Final time! What?! yup. Midterms just ended and we’re diving head first into the final.

I feel like this semester is going at light speed and I’m always playing catch up. Lucky for me, inspiration struck a couple of weeks ago while reading the “emotional design” reading by Norman, and I’ve been pretty set on it since then (not sure if I’ll continue to be, but as of now, I am).

Basically, I want to do something cool. My original idea involves two things: 1) lights, and 2) senses (and maybe mirrors too).
It’s basically build some sort of installation that would allow you to walk-through this forest of lights that would light up and emit some sort of sound with your touch–very Avatar.

I realize the scale of my sketch is sizable, and maybe not entirely realistic. So I started thinking of maybe reducing it a bit. So what would happen is I do some sort of hall that people walk through, or even smaller and have it in just one wall? or even smaller and just building some sort of whisker sensor patch of “grass” that lights up? I had talked about this last phase with Lindsey Johnson and we both seemed excited about the idea. (We had brainstormed together a bit already too but I think after tomorrow we might either solidify on the idea, or leave it all together. )
I’m trying to do the “go back to basics” technique of starting small and then adding scale to it. Do it with a button, a switch, just one LED light, etc.

An entirely different route I was thinking as well was the one of games. I feel like I’ve really gravitated towards them since I started at ITP. I like visualization, graphics and just beautiful things… so maybe something that brings the two together? I like the idea of having a game on the screen and being able to control it with you body or have the user be an active part of it.

I actually created a couple of games already for ICM, and my final for fabrication was a blind maze…. so maybe there is something there?

Or maybe something that incorporates different pieces of each?

I guess to sum things up, the concepts I like are:

• games
• beautiful things
• lights
• mirrors
• graphics
• motion
• repetition/patterns

I’m hoping inspiration strikes again (and soon), but hopefully tomorrow will be filled with wonderful ideas and ah-ha moments thanks to everyone else. I’m excited!