Week Five: Penny Switch
The assignment for week five was to create a device that addressed our senses. I struggled a little bit deciding on an idea, because the materials I was planning on using had not come in the mail yet.
I started just experiemting with really minimal elements that I had around me: conductive thread, pennies, led's, etc. Keeping our senses in mind, and keeping to my theme of hand-based switches, I eventually thought of making a switch that would use the pennies as contacts, transmitting the current along the conductive thread to light an LED - I really liked to minimalism and the exposed nature invloved. So, strategically placed the pennies and LED on my hand so as to light the LED when I gave someone the finger - definately a shock to the senses. The switch also had a really interesting consequence: because I put the battery directly against my skin, it gave me a tiny shock whenever I closed the switch. So it ended up being a reward/punishment sort of behavior modification switch; if you want to give someone the finger, you have to endure a shock, but you get to see an LED light up, which is stimulating.
Here are some pictures:
pardon the gesture...
The mechanism.
The thing I really enjoyed about this week was appreciating just how difficult minimalism and simplicity can be. It took a long time to get the thread, pennies, LED, and battery working together -- the positioning of the thread so as not to cause a short turned out to be a serious task. Overall, very enjoyable -- even getting shocked.
I started just experiemting with really minimal elements that I had around me: conductive thread, pennies, led's, etc. Keeping our senses in mind, and keeping to my theme of hand-based switches, I eventually thought of making a switch that would use the pennies as contacts, transmitting the current along the conductive thread to light an LED - I really liked to minimalism and the exposed nature invloved. So, strategically placed the pennies and LED on my hand so as to light the LED when I gave someone the finger - definately a shock to the senses. The switch also had a really interesting consequence: because I put the battery directly against my skin, it gave me a tiny shock whenever I closed the switch. So it ended up being a reward/punishment sort of behavior modification switch; if you want to give someone the finger, you have to endure a shock, but you get to see an LED light up, which is stimulating.
Here are some pictures:
pardon the gesture...
The mechanism.
The thing I really enjoyed about this week was appreciating just how difficult minimalism and simplicity can be. It took a long time to get the thread, pennies, LED, and battery working together -- the positioning of the thread so as not to cause a short turned out to be a serious task. Overall, very enjoyable -- even getting shocked.
posted by Ben at 5:52 PM
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