10th of february, 9.30: time for workshopping! Namely ‘Tinkering’, facilitated by Tamara and Loes, which meant conceptualizing, going crazy with thin foil and building an interactive installation. Tinkering is all about finding new applications for material of everyday use. To achieve this we were given two Makey-Makey’s, which we could connect to any object we’d like to use. These Makey-Makey’s are actually little hacking interfaces, which would enable us to create a working electronic circuit.
To try and understand how these Makey-Makey’s work, we were given 20 minutes of ‘ free play’ with them, which already led to some pretty funny interfaces. Then, inspired by the Olympic games, Tamara en Loes challenged us to build our own game the with Makey-Makey’s. Using Scratch – a visual programming language – we were able to build our own designed ice skating game. The game was a twist on ‘dance dance revolution’. Our game exists of two players who have to jump from one leg onto the other as fast as possible to move the avatar on the screen. The player who crosses the finish first, was the winner. Apart from the fact that we had a lot of fun making the game, we also learned that it is very helpful to put your ideas on paper while brainstorming, to break down the production process in pieces and to test your prototype throughout the whole production process, instead of testing it once, just before you deliver it.
