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.
I made a lamp as a tool to help people experiment with additive color theory. Although the lamp is able to display R, G, and B colors at a variance, it could be further improved through tinkering with mapping the colors so that the maximum brightness of all three LEDs could be the same. Currently, the blue LED is the brightest and overpowers the other two while red is the dimmest.
For my midterm, I wanted to create an art piece in awareness to marine pollution so I created Jellyplastic. Constructed by found object, I wanted to depict this beautiful sea creature in contrast to the materials of human’s waste that is actually destroying their homes.
My circuit had some problems, the first problem is that one of the LED on the jellyplastic’s head works only when the conductive legs are touching each other, so when the whole piece has lit up and the legs aren’t touching anymore it won’t open. The second problem is another LED on the jellyplastic’s head is loose and when audience touches the head the LED will light up. However, I feel that even though the LEDs don’t work as I expected, I think it contributes to making the piece more beautiful, and more alive.
I see my piece in an exhibition to raise awareness about environmental issues. For future iteration, I think I will reconsider my switch because through observation, users are more drawn to touch the head of the jellyplastic than interacting with its legs. Also, I want to create jellyplastic on a whole new scale and have a different display under the same concept.
For this project I made up my mind to do something meaningful. So I came up an idea to do lamp that can warn people to adjust their pose when reading because I feel like many people, including me, are reading to closely to the book.
The final result of the lamp is here:
Full details of this project is on Instructables: https://www.instructables.com/id/The-Rude-Lamp/
This week I wen to the metal shop and tried welding.
I identify this practice of me as being a learner, an artist and a maker because the purpose was quite simple — to weld two pieces of metal– and there was not much design in it, but I do qualify it as artist’s work. The process was quite uncomfortable because the metal shop was hot and I have to wear a protection coat and helmet. The process was also a bit scary because there were fire sparkles, horrible machine sounds and dust everywhere.
However, seeing the metal I welded was a great pleasure although it dose not look good visually.
My favorite tool at the moment is laser-cutting. It is simple, easy to do and the result can be stunning. Although there can be many frustrating moments when the power was set too high so it burns or the material is too thick so it cannot be cut through.
For my midterm assignment, I made a Tshirt for people threatened by a heart attack, called Life lamp.
When the patient is suffering a heart attack, they will have the following signs:
Chest discomfort;
Discomfort in other areas of the upper body;
Shortness of breath;
Others like dizziness, fatigue, lightheadedness, clammy skin, cold sweat, etc.
Therefore, it is hard for them to cry for help. The patients have a common gesture when they are under attack: pressing their chest hard. For Life Lamp, the lamp is attached to the Tshirt. When the victim is suffering a heart attack and press their chest unconsciously, the light will be on. People around this patient will be notified and can help him/her.
This is a toy for a child. When the child squeezes it, the tutu skirt of the bunny lights up. I used conductive thread, four LEDs, a battery switch, and button sensor. I made the skirt myself, and added it to the plush bunny.
1) Finish your ATtiny circuit. 2) Before next class, I would like you to try learning a new craft. That’s it. NO electronics. Make a swatch (small example) that comes out of your learning. This could include any of the following:
sewing (by hand or on the machine)
embroidery
knitting
crocheting
draping
paper engineering
woodworking
silkscreening
surface design/fabric printing
etc, etc, etc
Here are some tutorials from last year as inspiration (also, this was a much longer project last year – you do NOT need to go into this depth). There are also a TON of tutorials if you hit the Googles.
Next, create a post with an image of your swatch and reflect on the following questions.
After doing all of the above, write a blog post that answers the questions below. It doesn’t have to be long, but I would like you to spend a good amount of time reflecting on these:
How do you identify/classify your practice? Choose as many as you would like from the following and feel free to add to it. Briefly, explain why you chose them.
storyteller
maker
engineer
coder
designer
artist
learner
hacker
research
educator
gamer
craftsperson
[other?]
What is your favorite tool and why? Yes, again ? (I’m going to put one restriction on this – you’re not allowed to say computer ?
Reflect on your experience trying out a new craft. Some questions you could address: What did you like about the process? What was frustrating? What insight did you gain? What advice would you give to someone?
