Akari Doll

Interactive Doll

The Akari Doll is the first prototype of a collaborative work involving two Japanese artists: Keiko MIYATA and Elico SUZUKI (SUZUERI) and myself. I contributed by giving an interactive dimension to their creative works.

Keiko MIYATA

Keiko MIYATA is a doll designer. Her works entail a wide genre of design such as futuristic or kitsch… attracting and sometimes even threatening. She mainly works on “soft” dolls, but accounts to her oeuvre some wooden sculptures and even consumable teddy bears.

SUZUERI

Elico SUZUKI creates interactive art pieces using light, music, and computer graphics. She is an artist with multiple skills: designing, singing and composing… Recently, she started to work with Keiko MIYATA and exhibited one of their common piece at "Make: Tokyo Meeting 03". Our first encounter happened during this exhibition.

Akari Doll Concept

The Akari Doll project was born after I asked Keiko MIYATA and SUZUERI to make together an interactive doll.
Keiko MIYATA designed and made the structure of our doll; I made the electronic elements and SUZUERI assembled the different parts.

When people pet the Akari doll, it triggers a set of blue lights. The light fades slowly after the petting stopped.

Electronic Design

The electronic design was built using discrete components. Relatively cheap and capable of generating slow and nice effects of change in light intensity. A transistor-based touch sensor triggers the device and switch on a couple of blue LEDs; a capacitor ensures the fading effect.