My initial plan for the can project was to create something that would hang outside and somehow make use of the wind. Ideally, I would have been able to make something that used the wind to move in interesting ways, perhaps turn, move up and down, spin, or even do all three. Unfortunately, I could not quite work out the mechanics of the interaction between wind and cans, so I ended up going in a different direction. I then thought about making a model of something. I first tried a boat, inspired by my roommate's love of paper boats, but I had a lot of trouble shaping the cans into the form of a boat. To really be able to recreate a boat, I felt that I would have to make a large model, and I wanted to keep my project on the smaller end. I still knew that I wanted to hang whatever I made outside on a tree, but I did not want it to be too conspicuous, in order to see if people would still notice it. When the boat idea did not work out, my friend suggested I make a marionette. I thought the idea of creating a marionette out of cans sounded pretty interesting. I already knew that no matter what I ended up creating out of cans, I was going to include some kind of figure because the idea of using cans to form a figure seemed like a challenge, and I wanted to see what I would be able to come up with. Therefore, I took my friend's idea and modified it a bit. I wanted to use full cans as well as cut up can sheets, so I used full cans as the theater walls, can sheets as the floor, can tops as the "roof," twisted can strips as the body of the puppet, and the can bottom as the head. Everything was connected by wires. The theater walls are all connected together. Although it looks simple, this process actually took a fairly long time. I first connected the rows. Each row is connected by one wire, which I poked through the sides of the cans, and I tightly wound the ends of the wires around the pop-tops. I then stacked the rows of cans and used one long strand of wire to connect each of the columns, using a similar method as the one I used to construct the rows. To make the "roof" of the theater, I cut out the tops of several cans and wound several strands of wire around the pop-tops to connect them all and hold them in place. The puppet itself is made out of twisted can sheet strips, and three strands of wire hold it together. Two wires go through the arms, through the body, and through the legs. Then another wire goes up through the body, through a hole I made at the bottom of the head using an awl, then through a hole I made at the top of the head, and finally up to the roof where I wound the end around one of the pop-tops, allowing the puppet to hang.
Once I completed the project, I hung it up on a tree right in my quad. It seemed like a good location because so many people pass through my quad on a daily basis, so I thought I would be able to observe a good number of reactions to my project. I received a few looks as I hung up my project, and one person even asked what I was doing. After that, however, I did not witness any other reactions to my puppet theater creation, since I had to go to class right after displaying it. One of my friends did tell me that she saw a prospective student and her mother looking at my project and poking around it. They apparently seemed intrigued by the model. According to someone in class today (I'm sorry, I don't know your name), during the football game on Saturday, a little girl really took to my project, so much that her mother had to pull her away from it. It was quite flattering to hear these responses to my project, for I had not anticipated any real reactions at all, at least nothing more than a few glances. Sadly, I did not get to witness any responses to my project because by the time I returned to check on it, it was gone. It
turns out that someone tore it down (probably during tailgate), so my friend brought it inside to return to me. Whoever tore down my project, really destroyed it. The cans were all crushed, the "roof" was no longer intact, the walls had completely fallen apart, and the puppet's head was bent in half. At first, it was kind of upsetting to see that all of the work and hours I spent on this project were destroyed and put to waste within a matter of seconds, but I had not even expected any reaction to it at all, so I was then somewhat glad that someone had felt strong enough feelings about my it to do something with it, even if those feelings were not necessarily positive.
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