wet dreams. living machines

I believe the most effective products are ones that instantly project a story to the viewer, products that do not need any literature to describe their function and can stand alone without the need to contextualise. There are many designed products that I have come across in my research for this weeks homework that I feel have a strong narrative. The first few I have come across by a designer called Onkar Kular Singh;

- ‘Perfect Picture Frame’, a picture frame with a built-in spirit level, the story of the design can be easily understood throught the title of the product and the recognition of the spirit level…it helps you hang a straight picture frame.

- ‘Three is a Pair Socks’, a pack of three socks, obviously as one goes missing every now and then. Again through the title and the picture of the socks the story behind the product is directly communicated to the viewer. Through the experience of the user who would experience missing socks this product can be easily understood.

- ‘Pantone Tea Mugs’, mugs that can be ordered in your appropriate tea colour, whoever makes your tea can easily make your desired strength of tea by matching it to your personal colour mug. Here the product can be understood but is communicated clearer with the use of a poster, this poster adds more information with the product showing the viewer the range of colours it can be purchased in. However without the poster the product is still effective at communicating the story by just its image, telling the viewer how the product should be used.

With these products I really like the fact that the idea is so strong they do not need a storyboard or writing to demonstrate them to the viewer. I want my final photos to be instantly understood, and the narrative to be recognised from just one look.

Carl Clerkin is another designer who manages to achieve this reaction through his designs, an example being his ‘brooom’ and ‘bucket stool’.

Carl says “What goes through all our work is that we’re interested in the connection between people and objects. Our work tries somehow to make that connection, through storytelling.” His storytelling is simply through the design of the product, his products displaying the story behind it directly to the viewer. He does not use any conventions or techniques to do these, he simply uses a photograph of the product he has designed. With his ‘brooom’ the user instantly knows how to use it and why he has attached wheels to a broom…to make cleaning faster…its such an obvious idea the viewer’s reaction would be a humorous one.

Following this line of thought I really enjoy the talks given by IDEO, one in particular by Paul Bennett. He describes how design should be about the obvious…designing something that makes so much sense its a wonder it hasn’t been thought of before. He gives an example of a product he had to design for a Medical Company, their research was spending time in a hospital. When they were presenting their final idea to a company they showed a five minute footage of a hospital ceiling…this was obviously mind-numbingly boring for the company to watch but once IDEO had explained that that is the view a patient gets for all the time they are in the hospital it puts the company in the mind set of the user. IDEO designed some interesting ceiling tiles so that the user wouldn’t get so bored in hospital. I really like the way the company presents/tells the story of the product by using footage to put the client/company in the position of the user in order for them to understand the resulting product.

A genius of storytelling is Dimitri Martin, I have been infatuated by him since I saw a lecture by him on BBC4 back in the UK, called ‘If I’. By trade he is a comedian but did a one off lecture for the BBC in which he shares his thoughts and philosophies on life, interspersed with jokes of course. I can’t reccommend enough watching the 6-parter on you tube as he is an actual genius, he tells stories using cartoons, charactertures, photographs he has taken and words from books he has found. Another hilarious clip from you tube is called ‘Visual Jokes’ where he tells jokes and stories with a massive note pad of sketches. Althought this mention does not completely relate to the homework I do feel it is neccessary to observe the way he communicates verbally and through his visual aids as it is very clever and light hearted.

In relation to my final design I wish the narrative to be self-explanatory through the range of photographs. I want the reader to work out the story for themselves and therefore be able to form their own opinions of the product. I want the product to be communicated in a slightly light-hearted way also as the product is quite a scary concept, there needs to be a certain humour within the presentation.

See you all Monday!

I have decided the idea from the two I suggested…

- blood car
or
- self-fuelling domestic products

…I am most interested in pursuing the idea of self-fuelling as I feel I can take the idea further and finish with a designed product. Therefore this week I have been researching around this subject.

