Week 2 Assignments

In-class Assignment:
Construct TWO parallel circuits:
- Use two or more LEDs on each.
- Use two different types of conductive material.
- Document each one and post it to the class blog as an in-class assignment. If one did not work, hypothesize why it did not and what you would do to make it work. (This should not take you too long.)

Assignment for next week:
Illustration project: Pick sentence or passage from a story that you like (children’s storybooks work VERY well). Illustrate one scene from that book and integrate a circuit into it using the materials we discussed in class. Post documentation to the blog and bring your final product into class.

Week 1 – Life Saving Nail Polish – Grace

Four college students from North Carolina State University have started to invent a nail polish that changes color when it contacts with date-rape drugs, including Rohypnol, Xanax, and GHB. They markets themselves to be “the first fashion company empowering women to prevent sexual assault”.

This product may not relate to any materials we talked about in class, but I found this one a very brilliant use of wearable technology, and also a very good combination of technology and social issue. When it comes to wearable/crafting technology products or accessaries, we often think of how to enclose the technical things using beautiful covering materials or sewing skills and make it neat, but this one just remains the original decoration. Although this doesn’t use any circuits and it more relates to the chemical reaction, it provides me an additional option of how to make my project neat.

The image below indicates how this product works in pubs and bars. As you can see, when woman want to detect their drinks, they have to put their fingers into the cup and stir. Some people think it is not the neat part when it comes to use. Also an article came right after their promotion, saying they don’t really understand anything about sexual assaults and most of the sexual assaults do not happen in the bars and relate to drinks.

dipped

These reviews may have their point of view, but this product opens the possibilities of using our body decorations as a practical way to protect ourselves. In the aspect of computational craft, this also inspires me to use certain parts of my body to be the conductive switch that triggers a circuit.

BIOPLASTIC FANTASTIC – BIOLOGICAL DEVICES

Bioplastic Fantastic is a project that imagines how we can use bioplastics to create food for the future. It was created as a piece of speculative design by Joannah Schmeer. She uses these plastics with biological bacteria to make new more sensual and less technical looking designs . I am interested in her choice to think about design sustainability and future materials. Here is a list of the artworks:

The seven products:

1. ‘Rhod’ - produces protein — model organism: Rhodococcus bacteria

2. ‘Cyan’ - produces sugar & oxygen — model organism: Cyanobacteria

3. ‘Pseu’ - extracts water from air — model organism: Pseudomonas

4. ‘Caul’ - produces protein — model organism: Caulobacter

5. ‘Gluc’ - produces fibre — model organism: Gluconanacetobacter

6. ‘Lith’ - extracts minerals from rocks — model organism: Lithotrophs

7. ‘Lact’ - produces vitamins — model organism: Lactic acid bacteria

Image of the Instillation

By: Niki Selken

Week 1 – Miri Park – Monkey Business

This installation, titled Monkey Business, is an inspirational project that relates to my interests. A robotic soft toy monkey hangs from a wall and responds to the the viewer’s bodily movements by mimicking them in an awkward yet humorous way. I am interested in this installation because of the playful quality of interactive toys, and the possibility of what actions they may inspire in people and the ideas they may inspire in creators. I would really like to work with soft materials to integrate computational interactivity with physical materials that are inviting to touch and play with. Giving created objects a personality and the semblance of life is something I would like to pursue throughout this class and the rest of my MFADT studies.

monkeybusiness