People Feeding Ducks Feeding People [Video]

The goal of the project, Ducks Feed People, shown in the above video, “was to change everyday behavior in a public space with the help of digital media.” Created for a 2010 final project of the Digital World & Image Group at Georgie Tech, Ducks Feed People is a fun system in which a mechanical duck head releases candy from its mechanical duck mouth whenever humans are feeding the ducks under the bridge on which the mechanical duck is situated. From the students’ description of the project:

We turned the ducks into food providers for park visitors. To achieve that, we built a large artificial duck head and tested it in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. A web cam detects the presence and activity of ducks in the pond. This activity, then, triggers, the artificial bird head, which lets sweets rain from its beak – feeding the humans.

It does, however, seem like he children have found a way to manipulate the mechanical duck at around 1:27 into the video. Human ingenuity, 1. Mechanical duck ingenuity, 0.

(Ducks Feed People via io9)