I Think I Can

Participants first take a playful “Career Test” on a custom-built iPad Application. The test calculates their personality and provides them a choice of puppets in professions to which they are suited. This encourages children to imagine themselves into another reality, as if they were grown up. They receive an intricately detailed 1:87 scale human figure and are invited to imagine their resident’s story. As a puppeteer animates the character into the miniature railway world, the participant tells their puppet’s story. This story is documented and appears on the website created for the project, which is in the form of an online newspaper. As the puppet is animated, its movements are filmed and the footage is streamed live onto screens above or adjacent to the installation. At the end of their direct engagement, participants are given a “passport,” which enables them to return to the miniature town at anytime over the period of the engagement and move their figure again in relation to what has happened around them. As more characters arrive, the virtual community continues to expand, and each participant can track the journey of their figure through the online newspaper.