Overview
A two week workshop run by Prof. Fred Deakin, Chair of Interactive Digital Arts at University of Arts London. The workshop took students from a mixture of creative backgrounds and three different universities Falmouth, UAL and Manchester. The aims of the workshop were to get students to collaborate with other creative’s over the country and complete a self-directed project at the end.
The Project
I worked in a pair with Charlie Killick and we wanted to bring digital play physical. Our brief was to motivate 4-5 year olds to encourage and gain interest in coding by interacting with it physically. People are put off by learning a new language and children find it daunting seeing another language on screen not knowing where to start.
Our Solution
Our company is called ‘Physicode’ which represents us wanting to teach the basics of coding and circuitry physically with us hopefully having more products in the future. Our final product was a book produced as wooden boards with a Jungle theme naming it ‘Jungle Rescue’. It tells the story of jungle animals trying to save their captured friend Tommy the Toucan and each board has a various task that the child has to complete to follow the story onwards such as making a cave light up by completing the circuit to light up an LED and scaring away crocodiles by sounding a warning buzzer.
We made 3 different boards to show how the story would work with 2 actually working. The boards are made from wood and the counters are lined on the bottom with copper sheets. The circuit is on the back of the boards already wired up with the connectors attached to metal pins and magnets to increase conductivity. When the counters are place on the gold pins the circuit becomes complete. If we had a longer period of time we would have made the counters smaller and also made sure the wiring was smaller and more compact. We also made a wooden box for the boards and counters to be stored in with the box covered in a dark green material and our two logos laser cut into it. The box is able to fold over due to the design of having a living hinge on it.