For this week I decided to work with knowledge I had already acquired during the first block. The conductive paint combined with the touch board. This technique allowed me to visually show the chords. For my first prototype, I decided to use technical knowledge that I already had, because music is a field I don't know.

We decided to start researching different angles of approach, in order to be able to understand music and guitar more easily. So I focused on the chords and notes in music. After our first prototypes, we shared all our research to enrich our database before starting to create a new instrument.

For this first prototype, I looked for the main chords on the guitar. After some research I discovered that there were thousands of different chords but to be able to play a hundred of them on one guitar you can learn eight main ones.

I did some research in to different materials to mold Eric’s hands. There are a lot of different materials to make such a mold (different kinds of silicon: www.smooth-on.com/products/). We ended up with alginate, because it is more eco friendly and biodegradable. The only disadvantage is the mold can only be used for one time.

Eric is a maker himself this helps a lot. He gives us inspiration from other project he saw. Vasilis helped us to get to the core of what Eric wants.
Our group is now more comfortable with each other and we make jokes with each other.

We got a guitar! We could not do a guitar project without a ‘normal’ guitar. We took a practice round with the molds on Audreys pinky, it turned out perfect. The big molds of Eric’s hands, where more tricky. It was a bit hard for him to pull out his hands. Also there are some bubble formed so not the whole hand is visible. It is good enough for us to get an idea how his hands and fingers stand when he is not here.

We made a mold out of Eric's hands. In the beginning Eric was a bit uncomfortable with the idea that he had to sit still for a while in an uncomfortable position.

After a conversation with Eric and Vasilis we have a better idea of what is expected of us and what the possibilities are. It's difficult not to think too fast of an end product but first to get the guitar through and do research on Erik.

This week I tried to think out of the box to come up with different variations of a guitar. I drew all these on paper.