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Last class was great. Eugene Shteyn came and did a workshop for the majority of class. Originally, we were all curious as to why this workshop did not occur much earlier in the course, for by this time in the semester, we are all extremely frustrated with the brainstorming that must take place between our groups of diverse thinkers, however, after today we had a better understanding of why.

Talking about invention and innovation, we discussed the example of crow who would drop a nut from a wire line, wait for a car to smash it, wait for the cross walk to display the walk sign, and go retrieve it's meal. We thought this, incredible for a crow, yet tedious and silly should a human attempt to do the same. Looking a bit further into this example, I searched the web to find out how people would crack nuts without a nut cracker. First of all, the fact that a number of instructional sites had directions for how a person should retrieve the insides of this food was surprising, as well as the complexity involved in their answers.




This changed my mind on how silly it would seem for a person to attempt the crow's feat, for although the steps are different, they remain similarly tedious.

We looked at examples of inventions and spoke of seemingly good ideas that turn bad due to circumstances and/or timing. An example that was explained was a spandex type material in a time of great obesity- changing trends clearly change the success of a product.

What I found interesting, as well, was the comparisons of yahoo and google. Discussion about why google has been so wildly successful and yahoo has fallen behind.

The most important part of this workshop to me and my group, was the brainstorming. We spoke a little bit about brainstorming and further, did a whole lot of brainstorming, as well. The reverse brainstorming session was great for moving my group forward. It was easy to agree upon problems our project would face, and by writing them on a BIG piece of paper, allowed us all to see it, read it, and come back to it as often as necessary. We could easily point things out to each other, and releasing all these potential problems that get pushed around from the very front to the very back of our minds, now shared a common place. A place where instead of being one person's responsibility to remember this problem, it became a problem for the group to address head on.

Walking to class on Friday I was extremely curious as to how it would go, after a week of increased frustration and stress, however this was the best class we have had all semester (in my opinion), and were offered intriguing material, great discussion, and interactions, as well as actually brainstorming and moving forward on our projects, as well.

side step

I feel as though we meet every single night, and we brainstorm, and discuss, and draw pictures, and bounce ideas off each other. Everyone is very open about other people's ideas, we all get along great, and everyone contributes a ton. People bring in materials, books, movies they have seen for inspiration, and we move. Only it's in a direction that is not forward. In a direction that leaves us drained of motivation, frustrated, and completely discouraged.

1 step forward, 3 steps back

This week was full of intense conversation and discussion about many ideas for our final project. Our team has been working extremely well, and everyone is very open minded. We all worked on researching three of our own ideas that really excited us and present them to the group. We spent a lot of time looking into each of these ideas individually as well as somehow combining them into a SUPER smart surface, (thanks to the amazing art skills one of our engineers has been hiding).


We began with the idea that we want to bring green indoors. Having taken classes and done a good amount of research on the importance of green and natural environments on the behavior and efficiency of people, the group felt this was an essential issue that we could all get excited about. As described by Kaplan and Kaplan (our very own wolverines!), eight hours of sleep is not enough to restore the directed attention that we expend on activities such as studying, reading, and other activities that we must force ourselves to focus on. This type of attention takes effort and naturally fatigues. It has proven that being in nature helps to restore this type of attention by distracting us with involuntarily fascinating stimuli, which in result allows our directed attention to restore itself.

With this in mind, we all split up to work on and research a few of our own ideas, which were brought together (as already mentioned). Every day we met, we would come up with a finalized-ish idea, and every day that would be something completely different.


We looked a lot into algae and how algae was being used for biodiesel. We were intrigued both by this process as well as the suprisingly visually appealing set up of such a system. Having worked with algae in the past, I was VERY excited about this possibility. We began looking into people in the area who are or have worked with algae, as well as began looking into efficiency, and feasibility. What I found so intriguing about the possibility of using algae, is the parallel between natural and technical sun-based systems. Algae has not been totally removed from our final project, however, and has played a huge role in bringing us to our current ideas.

Another issue that we really wanted to tackle was that of water purification. We talked a lot about natural systems and how to use a mix of both natural and technical systems in order to filter water. We discussed where the water would come from, and what the purpose of the filtered water would be (for drinking, for watering plants, etc). We looked into using the algae in this process, as well, although this seemed to be getting super complicated and we began to divert slightly away from this topic.

I looked a lot into people power, and read about bike systems that would generate power that would be put back into the grid when one parked. The amount of energy produced would equate into credits that a person could now use on other sorts of public transit. Gyms, where the energy generated from working out on the machines was powering the machines, was another incredible example of using energy produced by people's every day activities.

