Powerbook Puppet 2006

In this project Craig McCahill and I explored the use of orientation as a mode of interaction. Recent Apple PowerBooks have an orientation sensor embedded to detect sudden motion allowing the hard drive to be protected from damage. I developed an Open Source Java and Flash interface to this sensor and with it we have created a Flash puppet.

The movie shows the puppet being picked-up and then moved to the left and right and put back down again. We started to look at different ways to manipulate the puppet by the three-degrees of freedom available, finding inspiration from the traditional marionette controllers.

Exhibited at dorkbotlondon's dorkfest in March 2006 and the Curiosity Collective Show, Ipswich, 2nd–6th August 2006.

The MAKE blog linked to our original video.

This would later inspire my work on BT Balance.