Week 5 : Construction Plan – Making A Friendly Hand Friendlier

After gaining clarity, I finalised a proposal and visualisation for the delivery of A Friendly Hand this week, completing the 'delivery' section of my double-diamond framework. To ensure accessibility, I created a schematic diagram and construction plan for others to replicate the build and to guide my own making process.

Part ① : Schematic Diagram

I realised that if A Friendly Hand is meant as a well-researched proposal for communities exploring See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception and Interspecies Communication and Performance, then a schematic diagram of how the Arduino kit is used is essential. This would help other practitioners build on the project and further their research.

In other words, the 'delivery' section of my double diamond framework will be most valuable if it includes a detailed plan—one that not only designs this seemingly "silly" or "trivial" prototype for friendlier encounters but also considers how material choices add layers to the metaphor of the Mycorrhizal Network. Some are more obvious, like using threads to represent mycelium, while others are more imaginative—wood and paper symbolizing trees, or a micro servo embodying fungi.

Ultimately, it’s open to individual creativity and interpretation. The goal is to address the Anthropocene by materialising the hidden language of the forest to – first and foremost - help people form 'affective relationships' or empathy with the non-human world and provoke self-reflection on the concept of interconnectedness – one where the links between what we use, how we build, and what we take from nature are easy to overlook, yet always present.

Part ② : Final Iteration of A Friendly Hand Delivery

To complete the dissertation, I want to conclude with a proposal for the delivery of A Friendly Hand. Although a fixed outcome is not the priority, I reckon communities surrounding speculative frameworks might find value in how A Friendly Hand, an alternative sensory engagement with ecological systems, might be applied to real-life settings that aims to communicate meaningful insights about our environment to the everyday audience.

This final iteration below came about from a philosphy of positioning a Friendly Hand as playful rather than unsettling. Reflecting on my previous visualisations from Week 3, I realise that my earlier approach, where A Friendly Hand performed a single function—grasping or holding participants—felt somewhat restrictive and even slightly eerie. Instead, I see more joy in allowing participants to choose how they engage—whether by interacting with the hand, the screen, or simply witnessing it move rhythmically to beats.

“Technology, playfully if not perversely, becomes a tool like any other by which we can not only reacquaint ourselves with the physical body but develop entirely new understandings of it and, by extension, ourselves.” - Krzysztof Wodiczko