The Family is an appropriate name.

So we’ve met together as a group a couple times. Scheduling these rendevous is difficult, but we’re making headway. After much brainstorming, we’ve decided that the crux of our piece is making the identity of our piece apparent using interaction, not forms. When someone thinks of a robot, he usually conceptualizes this mechanical-looking person that becomes personified by its interactions. In our piece, interaction is the identity. The form will be nothing but piles of wires, silicon chips, and other various electrical devices that will resemble electrical trash. But once a person walks near one, a sensor will “awaken” our creations and they will begin demonstrating tasks indicative of normal, trivial human behavior. An alarm clock sounding buzzer will ring, waking the parental pile into flashing lights, perhaps some commercials of breakfast on its monitor. Then it will display live video of the children piles and create noise and lights as if to wake them up. Subsequently, they will flash, make some noises and make similar displays of cereal and toothpaste. We have many ideas for scenarios, the structure being formed into a typical day of today’s American family, comprised of four parts: morning, day, evening, night (sleep). There will be scenarios both involving observers and independent of them. Our next step is to define these scenarios and classify them into the corresponding time of day. From there, we will begin writing the code and collecting the video clips, then acquisition and assembly of the piece.