Skanda Vale is a multi-faith ashram in the Welsh countryside, who keep a temple elephant, Valli. I went to visit Valli and her keepers at the Ashram on 21st Oct 2015, invited by Brother Stefan, who is interested in developing some novel enrichment for her.
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| Valli says "Good morning" |
Valli came to Skanda Vale as an orphan when she was 2 months old and slept initially on Brother Peter’s chest, so he is her natural leader (mother figure). Valli is Full Contact with her keepers, and indeed, everyone she meets at Skanda Vale.
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| Elephant shed outside |
Valli has a new elephant shed, which featured recently in Green Building magazine (Vol 24. No. 2) because of its clever environmentally (and elephant) friendly design, conceived and project-managed by Brother Stefan. The shed has sandy substrate and also a padded flat floor, for washing.
There are 2 doors, one of which can be opened form inside, leading to
paddock with electric fence. The other can only be opened by keeper, and
leads to exit when Valli goes for walks.
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| Elephant shed inside |
There is a small pool with waterfall and a fenced area which has access to the corridor outside, with bars wide enough for people to easily access. There are 2 heated walls, pipes set in concrete, with a wood-fired boiler and large insulated tank. A balcony overlooks the shed and there is also living accommodation – Brother Peter stays here.
The balcony area would be ideal for mounting a system of inverted bucket-buttons that Valli could reach. She could break the beams and a sound would be activated. She would have to keep her trunk inside the bucket to continue playing the sound. The speakers can be placed on the balcony, where there is an electricity supply, so the button would control an aspect of the environment next to it. Similarly, buttons to control wall temperature, for example, could be situated beside the wall.
Valli currently shares the space with Raf, an old male macaw which has been ill and is taking medication from Bro. Peter. We take her for her second long walk of the day - up into the woodland.
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| Woodland walk with Valli |
During the walk, Valli repeatedly attempts to stop and eat grass and leaves. B. Stefan says that at this time of year, the nourishment in grass is limited, compared with spring grass, which is full of nutrients. He regularly stops her from eating, because the idea of the walk is to give Valli exercise, so she works to get to a meadow where she can stop and forage. She likes willow and broom, sometimes brambles.
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| Raf |
When we return, it is time to play Valli some audio, to check that the different sounds do not make her scared. B. Peter says that a wildlife program terrified her when she was younger; B. Stefan says that she does not enjoy drums. It is likely that she can hear the drums being played at the temples at the bottom of the hill. There are 6 sets of prayers every day. B. Danny says he often plays her Grateful Dead, while B. Peter plays Bluegrass.
I have a selection of didgeridoo tracks by Ancien, Outback, Reiki Music Academy and some Bass Mekanik tracks from their album “Sonic Overload”, which includes very low frequency tracks, designed to test people’s speakers. There are samples ranging from 100Hz down to 10Hz. We connect my laptop (which can’t produce any sound lower than about 80Hz, but which can nevertheless play the MP3s) to Skanda Vale speakers and play Valli some didgi music and some low freq samples. I video her reactions. She appears to be listening.
Valli is not scared by the sound production and her keepers are enthusiastic about giving her an opportunity to control the production of audio. When she understands that she can control an aspect of her environment, and is confident doing this, the plan will be to use similar buttons/controls to allow her to control other things, such as the temperature of the wall, the lighting, showers or dust baths etc.
This was the first year we taught Toy Design as part of the BSc Computer Games degree. Second year students were asked to undertake a small piece of research into toys, then produce their own concepts and working prototypes, using Arduino as base hardware development environment. The module focused on technical aspects rather than aesthetics.
After a basic introduction to electronics - a reminder to those who had done physics at school - we launched into some toy-hacking. 
