Hand Puppetry
At this point in the project I had learned about War Horse, a new play that had come to London. War Horse has been praised for bringing life-size wicker horses to life in a magical way. There are parallels between puppetry and prosthetics wearing. According to Lucy Childs a senior animator and puppeteer at Bournemouth University, puppeteers are very much concerned with how objects move in space and use their skill as puppeteers to bring the most basic elements to life. Emma Fisher, a graduate of the London School of Puppetry. Emma mentioned that in her experience, subtle movements were particularly lovely and the key to bringing a hand to life might be in getting the fingers to move at slightly different rates, capturing the erratic behaviour of living things. This led to the creation of hand #7.
After much discussion we decided on two possible modes of operation. Either Holly could operate the fingers together in a grabbing motion by attaching all the cables to the cable of her shoulder strap. Or alternatively and more experimentally we could create a system by which Holly could operate the fingers individually and in sync with the fingers of her right hand. This would potentially create a new way of using her hands; in one mode in the hands would do things together, such as picking up a tray, and another the position of the left could be set, freeing the other to continue as normal, for example holding a cup of tea whilst pouring milk.