Somehow we ended up on "Evil Green".
The idea that people smoke, and will continue to smoke. We began to question if we could generate some sort of power from this seemingly terrible habit in attempts to... well the "in attempts to" is still being discussed. Whether we want this to be in the form of an ashtray, a smoke lounge, an outdoor smoking area, we have not decided. We have been doing some research into how much energy we could potentially generate if we used the heat from cigarettes that were burning out, instead of being put out.

Although we have already had numerous meetings, it does not necessarily feel as though we have made much progress, for the "final" idea changes drastically each time we meet, and so not much forward movement has occurred. I really hope to begin prototyping this week.

We have a lot to do, a lot to talk about, and some significant decisions to address this week.

inspiration-a new direction

Stats

People are not going to stop smoking.
Is there a way to create some good out of this seemingly terrible, potentially unbreakable habit?

Sculptures from Trash

inspiration

Generating energy-biking

Gym members help keep lights on

Algae- bio diesel and other uses

sparks fly

Bringing green inside/Urban

People Power-

Generating energy-biking

Gym members help keep lights on

Algae

15 Year Old Invents Algae-Powered Energy System

In our brief group discussion, we touched on the use of algae to create energy. The fact that algae can survive in a closed system and is very much dependent on the sun, this leaves great potential for a heliotropic smart surface. I have worked in the past with algae (biolumenescent), and am intrigued by these new discoveries which transform nature into human commodity.

The fact that algae is extremely efficient with regards to photosynthesis and that it could feed off of both human and animal waste is promising.

Talk of Algae farms and the costs in dollars and land that exist in creating these farms makes me question whether it is possible for people to produce/raise their own algae in attempts to harvest their own oil, and therefore take a huge step towards self sufficiency. Oil, as far as I know, has been a commodity people bought from large companies for a very large time, and the idea of gaining personal control over ones production of oil would result in the increased attention given to one's consumption of oil.

MIT Algae Bioreactor- Further uses for Algae have sparked inspiration in our group.


Discussions of all sorts of ideas, projects, and visuals.
Very patient, orderly, interactive, and engaging.
Lots to sleep on

a lot more than stress and productivity

Tonight has been the most fun and the most productive night I have taken part in this semester. I have been learning from my peers to CALM down and stress slightly less, which has been a huge development, both for my sanity and for my effectiveness. I have come to the conclusion that we all care about the project and no one is going to let it fail (at least without giving it all they can), and this makes me confident. Our group had some issues from day one, and have made slow progress. Our ideas were very broad, there was an overflow of different ways to solve the same problem, while the problem continued to change, leaving everyone, often very confused. Our communication got much better by the second week and things did become together.

We decided to build our prototype using air instead of water, however, water is not to be forgotten when discussing further applications. We wanted to transform a 2D surface into a 3D form in accordance to the amount of sunlight available. When the LDR senses a lot of light, the bubbles will begin to inflate, focusing the light in order to increase temperature. When the flex sensor finds that the bubble is completely inflated, the input will turn off. Ideally we could replace this with a sensor testing for temperature, and once the water reached a high enough temperature, it would be released and circulated through the building- or where ever these cells were placed. It works similarly, with minor differences when substituting air for water, etc.














Although by last night, we probably all should have been extremely stressed out (or I thought thats how I should feel), everyone was extremely laid back and in good spirits. We laughed a lot and worked really well together until we were all pleased, and we could confidently say goodnight, wander to the dud, and get in a crowded BUT FREE cab home.

With each consecutive week, I have begun feeling more and more useless to my group. I feel as though I play a large part in the planning, organizing, brainstorming, dividing up work, and scheduling , however, that shouldn't be my main goal. I love working with all these disciplines, however, everyone knows a lot more about the different aspects of the projects than I do. The engineers end up working on the programming, for they have been studying that for a good amount of time, the architects work on digital project, and the other art and design student, has thus far, been an extension of the engineer/piece of the projects.

I have a lot to learn when it comes to fabrication, having only taken one class that truly focused us in that direction. I in part, took this class in order to learn much more about these things, however, we have gotten to a point, where those who are very efficient in one thing will just branch off and take care of that, instead of really wanting to wait around on anyone. This is understandable, for our limited time for each project. I just constantly feel as though I am begging for jobs!

I say this only half heartedly, for I do play a large role in the decision making and the brainstorming. We have been having really good brainstorming sessions, where one idea multiplies into many that branch in all directions. You can see the excitement in people's faces, and the support from the rest of the group. Although we started on shaky ground, we have become much closer and much more open to each others ideas.

