11/30 - Semester Project Process post #6 - Jen Herrera

At this point in time, I'm into the making of my project.
The plush's body is a work-in-progress; the body pattern is drafted and the head pattern will be finished soon.

More important than the physical is the electrical; I have all the pieces I need now. My usb power supply arrived today:

It's pretty large, so I need to make sure that I leave room for it in the final design. I'm looking forward to the fact that my project will be self-contained though! For the matrix, I just need to solder up a protoshield with its various connections so that it will be a plug-and-play sort of function. I have the protoshield in my mailbox and found a tutorial on soldering it for the matrix:
https://learn.adafruit.com/32x16-32x32-rgb-led-matrix/connecting-using-a-proto-shield

For my concept, the content of the matrix when the plush is touched is the most important thing. Last mini-crit, it was suggested that I look into animal communication research and I thought that maybe I would find some imagery to use in there. After researching, I found that the most interesting part of the articles were sections that said 'The cat was very concerned with the owner's emotions, researcher said.' In the end, we can observe interspecies communications all day long, but we are still making conclusions about them as humans, and are never able to fully understand how another animal is interpreting the situation.

Using this idea, I decided I'm going to simplify things and use the mechanics of the matrix to my advantage. It draws shapes very much like processing does, so it will be easy for me to draw various compositions of line and shape. Like abstract painting, it will be up to the viewer to try and interpret the shapes; or otherwise not try to interpret them. These composed reactions will be randomized in the order they show up, how long they last, and whether or not they blink. The 'emotions' of the 'animal' will remain a mystery, even if the viewer thinks that they have figured it out.