Artistic Premise

The idea behind this project is to bring awareness to the group of kids that belong to the Rohingya Muslim community and were lost to CAA. We want to show how the government is picking out the Rohingya Muslim community and removing them (and their votes). In order to symbolize this we are going to have objects in a box meant to represent a ballot box. Then we are going to have a claw like mechanism that is going to only select certain objects and remove them from the group to symbolize the government removing the Rohingya Muslims. These objects will be put into a separated area to represent a detention center/ prison. We are especially looking to highlight the selection and the removal/ rejection that the government is preforming.

Unresolved Creative Questions

  • What object best represents Alam (and the others being displaced/removed)?
  • What is the best movement to represent this removal/rejection?
  • Where should the removed objects be placed?

  • How are we resetting the installation?

Idealized Final Result

Pivotal Technical Questions

The biggest technical obstacle will be making the claw portion work properly to pick up and selecting only certain objects and removing them from the group.

  • Can we sense when a ball (or other object) that has a magnet in it?
  • Can we effectively remove a ball (or other object) from the group?
  • What is the best motion to get out point across that is not too technically difficult?
  • How can the machine be reset to keep running for the entire performance?
  • Can we use motors to create 2 degrees of motion in a plane? and later add the 3rd degree of motion out of the plane?

Proof of Concept Experiment

Our biggest technical obstacle is making the linear actuators for the claw aspect. We therefore figured we would test of simplified version of that in our proof of concept experiment so we could determine if it was feasible for this project. So in this upcoming week we are going to try to make a rail system that can create movement in a 2D plane with enough room in the design to expand to a third dimension after the proof of concept experiment is completed.

Material Needs

  • Balls (other objects to represent Alam)
  • linear rails
  • string
  • Motors
  • Magnetic sensor
  • Magnets