a hard time finding a computer to work with. ACCAD’s computers also had an issue with saving Isadora files. So the computer drama took some of my time and creative energy. However, I came up with a new idea!

I thought why not create a mysterious experience that does not include much verbal instructions. A small, quiet, fortune telling secretive room, with no one in there but the person curious to know more about their future!

I made a tiny space (similar to a fort) where the user had to crawl in under a table covered with blankets.

Took me a while to know how to get started with makeymakey. on PC the keyboard watcher identified A W D S as the arrow keys but on Mac it was just ‘ ‘ – the space representing whichever arrow key was entered. It was important to label my actors by arrow direction or makeymakey colored cables.

The way it worked was, a key was clipped on the cable going to earth. The other four cables on the arrow keys were attached to paper clips, representing locks (wish I had real locks!). When the key would contact a paperclip and audio would go off. Every arrow key corresponded to a fortune telling, but the story was told in audio only. For example, a car engine starting and then crashing, or people clapping someone’s success/fame and then heart rate beep going off. They were ambient, and vague. One could imagine the scenes that the audio provided and make up their own story to it.