This weekend I went out to Joe Trumpey's house, to help adobe, and saw his huge solar panel system. It is a beautiful application for the things we have been learning how to do via arduino-ing, etc. A huge plane of solar panels set up in the sky by a pole. The plane follows the sun from sunrise to sunset, and if it cannot make a shadow, the solar panels become inactive until it can generate a reading. He also showed us the readings inside the home, so the family can see how their energy use is, and whether they are in the negative or positive for the time being. We saw the 30 batteries powering the machine, as well.

This was incredible to see, especially now having created a machine that does the same movements. I have been looking a lot into heliotropic instances in nature, as well as watching some Ted Talks about design, nature, scalability (thanks in part to Brieana).

This weekend, we all got together to start testing materials and structure out. We worked with different sized material and different shaped bubbles. We had a hard time making decisions that would allow us to move forward more quickly, however, we all got a much clearer view of the plans, and how to make this function while reformulating and redesigning a bit in the process.

As for the Future of Design conference. I really liked the 15 minute/speaker set up. It allowed focus to come more easily. I was not entirely moved or inspired, overall, however, a few speakers did stick out. One woman spoke of trash as our biggest renewable energy, which I found fascinating, and I have been thinking about since hearing her on Friday. Also, I find that I really want to work with my hands and not just working on graphics at a computer. The man from Readymades, I found extremely intriguing, in his work with an elite first world consumer and a hard working third world producer (in some cases).

I am very excited to find out much more about what our final projects will entail and get started. It is hanging over our heads, we know something big is coming, but NEED MORE INFORMATION.

heliotrophic part 2

Exhausted, from this week's project, my class hesitantly walks in, finding a seat, and hoping for some sort of break. The usual critique days of art school, allow one to rest on the day big assignments are due, however, we know better than to hope for such. We watched the groups present. This is always extremely interesting, and very laid back. Conversations occur, and questions arise and answers are given and discussed from all corners of the room.

This week was very interesting for me. My group was very laid back. I am generally programmed to be very stressed out and concerned about every little detail until it is done, functional, and has been presented, therefor having received a grade, and it is over. My group, however, was very calm through every piece of the planning, prototyping, problem solving, and even last minute repairs. This was extremely refreshing and overall, MUCH more productive.

From the get-go, we were aiming at bio-mimacry. Having done research on heliotrophic surfaces, I mostly came across articles discussing plants and nature. Sunflowers, are an incredible example of a heliotrophic organism, and our whole group came to look for inspiration in nature.

We wanted something different, and decided to bring other materials into our palette. We would use fabric and finger like pieces to create almost a skin. This would create a pleasing aesthetic, but would be incredible functional, as well. Three dowels with fingers would lay in a resting position, keeping the fabric that covered them impermeable. This, would allow for a greenhouse effect- where heat could be trapped within the "skin", reducing the need for heating. (Application-wise- we were thinking how this could be used in buildings, etc). When the sun would appear, the fingers would begin to open, stretching the material, and allowing the pores of the material to open and collect the sunlight (or rainwater if sensors were changed to read humidity). In doing this, the inside of the building could collect sunlight within its walls and or have the sunlight reach solar panels within the building, but only when the sun is present in the sky. Without the sun, the material traps the heat, and warms itself.

With relation to rain, the same could be true. With high humidity, this material could be stretched by the fingers, allowing the collection of rainwater to occur.

The aesthetic of this piece resulted in a very biologic, almost creepy contraption.

heliotrophic surface

This week was painful.

It had nothing to do with the members in my group, they were great.
It had to do with scheduling everyone and communication.

We started strong, meeting the sunday after class for hours, just discussing exactly what we wanted to do; what we thought would work, what would not, why. We worked off each others ideas, and just had a very long conversation about all the things this project and our object could entail. This was extremely relaxed, with no sense of urgency or schedule, which I thought was incredible. Rarely, I am I not watching the clock, making lists of what we need to accomplish, and finding myself totally distracted worrying about getting everything done and doing it in a timely fashion. The calm dynamic allowed us to work through many ideas, and to start with a very positive outlook on the project.

As the week picked up, however, things got crazy and everyone got busy. We had a really hard time meeting as a full group which made it impossible to figure out all the details and overcome all the issues involved in such a complex system. This made it difficult for anyone to move ahead, for we all felt a little bit lost on the final plan (i guess im talking for other people... but thats how i felt and imagine others did as well).

this week was really hard. Attempting to organize our schedules is a big enough headache, but trying to accomplish ANYTHING on top of that...
truly difficult.

we, unfortunately, have some last minute things to workout, so I will check back in tomorrow!