Passeriform
team
solo project
role
designer
developer
timeline
fall 2024
3 weeks
tools
armature wire
processing
Background
The great-tailed grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) is a blackbird of order passeriform native to Central and North America. They are common in urban areas and an icon of the UT Austin area. In this inquiry, I research the umwelt, or behavior and perceptual realms, of the grackle and apply it to a design intervention.
Research
Observation
Over a period of two weeks, I observed, filmed, imitated, and sketched grackle birds near Waller Creek. To understand their umwelt, I paid attention to how the birds used their senses to perceive and respond to their environment.
Grackles are highly opportunistic birds, simultaneously beloved and loathed for their mischeivous and flippant attitude. As expert foragers, they're often seen digging around with their beaks for bugs or human food waste in urban areas, causing chaos wherever they please.
Umwelt
Grackles, and passerine birds in general, differ the most in terms of perception from humans through their senses of sight and hearing. Birds have tetrochromatic vision, and can also "see" the Earth's magnetic field for navigation. Grackles in particular can move each eye independently, which may aid in heightened spatial awareness when dealing with predators.
Goals
Compare the umwelt of the great-tailed grackle/passerine birds to human realms of perception
Reimagine human-computer interactions using passerine gestures and affordances
Concept
As AR/VR become more popular, human-computer interaction is exploring more body-based gestures that are integrated seamlessly into our daily lives. We are no longer restrained to hand/finger movements in relation to a 2D plane, a screen, so how can we maximize our gestural potential? What if we freed our hands for more tactile tasks in the physical world, and used head gestures like passerine birds for digital interaction?
The grackle's beak-focused gestures intrigued me: the analogous body part we reserve primarily for speaking and eating is the grackle's primary tactile interface with the world. Passerine birds use their beaks to nudge, open, turn, and grasp objects. Their wings are reserved mainly for flight, and aren't used for "touching" things like our hands are.
What if we freed our hands for tactile tasks in the physical world, and made use of our heads for interaction in the digital world?
The concept of a wearable controller addresses this idea. Having head-based gestures is compelling: it frees up our hands for other tasks, allowing us to integrate digital interactions into our lives more seamlessly. It's adaptable, allowing amputees or people with neurological disorders affecting the arms to interact with technology. It's intuitive, taking into account both translated hand gestures and existing standards of near-universal head-based communication like head shakes and nods.
Prototyping
Passeriform: of or relating to passerine birds.
To create the visual look of Passeriform, I leaned into the passerine inspiration and based the wearable off a bird beak. The extended point had a practical purpose as well: it allowed for a greater range of cursor motion with less head swiveling.
The mask was sculpted with flexible armature wire, which can be molded to fit the wearer's face. I created a simple hinge mechanism at the jawbone for the articulated beak open/close movement—the lower beak has a rubber band strap that is pushed down by the chin. Color tape was added to visually differentiate the top and bottom beak for easier tracking.
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D
I used Processing to develop a desktop application for showcasing the interaction. Using computer vision, I track the two points on the upper and lower beak, respectively, to form the basic set of gestural operations.