Author Archives: xiaoy879

[The Enchanted Rose] – Yiying Xiao

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For the final project, I decided to make an interactive installation that is inspired by the enchanted rose in Beauty and the Beast. When user interact with the installation, the rose will be changed to another color. 

[Precedent  ||  Inspiration]

I was inspired by the enchanted rose from beauty and the beast. The rose was the symbol of the ability to ever love anyone more than the beast himself. In the original story, the rose was awoke by belle from almost losing the last petal. And so does the beast.

 

Another precedent for my project is the thermochromic ink table set. When you sit for a while, you will leave a mark over the table that could show you have been here for a while. It demonstrate the existence of a human being.

 

[Materials]

Pink craft paper

Conductive Thread  &  Needle

Yarn

Conductive fabric

Thread

Glue Gun  ||  Hot Glue

Thermochromic pigment

Glass Dome Cover

 

[Technology  ||  Documentation]

I was very interested by the thermochromic pigment, so I had this idea of combining thermochromic pigment with the enchanted rose, and try to recreate the reborn of the rose.

I bought some pink craft papers from michaels to make the petals.

After that, I used thermochromic paints to cover all the petals. The material of the craft paper creates a very natural shape of petals.

and I just hot glued the conductive thread onto the petals to create a pattern that will eventually cover the whole rose.

Then, I worked on a 3d heart crochet and stuffed cotton inside. 

And I sew a piece of conductive fabric on to the heart, and made a tray with circuit made by copper tape on it and left an opening on the circuit. So when you put the heart over the circuit, it completed by the piece of conductive fabric. This is the switch for my project.

I first attached a button battery and it doesn’t work. I thought there’s a circuit problem at that time, but then found out it’s because of the battery doesn’t have enough power. So I changed the battery to two 9V batteries and it works well.

 

[DEMO VIDEO]

Midterm lamp – [Yiying]

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I was trying to make a practical lamp for people with night blindness. In this case, the lamp suppose to be easy to reach at night, and the material should be soft and can be hold in hand easily. Some of the inspirations are down below:

And my first iteration of the lamp is a hexagon box with crocheted pressing sensor on top. Here’s the sketch of my first idea.

However, I found the material is not right for my main purpose, so I changed my material to yarn entirely. The LED was put inside the crocheted rose pedal.

My future steps on this could be embed the pressure sensor and LED into pillowcases.

Assignment 4

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For this project, I choose to do a group project with Jaeky Cheong. We were using a pressure sensor I got from the swatch last week from Aaron. For the code, we setted the pressure to 300, 500, and 800. So if the pressure reached 300, the green LED will be turned on; if the pressure reached 500, the red LED will be turned on; if the pressure reached 800, the blue LED will be turned on.

Here’s the code:

 

And then we used a bird to explain how the power and code works in the short film below:

Crafting A Path (Week 2)

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For this project, I decided to make a scene from my favorite book series, Harry Potter. I choose the scene that Harry first produced the patronus, which was in the shape of a stag. So I did this illustration of the scene, and use cotton to create a dreamy effect of the smoke suppose to come out along with his patronus and also as the cover for the LEDs and the copper tape.

After I finished the illustration, I was trying to figure out a way to lay out the circuit underneath the patronus. I decided to go with a parallel connection with the switch and battery in the middle. Here’s the diagram for the circuit I used in the project.

The circuit is completed by moving around the wand and the two LEDs will be lightened up once the wand is in its position. Right now, there’s some connecting issue with the left LED that I need to fix. Although it’s hard to find the right position to lighten up both LEDs, I think this actually make sense since Harry was struggling to produce the entire patronus in its complete form at first.

Here is a demo that shows how this works.

Input/Output paper (week 1)

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I was really excited about Jie Qi’s work self-folding paper. The project was two paper that responsive with each other. When one is folding or flipping over the red paper, the white paper would do the exact same thing. Jie Qi was using microcontroller and certain circuity on the red paper, and shape memory alloy on the white paper. Although I’ve heard before this technology was applied in different materials like fabrics, I didn’t really realize this could also be a wonderful teaching tool if it is used on materials like paper. And it could also be not only for little kids, but also for grown-ups. This could be utilized in art school, engineering school, or even medical school. Besides, the circuit of this folding paper seems very simple.

Below is the documentation video of this project:

I really think the Input/output self-folding paper shows the huge possibility for us as designers using the shape memory alloy.