The Good Deed Machine
Holding the door for someone, recommending a book, letting someone ahead of you in line–these are little things that people do for each other. Our friends at Bombas asked us to create a piece that responded to small everyday acts of human kindness. Bombas created an online campaign that allowed users to submit deeds to inspire people this holiday season. We created a moving physical sculpture that brought this campaign to life.
The Good Deed Machine lived in the window of the Gap store at 54th and 5th for 2 weeks. Passers by could place their hand on the glass and watch the gears and pistons of the machine startup. The activity of the machine would then produce a good deed, written by online users, for them to carry out this Holiday. The end result was a playful and kinetic way to visualize the flow of goodwill during the Holidays.
The machine was created with a combination of classic automata techniques in combination with arduino, stepper motors, and camera tracking. A central cinder framework ran the installation and coordinated the movements of all the components.
Team
- Zander Brimijoin - Creative Director
- Pedro Piccinini - Design, Editing
- Daniel Scheibel - Technology Director
- Adrià Navarro López - Creative Coder
- Eric Jiang - Technology Intern
- Lisa Walters - Senior Producer
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- Nathan Punwar - Video Footage
- Daniel Jaffe - Video Footage
- Pink Sparrow - Fabrication
- Music: Coffee Cup - Niels Nielsen
Created for Bombas
- Gap - Client