Firstly I have been researching which products around the home are the ‘hungriest’:

1. Kettle – consumes 2,250 watts per hour
2. Cooker oven- 2,150 wph
3. Washing Machine – 1,200 wph
4. Iron – 1,000 wph
5. Toaster – 1,000 wph
6. Vacuum Cleaner – 750 wph
7. Microwave – 750 wph
8. Hairdryer – 750 wph
9. Freezer – 300 wph
10. Fridge – 125 wph
11. TV – 100 wph
12. Stereo – 100 wph
13. Laptop – 75 wph

I then started to investigate which foods gave you the highest glucose count:
1. Dried dates
2. Baguette
3. Brown Rice and Pasta
4. Pretzels
5. Jelly Beans
6. Gatorade
7. Doughnuts
8. Honey

These two sets of data have been starting to inform my product as I want to design a system for the home for self-fuelling products by blood. My final design will be a range of photographs showing the system in the home, detailing the port in the skin and the lead that plugs into the skin which connects to all domestic appliances in the home. The photographs will also detail other elements of this system, for instance I want to design stickers that will be placed on all the appliances. The ‘hungrier’ the appliance the sticker will show a higher star rating or higher ‘doughnut’ rating for example as this informs the user they will need to eat so many doughnuts to power this product (the kettle having the highest ‘doughnut rating’). Stickers may also read ‘Do not use if you are below the age of 12′ or ‘ask a responsible adult to help you power this’.

Photographs might also detail ‘energy packs’ stored within the home, these packs would be suited for different appliances for instance to power a kettle the pack may include: dried dates, a baguette and some brown rice, whereas for a laptop it may only be a couple of jelly beans.

Other scenarios may be outlined in photographs, I was thinking this product may not only be powered by humans, it could be powered by your pet. For example the fridge needs to be powered 24 hours a day to keep your food cool. A pet could be connected to the fridge, the better the pet is looked after, the better the fridge will operate. A photograph could be taken of this scenario to push the boundries of my product even further.

I am going to continue designing scenarios for my product and an going to start to create an image of what the port and lead would look like, so I can start mocking them up and begin photographing. I have also been observing peoples actions in the home and looking at their proxemics to the domestic objects they are using, this will inform how long I will have to make the cable.

Narrowing my focus to blood-powered MFCs as a future fuel has been a great help in order to focus on the outcome of this project and now it comes to the serious part…designing. As the technology I have chosen to look at is in such early phases of development my designs are going to be highly speculative and conceptual at this stage. (So maybe not so serious yet)

A few design ideas that I have begun to develop include…

- To design a port that is implanted into the human, this port is embedded into a microbial fuel cell and create power from the blood. A lead could be connected into this port and then attached to various household appliances in which the user’s blood would power them. This design idea would include looking at the scenario around the product…eg. foods you could eat to create more power for more hearty appliances, or programs on appliances such as the computer or tv which inform your health from reading your blood.

- To design a car that runs on blood microbial fuel cells, the next step in alternative energy? There is irony with this design because there is a lot of links with blood and oil already. I would explore scenarios such as where would the blood come from? Would there be special farms to breed animals for there blood? Would blood be donated? What would the car look like? Would the technology be hidden from the user or embraced?

My designs would suggest a future that is open to new technologies and is not wary of extraordinary ideas. They also indicate that the future will advocate any alternative forms of fueling due to the depletion of natural resources. The kind of future I want to allude in my design is one of open-mindedness, a future where everything has new meanings and things are viewed differently, eg. blood is seen as a fuel and not viewed as something to be feared when outside the body.

In this project I will limit myself by only concentrating on one application for blood MFCs however I would like to fully explore the scenario, the context and all the concsequences of my design in order to make the final idea more interesting. In this sense my design will be speculative and conceptual, fueling products by blood is a long way off yet. As my idea is highly speculative I will provide detail into the technolgy to ground my ideas slightly and to show the viewer that the design is not just a pie in the sky idea, it might be available one day. To ensure details are correct I will thoroughly research the technology of microbial fuel cells and will talk to as many researchers and scientists I can to fully comprehend the technology. I feel it would be beneficial to interview consumers to get their feelings and understanding of utilising this technolgy, their views and opinions might shape my idea and create a better outcome.

This week I have been focusing my research on microbial fuel cells that use blood to power them. I was quite suprised to find out how little research has been carried out on this new technology and have only managed to find out a couple of actual experiments that have gained results from this new technology.

The major experiment with blood powered MFCs was carried out by a Japanese research tem. They developed a fuel cell that runs on blood without using toxic substances, which means it can be utilised in artificial hearts and other organs. The fuel cell uses glucose, sugar found in the blood, with a non-toxic substance used to draw electrons from the glucose. The newly developed fuel cell is the size of a tiny coin and is able to generate 0.2 milliwatts of electricity, enough to power a device that measures blood sugar level and transmits the data somewhere else. I believe in the future with the developement of nanotechnology the fuel cell will be able to generate more power than 0.2 milliwatts at a smaller size. The technology might one day power devices such as a pacemaker….this would be fantastic as it presents a renewable energy source that would not require charging.

