This week in art theory, we participated in the semester's last Material Inquiry activity, creating an interface with Scratch. This consisted of creating a craft with a paper circuit to be connected with a Makey Makey to the computer on which we made our Scratch program that had interactive code that would then be activated upon the craft being touched in places where the circuit lies. I began my own interface by creating the face of a dog with various craft materials.
I then went onto Scratch and designed a sprite, or character, modeled after my craft, as well as several costumes based off of the original design to be factored into the coding. Next, I created the codes I needed in order to make the sprite do different actions when certain keys are pressed. I wanted one action to be the dog barking and another to be the dog wagging his tail. While figuring out the combination of commands needed to make him bark was rather easy, I found it quite challenging to make his tail wag like I wanted it to. However, I persevered and found the perfect set of commands to make the dog happily wag away.
After I was able to program the dog's actions with the codes I needed, I created paper circuits on a separate sheet of paper to be attached to the crafted dog with a switch that would connect each circuit when the dog's nose or head was pressed. I then connected the paper circuits to a Makey Makey with alligator clips. The circuit that connected when the dog's nose was pressed was connected to the SPACE key command which would make him bark, while the circuit connected by the dog's head was pressed was connected to the DOWN ARROW key command to make the sprite dog's tail wag.
(Click the image below to be sent to my interface on Scratch and try the commands for yourself! Even though it won't include the craft dog.)
Thus, I created an interface with a puppy! Creating such an elaborate project with so many materialities was a very interesting experience with very intriguing results. In my experience, the most invaluable part of the process was being able to see my physical artwork in the form of the crafted dog be translated into digital art with the sprite on Scratch. In a society becoming increasingly technologically advanced and integrated, this could be a very interesting and important skill that I may teach to my future art students, so I hope to continue exploring the idea of turning my physical artwork into corresponding digital pieces.