Gregg

Greg the egg

By Reyhan Danişan, Nikki Rademaker, and Yanna Smid

Overview

For the course "Artificial Creatures", I teamed up with Reyhan Danişan and Yanna Smid to create this project. The purpose was to pick exactly one quality of creatureness, and create a creature that maximizes the immediate experience of this quality with minimal technical means possible. The creatureness we decided to focus on was gregariousness.

A lack of social interaction can lead to negative feelings. This also applies to the creature Gregary, also known as Greg the Egg. Greg is in need of constant social interaction. Whenever he is alone, he gets sad and starts makeing sad soft noises. These noises convince people to pick him up and play with him. This cheers him up, and instead of crying sounds he will start making happy beeping sounds. People can play with him in his handcrafted playground, by using the swing, seesaw or merry-go-round. People can also choose to play with him by holding him in their arms and gently rocking him back and forth.

The Goal

Our main goal with this project was to create a creature that would win over the hearts of the audience during the exposition for this course. For the creatureness, we decided to go for gregariousness. A gregarious creature typically refers to a being who is sociable and enjoys being in the company of others. With this description in mind, we started thinking about our concept for Greg the gregarious egg.

Materials

Greg's hardware consists of:

• Arduino Nano
• Aaccelerometer: to measure movement of greg
• Battery (9V): power source for Greg
• Small piezo speaker: for Greg's noises
• Jumper wires

Greg's appearance is intended to look soft and cute to attract people. This invited people from the audience to comfort Greg and play with him. His outside consists of:

• Pink plastic egg shell
• Soft pink yarn: to wrap around the egg shell
• Pink bow
• Velcro: to ensure attachment to playground attributes

He also has his very own playground, consisting of a swing, seesaw and merry-go-round. These have been handmade in order to fit Greg the Egg perfectly. By making use of wood, paint, paint stirring sticks, a basket, a hamster wheel, two small easels, paper, and flower decorations.

Final Product

The final product shows a cute little egg, with the tendency to cry when left alone for too long. With the aesthetics of a cute little fluff ball, Greg will for sure steal your heart, making you want to play with him on his little playground.

We found that during the exposition people would be drawn towards Greg the Egg, wanting to play with him and handle him delicately. We noticed a lot of the audience looking at Greg as if it was their own creature, making sure to play with Greg. In moments like those, we realized we had achieved our goal: creating a creature with gregarious characteristics. Greg didn’t want to be left alone, and the audience didn’t want to leave Greg alone.