For this week, I prepared the “Nasty Bird”. Two weeks ago, my parrot was stolen from my apartment. The burglar was able to get into the apartment (must have had keys), and was not interested in the many thousand dollars worth of electronic equipment I had sitting in the same room as the bird. It’s true that “Paprika”, the cockatiel was cute, but in this capitalist system, she wasn’t worth more than $60.

My girlfriend has been depressed ever since, so in the spirit of healing, I created “Nasty Bird”. Nasty Bird looks soft and plush, but when you reach your hands at her, she starts chirping her nasty low-fidelity chirp. Maybe she just wants to look into her mirror. The eyes are infra-red phototransistors that I use to trigger the sound when the ambient IR level drops below a pre-set point.

As a continuation of my experiments on reactions to various user interface designs, this piece was very very well accepted. The venerable Tom Igoe insisted on knowing what the bird did, and other students were bemused at the mere sight of it, regardless of what it did. Since you really have to shove your hand right up to the bird’s face before it chirps, it’s somewhat surprising that nobody mentioned such limitations. Presented as it was as a self-contained unit, it was generally acknowledged as a finished piece whether or not that was my intention. Maybe because my intentions were hidden or because I told a sad story with general emotional appeal as a part of the presentation, or both.