The concept development and the physical realization of a prototype of what we designed, thought us numerous lessons. From the beggining we kept in mind the idea of working with simple, very physical interactions. It was soon clear to us that a strongly mechanical installation would have been both a consequence and a solution to many of the discussions we had in the first weeks.
The idea of working with few electronics to prefer a tangible prototype seemed to be an advantage but it forced us to take into consideration many practical issues.
For example, an apparently banal problem was working with magnets. The first we used were too weak. We bought a new set of Neodimium ones (6kg force) but they were very delicate to handle (since they were strongly attracting everything, they broke into small pieces when hitting). Another problem was managing nails, tools and other electronic components after magnets were firmly set into the MUBU.
Pulleys have been a big challenge too; although after days of tests we had to include a sort of counterweight, they remained the best solution for the slow movement we wanted.
Materials were also an important matter: we spent a lot of money and time (and we also had to use special tools) working with wood, while we discovered just in the last days the convenience of Forex panels…
However, probably the most important thing we learnt ,is that one should always try to work with on one single problem at a time. Our aim was to build a really working prototype with four MUBU, but we kept on approaching the thing always considering the all four of them and not just trying to make one work perfectly in order to repeat the experience on the others; and probably this way we could have saved more energy and time, with even better results.