Making an interactive Thingamajig

Step one: Overthink Everything

Days prior to actually putting anything together I was wracking my brain to think of some way to combine these things in such a way that would be, in a word, extraordinary. I may have done myself a disservice by not digging into Rob Faludi's webpage with the very useful phrase, "Don't over-think it". Well, it was a little late in the game to un-over-think things but I did just that, I stopped by the dollar store and grocery store to pick up some "synthetic" feathers(see description/reasoning in the picture) and some lentils... Somehow I would cook up something for this project.

The "feathers" are substituted with party blowers because the real feathers I found on the ground were from pigeons, and I'm just not sure I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I should be collecting pigeon feathers off the street in Astoria.

I had this idea to combine the cup and lentils with some kind of movement to make a sound. My inclination was to make a shaker kind of percussion instrument but I would experiment with the other movements to see if anything surprised me. 

While many of the "inputs" to the lentil-cup did little except make me glad there wasn't a mirror or anybody watching me, dancing elicited the most interactive result. So, dancing lentil-cup it is. 

There was more to be done, though. I had spent all this time trying to find a not-gross feather on the ground in NY and settled for some feather-esque things and you'd better believe that I was going to find a way to use them. 

While I was walking around (I do a lot of walking, it has both a brainstorming and mind-cleansing effect) I had the idea to try and combine the feathers and breath. I had imagined the feathers flying up and around under the power of me blowing on them; that was the rough idea, not I had to figure out a way to do it. Naturally, the first step was to go to the kitchen and get the bread knife.

Bread knife...birds eat bread...birds have feathers...this is a feather replacement...RATIONAL CONNECTION MADE!

It was sometime during this process that I had the idea to mount my creations into a box from Amazon. I thought it would help in making seem a little more interactive? Rather than just dancing around with a cup full of lentils...

Draft #1:

Breath goes in... something something something... fake feathers move

It was late and I thought I would benefit from coming at it again in the morning, so I went to bed and dreamt about dancing around in a land of lentils. 

Prototype breath direction channel:

This think kind of reminds me of something else, but I just can't put my finger on it... I know, I'll jam out on my melodica to clear my head. 

Wait a minute, that might just be...

Perfect!

It's like it was made for this.

I ended up just getting rid of the plastic mouthpiece part entirely and rolling the feathers up and sliding them into the end of the mouthpiece from the melodica. It actually reminds me a little of the flailing tube people at car dealerships, so maybe I would call this output a "dance as well!

At the time of writing, I think I may be at a finishing point of sorts. I did drill an extra hole in the box for no reason whatsoever so maybe I will dream up a possibility for it tonight. #workinprogress