As mentioned before in class and the blog I also discovered a film called blood car that I just had to find out more about, I looked on you tube and there it was…a trailer for this incredible film. I feel everyone should watch this gem of footage.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/s9TtaFFSWzk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Woah. I will post more of my thoughts in regards to the homework soon.

The more research I seem to do the more confused I become in regards to which area of biological technology design I want to specialise in….viscious cycle or what? However I do seem to keep returning to the work completed by the students at the RCA. Not intentionally meaning to focus on the work emerging from a British institution but I have always been fascinated about the projects coming out of the RCA and have always wanted to complete a project in the ‘Design Interactions’ style. I love the way the work is so conceptual, it really pushes the boundries on what a product should be and provokes such a great reaction from the viewer. I feel a project like this will not only be beneficial to my knowledge of design but will also greatly contribute to my CV and will demonstrate flexibility to future employees. Therefore I will design a product and scenario which is conceptual product and aim to provoke a reaction from the viewer.

Now I must choose my specialist category in which to focus all my research on…
… my interests have been swung slightly by Blake’s research into MFCs and once I began looking for myself I discovered there are many types of things MFCs can run off. One of these was the use of blood, I was fascinated by this as it is a scary thought that in the future radios, tvs, laptops etc could be run off blood and the consequences off this could be even scarier. Animals could be bred simply for their blood? Could humans be recycled once they had died to power the tv? Bit of ‘out-there’ thinking for you, anyway… there are a few concepts that have been proposed already that would utilise this technology for example Nirmal’s electronic tattoo and Fiona Raby’s radio that I mentioned in my previous post. I even came across a horror film titled ‘Blood Car’ which synopsis reads “In the near future, gas prices are at an astronomical high. One man is determined to find an alternate fuel source. That alternate fuel source turns out to be blood…HUMAN BLOOD.” WOW…the film sounds incredible and might have just hit upon the answer to our fuel crisis. Scarily though could this one day be a reality? Lets hope they progress with the hydrogen cars.

My other interests lie in the idea of the ways people are remembered after death, and the new products or processes that are making their way onto the market are staggering. An example I came across was a product called ‘Biopresence’ where human DNA from the person that has died is extracted into a tree, this is then planted and grows into a apple tree. Strange choice of tree I think, would anyone want to eat ‘human brand’ apples? Maybe thats the fun in it.

Smilariily I discovered the company Lifegem whilst researching this field, where once you have died you can be turned into a diamond! Parts of your ashes or a lock of hair are given to lifegem, they remove the carbon and transform it into a diamond. I know what I want to be when I grow up.

I also came across a project called Memento Mori in Vitro created by Michael Burton at the RCA it presents ‘a vision of a new association with death whereby a daily ritual and form of remembrance of a past loved one is imagined’. He explores the idea of growing hair from your the DNA of your loved one after they have died and looking after it, washing it, trimming it to feel comforted by the touch of it.

This idea really interests me and would like to explore similar themes myself within a project. These two interests in MFCs and life after death link quite well and I feel I want to create a product that does combine with two themes.
See you all in class tommorrow…bring on the beer.

Well I hope the goldfish are still alive after Easter break… I suppose if they’re in the upside-down-way when we get back we will have to get the blenders out again…all in the name of science of course. From reading through the blog Boo posted it was apparant to me that I was most interested in the themes of maintenance. Since we clubbed together and voted to keep the fishies alive it is obvious emotional attachment plays a big part in human life.

I was intrigued by Blake’s post and interest in MFCs and led me to remember a piece of work one of my tutors (back in the UK) had designed. It was for an exhibition at the London Science Museum called ‘Is This Your Future?’ It introduced the viewer to the ‘energies of the future’ and explored the ethical, cultural and social impacts of them. My tutor Onkar Kular Singh explored the idea of MFCs for future sustainabilities. He carried out research and discovered that in China for centuries human poo has been used to fertilise tha paddy fields and more extrodinary than that he also discovered that even today poo is left as a gift from dinner guests so that the host can return the nutrients of the meal to the soil. Onkar asked himself whether social behaviour and etiquette would change when living in a world where everything is poo-powered? In result he designed a scenario and product for the future….

…a lunch-box where one side contained your lunch and the other side was where you collected your poo in order to take home to make electricity and heating. Obviously social behaviour and etiquette would need to adjust dramatically in order for this system to work but nonetheless it would fit seamlessly into the rhythms of daily life.

