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.
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