Project was based on a real-life historical object: a canary resuscitator. It was used by miners in the late 1800s and early 1900s to save the canaries that they used to detect CO2 levels. Because birds are more sensitive to CO2 levels, they would get sick before the miners could and would subsequently die from the high amounts of CO2 that they were detecting. The resuscitator was made as an act of compassion by these miners for these birds.

The purpose of this project was to not only be educational but also inspire compassion in our participants. We made a physical version of the bird to make the interaction between participant and our bird feel more real. Although our "O2 levels" were initially controlled through a button, after receiving feedback from play-tests, we changed our controller to an "oxygen tank" (that was 3d-printed) so that giving the bird "oxygen" felt more intuitive to the player.

My role in the project was assisting with both fabrication (specifically, laser cutting) and the p5 interface. I also led the team in ideating and forming what sort of interactions that we wanted the bird and player to have.

This project was displayed at ITP's winter show.

Prototypes

Project was prototyped and reiterated multiple times because of physical limitations and time constraints. Also there was an awareness that our prototyped model wouldn't work the way that it was supposed to because all components had to be working accurately for our bird to actually "fly."