Day 12: (Thu Oct 7, Week 6) Why-How Laddering

Notes for 2021-10-07.

New Assignments

  1. New assignment, due Tuesday: Project Pitch.

Agenda

  1. Review any remaining progress reports from the suitcase test.

  2. Introduce new assignment.

  3. Quick show and tell of resources.

  4. Why-How Laddering (orig. from Stanford d.school)

  5. In-class exercise: abstraction and resolution. We’ll do several rounds in small groups.

    • Please consider the prompt together and analyze the abstract rationale for the idea: this will answer why. Prompts:

      1. What need would this satisfy?

      2. What question would this answer?

      3. Can you trace it back farther? All the way to a fundamental human need?

    • Please consider your abstracted rationale and brainstorm alternative strategies which answer the need: this will answer how. Prompts:

      1. What’s the simplest ways to evoke the need?

      2. What materials tell the story directly?

      3. What movements and behaviors explain the idea?

  6. Discussion rounds:

    1. Consider a suitcase sitting open, throwing rubber balls against a wall which bounce back inside.

    2. Consider an open suitcase apparently filled with ordinary clothing, only through a small gap one can see a miniature living room with tiny robot pixies moving around.

    3. Consider an open suitcase in which the divider is a mechanism which unfolds again and again until it becomes a tall ladder reaching upwards.

    4. Consider a tattered old suitcase covered with travel stickers, sitting closed, but with sides which slowly pulsate. The viewer is invited to open it, and sees inside a gleaming new suitcase.

    5. Consider a open suitcase containing several sets of paper shredder rollers which choose to grind or not depending on the contents of the offered paper.

    6. Consider one of your previously offered suitcase project ideas.

Performance Resources

  1. suitcases

    • purchase inexpensive equipment cases

    • purchase inexpensive antique or used suitcases

    • make notional suitcases (e.g. on the laser-cutter)

  2. setting and dressing

    • laser-cut plywood

    • 3D-printed artifacts and mechanisms

    • found and purchased artifacts

    • feathers

    • fabric

    • multiples and ensembles

  3. actuation and movement

    • stepper motors

    • hobby servos

    • DC motors

    • low-pressure pneumatics

    • mechanical energy storage (springs and counterweights)

    • underactuated mechanisms

    • out-of-plane 3D motions

  4. sensing and interaction

    • switches and photointerrupters

    • IR range sensors

    • sonar proximity sensors

    • machine vision

  5. choreography and animation

    • real-time Python control system, scripting, motion generation

    • MIDI performer input

    • MIDI sequencing

    • traditional trapezoidal motion control

    • idiosyncratic physical interfaces, e.g. puppet controller

  6. light and shadow

    • Source Four lights

    • Soraa LED lights

    • Neopixel LED lights

    • DMX lighting fixtures

    • shadows: wall, scrim, ceiling, etc.

  7. sound and music

    • motor sound

    • actuated physical instruments

    • synthesized or prerecorded sound