My responsive small being lives in the cupboard above the only countertop in my apartment kitchen, right above all of the mugs. It is awake and watching in the darkness that fills the cupboard when the door is closed, but when opened, it shields its eyes from the brightness that the outside world brings.

I really enjoyed thinking and making this project. I started by simply looking around my apartment and noticing the small environments that exist, each with their own features that a small being might respond too. The cabinets interested me because they have a whole world inside them that we never actually get to see – the darkness behind the doors.

My creature has “eyelids” that stay up when the door is closed and when the door is opened (and I shine a light directly on the photoresistor because I couldn’t find a threshold that worked without that), it brings the eyelids down.

This project uses pieces of lace that I stitched so they could hang like curtains from the straw I extended the hobby servo with, little pieces of cardboard sewed into the lace to represent eyelashes, a piece of muslin fabric to represent the actual eyes, and the photoresistor (light sensor) on the Circuit Playground.