After much more toiling than anticipated, we have a Steve Jr. up and running fully functioning and ready to go. Really exciting. 

A few notes on how the process went down: 
Once all the official sounds from my bank were approved we uploaded them to the Bare Conductive touch board. Then the touch board was nested within the skull cavity of the sculpture, along with wires attached to their respective auditory responses. Out through the back of the neck & plugged into a speaker. 
We had one major issue.

KP and I thought we’d successfully tested already for metal to metal contact as a trigger but it turned out it absolutely requires you, a person, to touch & complete the circuit. Therefore the sounds weren’t triggering despite using magnets and foil squares to ensure everything was as surface to surface & securely connected as possible. 

We thought, conductive paint? Expensive and hard to get the amount we’d need quickly. 

I had foil purchased only to help with wires and conductivity pads. But I realized we could troubleshoot this problem by wrapping the pieces in foil. And since that would be really bulky, what if we cut very delicate and clean strips of the foil and wrapped each piece around once or twice? That way you have to touch the foil in order to remove one of the pieces successfully, and by touching it you complete the circuit and trigger the response. We quickly tested this theory and indeed it worked well. 

I actually really liked the final look. There was something clinically creepy about it which in fairness went with the vibe anyhow. Plus we had a good assembly line going by the end, problem solving together and working productively. 

Once everything was wired up and all the pieces wrapped in their foil X’s, we superglued / hot glued velcro to each side of the skull cavity and sandwiched the final piece together. 



(Velcro technique allows us to get in there and fix any issues, which is why we didn’t actually seal the sculpture shut.)