Puppets and technology

How do you mix paper bag crafts with technology?  Our usual answer to a question like that is “put a light on it!”  Basically, we tried to figure out what we could add to a paper bag puppet to make it more “techy.”  Rebecca created a very cool example that combines a paper bag with an electronic circuit.  When you close its mouth, two paper clips touch each other and complete the circuit allowing the LED eyes to light up.  This is a great example of taking something fairly ordinary and making it extraordinary.

I struggled with adding technology with shadow puppets.  They seem so simple.  I remembered a long time ago that Paul, a former employee at the Museum, created a shadow puppet stop-motion video in the Curiosity Lab, the space that existed before MAKESHOP.  I figured that we could revive that kind of animation in MAKESHOP.  I had a visitor help move the puppets while I took the pictures.  It was Groundhog’s Day, so we made a simple video using a ground hog puppet.

-Kevin