Project: Scrapyard Challenge Workshop

On Sunday, September 25, we participated in Scrapyard Challenge workshop. It was a six-hour activity where we were challenged to create an interactive musical controller out of found materials and junk. We were encouraged to take risks and focus on the process and response to the practice of what we were doing.

Result & Reflections:

MIDI? Switches? Musical Controller? These are all words that I would never have put together before my participation in the Scrapyard Challenge workshop. Working with found “junk” was a challenge that not only tested technical skill and understanding, but also creativity.  Scrapyard Challenge would not have been successful if we did not use our imagination. From the beginning when we looked at piles of stuff that people brought in, our role as the designer began as we started to think how to create a prototype of a working musical controller.

Our project began with a pile of random unused, unwanted materials. With no initial ideas in mind, my group started by claiming objects we thought would be interesting. The object we started with quickly changed from “junk” to a prototype for a musical switch.   As we continued to work, our goals became clear: making something that worked and looked worthy of interaction.

This experience and process of starting from nothing and creating an object (with a personality!) taught me a lot about the design process as well as the importance of having an open mind.  Being put into this situation, we tested our creativity and how we could be from turning “use-less” objects into something “useful.” We were a little prototyping team, who thought about the role, implementation and look and feel of our final device. We had problems, but we discovered solutions. Our prototype went through a few stages that finally lead to a working model. At the end of the day we successful created a working prototype of our “MJ Switch” that allowed us to make music.