Our pathway tunnel is built to inspire excitement and curiosity to those who walk through it. Users can either passively interact with the motion-activated lights or go out of their way and pull strings attached to bells.

We started out on a very different path, trying to sync lights and music at an ice skating rink. We tried brainstorming several different ways we could work with that idea, but none of them really turned out to be anything we liked or thought would work very well. We then switched to a similar idea, but placed over a pathway. This way, we can use direction to control the experience. We eventually decided on using passive and interactive experiences on a pathway. This way, people could experience our installation whether or not they had time to go out of their way. 

We built our first prototype out of handcut cardboard. You can see it in the first three pictures. It was quite rough and messy, but it shows our bell design, with routing string through plastic straws. In our next three pictures the process of that prototype. In the last two photos, you can see our laser cut version. We also worked with using an Arduino and a PIR motion sensor to turn on an LED. Unfortunately, we took pictures with the camera of the Arduino setup, but it didn't upload. 

We were going to just have either the lights or the bells. When we received feedback from the coaches, they told us that we should have the bells in tandem with the lights to we have an installation with more and less interactive options. They showed us a few videos of different interactive installations to spark some inspiration, such as a room where it rains, but you wont get wet (using sensors and valves), and a room of string lights.

Our goal was to inspire excitement and curiosity, and I think having two parts to our project really supports this. We didn't really change our thesis (since we didn't really have anything solid), but Andrew helped us really form it into what our project supports. 

We still need to wire all the LEDs and sensors into the project. Since we only have one sensor, we might have to settle for one section of the project for now. We also are working making a more clean version of the hot glue straw mess used for the bells. We are experimenting with different placements and ways to move the strings without them tangling. Our next move is to finalize our light/PIR sensor setup, hopefully on Monday. Then we will work on the bell setup the rest of the week. If we are able to get more PIR sensors, we will expand that part of the installation.