Another possibility for future fuelling that arose from this exhibition was the use of blood. A product which derived from this idea was a radio, powered by an MFC which would convert nutrients from blood into electricity. The designer created pouches to contain the blood which was pumped into the circuit, she designed them to look like nice things eg. teddybears thus making the product look less scary. Again the product would fit right into the rhythms of daily life but it is people’s perceptions of MFCs that would need to change in order for the process to fit.
The designer interestingly notes…Where would the blood come from? Would there be special energy butchers?

From looking at these two products using MFCs in regards to maintenance, I feel they will be easy to maintain and fit well into our everyday lives. However it is our duty as designers to make the processes ‘nicer’ to utilise and ‘less scary’ to carry out for the consumer and in turn help change peoples’ outlook on using poo and blood as forms of fuel.

I also came across a couple of other interesting products in my research,
- Grass chair that needs maintaining
- A Darwinian style plant pot called ‘natural deselection’ designed by a student at the RCA

I found the reading that Boo gave us helpful in establishing my opinion on these new and emerging technologies/ways of living and gave me a deeper understanding of what they meant for different people in different fields. From comparing the interviewees thoughts and beliefs to my own I was able to work out exactly where I stood as a deisgner in all of this.

I feel I play the role of a very much unknowledgable but exceedingly interested bystander and I believe that research and learning must be undertaken on my part to understand these sciences/technologies/ways of living. I agree with Professor A. I. Jones when he refers to designers as “able to appreciate the possibilities that new technolgies could offer and imagine ways in which society could adapt these possibilities to entirely new purposes, unanticipated by scientists and technologists involved in their creation”. I would like to see this as my future role as a designer concerning biotechnology; someone who understands the science and technological processes and sees the potential of it within a product. This will the hopefully result in solving a problem which had not been solved and not just creating ‘better mouse trap that sends SMS when it kills a mouse’.

Looking forward to class
See you guys soon

A new year, a new semester, a new country, a new University and ultimately a new blog, well my first blog infact. Just landed in sunny, sunny Oz from the distant shores of England and enrolled for my semesters study at RMIT. Landed a little in the deep end with the subject of Biological Technology design but excited and enthralled at the prospect. Not to come off as too much of a geek (to have a few australian friends would be nice) but I am fascinated by the idea of bio-technology.

Back in England, Kingston University, we were once given a talk by a lecturer at the RCA who ran the ‘Design Interactions’ program and since then I have had an avid interest in the futuristic and wonderfully weird aspects of design. An example of a student project, that I vividly remembered, involved studying the future possibilities of organ and tissue generation. The student’s task was to produce a blue-sky product that could possibly be made from manipulating this new technology. The student came up with an idea; to produce sex toys grown from the cells of your lover!

Anyway, from harbouring this interest in bio-technolgy I always take notice of articles and new stories concerning these issues. One article I came across a couple of years ago was the work of scientist Bob Burlage. Burlage was frustrated by the fact that landmines are still killing or maiming 25,000 people a year due to the fact the that they are virtually impossible to detect once they are buried in the ground. However, he did notice that most land mines leak slightly and leave traces of explosive chemicals such as TNT shortly after they are installed. From this discovery he came across a bacteria which consumed TNT as a food source, which meant it was instantly attracted to the TNT once it was sprayed on the area. His next step was to make this bacteria obvious to the human eye, this is where a gene from a jellyfish came in useful. Burlage says “We attached a green fluorescent protein gene obtained from jellyfish to these activated genes and included a regulatory gene that recognizes TNT. As a result, the attached gene will also be turned on. It will produce the green fluorescent protein, which emits extremely bright fluorescence when exposed to UV light”. This breakthrough has meant that more landmines are being detected and with greater advancements might be able to eradicate the statistic that ‘landmines are still killing or maiming 25,000 people a year’.

As a foreigner coming from a country where a lowly wasp is the most dangerous of all creatures to a land full of jellyfish which can cause the most agonizing and excruciating pain known to man (when all you’d really bargained for was a nice dip in the sea) I think Bob Burlage has discovered a much better use for jellyfish. This gene has incidently been the subject of many experiments including jellyfish potatoes and jellyfish monkeys.

Brilliant! Less jellyfish and more glowing objects please.

What ultimately attracted me to this article was I like the way inspiration for new design is created from mimicking biological capabilities. I really feel experiments like Burlage’s will be vital in saving lives and contribute to solving long-running problems such as landmines.