With a background in comics & film, Eunyoung Park created this experimental "Mechanical Cartoon" that combines an Arduino, ultrasonic ping sensors and cardboard to transplant his previous expertise to the physical exhibition space, "making it pop up from a page of book and a flat screen of theatre". Exhibited in 'Nightmare before Christmas' at Open Innovation House, Espoo, Finland (Dec. 13 - 20, 2013), the installation was inspired by the awkwardness of gaze - a resulting chain of thoughts lurking in the back of our minds as others gaze at us. The idea was to make several puppets to follow viewers by the movement of head and eyes as they pass by.
The installation includes 4 rows of cardboard panels with 11 puppets, 4 servos, and 3 Ultrasonic Ping sensors. It follows viewers as they pass by each sensors that is located evenly in the piece at the waist level. Eunyoung notes that the noise seemed to make viewers be more interested in the installation and revealing the mechanism instead of concealing made the installation more playful and engaging to the viewer.