Prototype 4- Arduino

An arduino is a microcontroller and software suite ‘you can program to process inputs and outputs between the device and the external components’ (McRoberts, 2011). It combines hardware (microcontroller boards) and software (code), to program things to happen.

‘‘Hardware hacking’ means modifying a piece of existing electronics to use it in a way that it was not necessarily intended’ (Taylor, 2013). Essentially as a mini computer, an arduino has the capacity to modify and ‘hack’ almost any device.

This is more often than not used for functionality, e.g. building a weather display system, a finger print scanner or parking sensor, however performances have also been made. It is more common for a performance of this nature to work as an instillation, as it responds to environment and interaction, rather than being used as a collaborator.

Using an arduino in performance is a difficult thing for audiences to come to terms with, as it means going beyond the conventional theatre tradition of an end-on, seated performance, where the performers are physical people, and there is a ‘4^th wall’. In the case of new emerging technologies such as arduino, all 4 ‘walls’ are rarely ever there, and the performance becomes more about interaction and experience rather than purely observing. The arduino also becomes the performer itself, rather than a physical body.