Kenny J Smith

The basis on the relationship between the Feedee (a-life creature) and the Feeder (the user) is based on the habits of eating.

The creature has a fussy personality and does not like eating new foods, however it becomes accustomed to the food that it is fed.

Facial expressions in the claymation character are shown in response to the food it is fed, it can be happy, angry or neutral.

Interfacing hardware is made from bowls with resistors mounted on the bottoms. An Arduino reads the resistance of the bowl and sends the information to flash, which determines which bowl has been presented.

In interacting with a creature, Tamagotchi’s are the first thing that I think of. People become attached to their Tamagotchi and form a relationship where they have an artificial being who’s life is reliant on being fed and cared for. I want to further examine this relationship

Electronic mediation of human action has been established for several decades now. The traditional means for communicating with one another, observing natural phenomena, making economic transactions - even dating - are now commonly negotiated with electronic devices. As designers, we can address  such phenomena in a utilitarian manner: by creating new designs that  succeed as functional solutions. Another approach is to investigate these systems for a deeper meaning: designs working as experiments for understanding phenomena. How are complex electronic systems different than biological systems? What manner of attenuation or transduction must occur for fundamentally different systems to communicate? Why do humans imbue objects and interactions with feelings/projects that are simply not there? These questions represent the latter approach for how designers may work with electronics to understand the world we live in in a broader sense, which in turn, will inform how we create more design solutions in the more specific sense.