I wanted to explore the idea of our innate desire to give social feelings towards animate objects and our need to be accepted and understood by similar social creatures. My concept revolved around a clam-like object with two main degrees of freedom: opening the shell itself and a side-to-side tilt. The interface could be connected to a drum pad where the sliders/knobs would correspond to different weighted behavioral traits (sociability, apprehensiveness, playfulness, etc.) while the pads acted out specific behaviors.
I was fascinated by the idea of a cybernetic system that the audience could interact with, and was thinking of creating a network that weighted these behavioral traits to give each configuration a distinct personality. One could be a shy version that a viewer could gain its trust by themselves while easily spooked by large crowds, while another could emphasize play and get frustrated when being left alone for a long time.