Joanne Lee – Looking Outward 12

For my final project, I plan to create a virtual Rube Goldberg machine geared towards children ages 5-9. Because my project is not necessarily “art”, I took inspiration from a media sample and contest design. One project that I found relevant and interesting was a media sample of a simple Rube Goldberg machine being explained on Sesame Street.

Sesame Street explaining how a simple Rube Goldberg machine works.

I was unable to find the year of this media sample however they call it the “What Happens Next Machine”. I found it to be useful to see how the machine was shown and expressed in very simple terms and helped me to better understand the type of terminology and level of difficulty I will implement in my actual experiment. Something that this media sample lacks is interactivity due to it being shown via television. I believe learning is done best through interaction and trial & error!

Another project I found was the Rube Goldberg exhibit at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. At this exhibit, children are able to activate chain reactions in order to complete every day tasks. I think this is a great exhibit because as a child, I was very fascinated by Rube Goldberg machines and still am! It is important to foster creativity in children and by using these inefficient machines to complete every day tasks, it helps to keep the creative juices flowing! I don’t think they overlooked anything large, but I would like to increase accessibility to these interactive exhibits by creating my own virtually. I hope my project turns out well.