PupIoTry was an R&D project conceived with puppeteer Andrew Purvin in collaboration with a team of creative technologists including Rob Hill (puppet armature and mechanics), Nick Prince (electronics) and Simon Wihl (programming and electronics) to explore the control of puppets over the internet.
The ambition of this collaboration was to explore the potential of narrative and the Internet of Things (IoT) within live theatre, and to celebrate the potential of physical computing as a way of understanding data and making it accessible to audiences.
For this R&D project we created a bird-like puppet whose natural movements are activated over the internet, drawing on social media engagement and both immediate and remote environmental data as well as spatial interactions with the operator and participants. The ambition of the project was to embed the Internet of Things (IoT) within the fabric of a puppet, informing the puppet’s gestures so that it appears to have presence but is in fact connected elsewhere.