Blinking Monkey Hat

March 17, 2014

This project is a piece of wearable technology created with Arduino and an 8×8 LED matrix by Annelie Koller and Niki Selken. In our quest to program two 8×8 LED matrixes, we wanted to create a piece of wearable tech with blinking eyes. First we thought of glasses that blinked, but after visiting the discount store, we settled on making a Sock Monkey hat with blinking eyes. Below is our first prototype.

Blinking monkey prototype 1 from niki selken on Vimeo.

Our major hurdle was getting the eyes to blink at the same time. We eventually had to add in the delays to make that work. We then embedded the Arduino and breadboard into the hat with a battery pack attached. You can check out the code on Github.

Museum Interaction Design

Thesis

What I'm Thinking About

Parsons MFAD+T Projects

Fresh Posts

I’ve been thinking about Annie Dorsen’s Hello Hi There (2010), a performance in which two chatbots sit on stage and talk to each other. The conversation is inspired by the famous 1971 debate between linguist Noam Chomsky and philosopher Michel Foucault—a clash between two radically different views of human nature, knowledge, power, and society. Fifteen years later, it feels less like an experiment and more like a prophecy. What’s striking isn’t the technology—by today’s standards the bots were primitive. What’s striking is the question Dorsen was asking: what happens when computation becomes a participant in culture rather than merely a tool? Drawing from transcripts of the Chomsky-Foucault debate, alongside philosophy, literature, politics, religious texts, and internet culture, the bots generate an endless conversation. Sometimes insightful. Sometimes absurd. Often both at once. Watching it now, I can’t help but connect it to the work I’m doing with Claude. Much of the conversation around AI remains focused on productivity, automation, and content generation. But I’m increasingly interested in AI as a new artistic and cognitive medium—a space for dialogue, interpretation, provocation, and reflection. In that sense, Hello Hi There wasn’t really about chatbots. It was about creating conditions for emergence. AI art history didn’t begin with image generators. It includes theater makers, conceptual artists, cyberneticists, and designers who recognized early that the most interesting thing about these systems wasn’t their intelligence—it was the conversations they make possible. The same question feels alive today: How do we design systems that don’t just produce answers, but create new ways of thinking? 🎭 Annie Dorsen, Hello Hi There (2010) Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PiwEQQNnBk #AIArt #CreativeAI #AlgorithmicTheater #AnnieDorsen #Claude

Saltwater soul, skin of the sea 🦭🌊 A little selkie magic for my Sacramento birthday—caught between land and ocean, just where I belong ✨ Shedding one skin, stepping into another—this next year feels like transformation 💫 Forever pulled by the tide, no matter where I am 🤍 #SelkieEnergy #BirthdayMagic #mermaidstyle #OceanSoul #MythicMood MakeWaves SeaSpirit