Assignment: I ask you to develop a project which consists of digital content and a custom physical interface for the audience to interact with the content on the computer. The interface consists of a hacked computer mouse. Find an old USB computer mouse, and take away its outer shell. Take only one button of the mouse and think about how the audience would trigger it. Also think about how the overall form, shape and visual qualities of the modified mouse can contribute to the triggering of the button (i.e. you should completely change the apearance of the mouse).

I began by thinking about different kinds of buttons and what they trigger. I thought of a pen or a stapler, but the pen idea seemed like it would not develop very far, so I expanded the stapler concept. I thought about what people normally stapled, and what is common around CMU. Flyers to poles seemed like a good idea. I took a picture of a pole and a flyer, created a button using the stapler, and put them all together in a director movie.

In the executable file, when you click on the pole with the stapler, the flyer appears. When you release the stapler, the flyer is torn off, leaving a small bit of paper and a staple. Each new flyer appears in a random spot on the pole.



Click to view a movie version of the program (Quicktime, 457 KB)