wet dreams. living machines

so im making my presentation and have gone for a cartoonist kind of aesthetic. its based on the art from a game called Grand Theft Auto and i think it will go well with the futuristic feel of the world. i will be making A3 posters each one carefully depicting a setting or scene of my designs. they will also have worded explanations with them that will tell the story. i have chosen the cartoon aesthetic because i am trying to tell the story of the functions of the product rather than how it works technically.

i have included some links to pictures. they are high resolution so i used links instead of putting them on the site.

gta 1
gta 2
gta 3
gta 4

so i have been looking at the points of interest in week 6HW which has probably helped the most in terms of formulating the ideas into projects.

i have written a small list of what i want to incorporate into my automated worm farm.

in the future the rubbish tip will become illegal. recycling is the only process that is legal for waste products. consumer products and packaging must be produced using recyclable materials. but there will still be organic waste produced when cooking and just from the general use of our food. so by law every home should have a green waste management system. my design will target those living in existing apartment buildings, where it would not be possible to have an outdoor composting bin. the only other way to get rid of your green waste is to pay somebody a fee to compost it somewhere else. by doing it yourself it will save money and also help fertilize your hydroponic veggie/ herb garden or other plants in the apartment. the aim of the farm is to minimize the amount of care the worms need by automating the process.

worms need.
food
kitchen scraps, hair, plate scrapings, fruit peelings (not too much orange or lemon), vacuum dust, stale biscuits and cake, coffee grounds and tea bangs, crushed eggshells, saw dust, soaked cardboard, juice pulp, bread.
NO dairy products, meat fish fat and bones, or oily foods, garlic or onion.
Temperature cool 18-25 degrees
drainage
lime to balance the acidity

so the farm will include

drainage that will analyze the worm piss at the bottom of the farm
weighing capabilities. this is to measure how much food is put in and the population of the worms.
temperature control. insulation, fan, possible fridge like components. thermal imaging on the lcd panel.
LCD panel to display information. tilt out like car system.
moisture analyzer.
possible activated charcoal filter and ventilation to outside.
worm piss collection bottle at the bottom of the farm.

tower one will include waste that will be automatically blended with water and feed to worms as and when they need it.
tower two will house the worms, and will have an extractable interior bucket to be able to clean and use the worm waste as fertilizer.

Aristotle said “earthworms are the intestines of the earth.”
well i say “ants are the vacuums of the earth.”

this is still purely speculative. pheromones are the key, but im also looking at genetically modifying them too. ants can be aggressive and to stop this from happening i need to remove or stop the ant from understanding the particular pheromone that makes them attack as a group. the system would work i think but it needs a lot of thought as no one has ever tried to get this to work. so to keep you all entertained i found this video that explains a bit about how the ants use the pheromones.

ants

AUTOMATIC WORM FARM
I think my design of a new worm farm, one that is automatic will be or can be applied to now or in the next couple of years. the design will be practical and basic, and will just make it easy for people. i am currently finding out everything i can about worms and how they live. it will be difficult as i have no expert that i can collaborate with on this design so i will have to learn everything for myself. i am also running into contradictory information on a regular basis. these are some sites i have found that are interesting. they give me an incite into what i will need to know about worms to make my design as realistic as possible.
worms 1
worms 2
worms 3
worms 4
worms 5
worms 6
worms 7

ANT FARM
this is purley speculative. it is only based on an unforeseeable future but one that could possibly be imagined. the speculation is only based on how the humans would react with the design. i will be limited to some technical details but others i will provide. this will take some getting rite, and i will need to work on my brief as i design and as i research.
i will also have to learn alot about ants ie.
1. the average life expectancy of an ant is only 45-60 days,
2. ants use their antennae for both touching and smelling,
3. ants have compound eyes (i.e. eyes within eyes); and
4. the abdomen of an ant contains two stomachs.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/q-2bWXCH-qY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

research links
ants 1
ants 2
ants 3

next will be the creation of ideas, some basic sketches and the such, and that will move on to development.

I’m still finding my way through all this information. the three topics we have to choose from (Biomimicry, Maintenance and Control and responsibility) are all very interesting and i find it hard to form an interest in just one topic.

I still like the idea of my automatic worm farm and i think my idea would fall under “How can we design biological systems, or processes, such that they can be easily integrated, or fed back, into the rhythms of daily life?” but i would like to explore more biological systems and processes before i commit to the worm farm. another one that came to me was the cat and the mouse idea… that sometimes you have infestations in your house that you need to get rid of but most of the time this includes using harmful chemicals or knocking out walls and ceilings. what if you could use things like snakes or the natural predator as the key to the problem, one that could get to those hard to reach places and so on and so forth.

I watched a documentary on discovery channel about locust swarms and the huge problems that they had and continue to have today. this was a particular type of locust near Yellowstone park that once wreaked havoc on the farmers there and then all of a sudden became extinct. the main theory was that the locusts needed soft land to lay their eggs and the farmers and hunters had killed all the American buffalo. (the buffalo had hoofed feet that softened the land) But when the farmers moved in they brought their own cattle to farm so there was a replacement of the buffalo. then eventually some nerdy dude figured out that it was actually the farmers who were tilling the land that had destroyed the eggs of the locusts. but what if you could shape an ecosystem to battle these problems, to introduce species that could handle the problem or to genetically engineer the locusts to breed a deformity so they are less effective, die or just lay less eggs. but i guess this topic crosses the lines of biomimicry and control and responsibility so its kind of hard to define as a topic it could even be part of a Maintenance solution in the house like spiders are to flies?

“How can we design biological systems such that they generate the levels of attachment, or behavior, required to keep the owner attentive to their needs?”

When i looked at this question i realized what ants where good for… ok my mind is all over the place!
think of ants as tiny robots cleaning your house. why dont we just use the ants in our house. it is possible to control ants with pheromones and they would be really good at cleaning all the crumbs left behind from when you where watching the movie on your nice leather couch. Ok but then ants can become a hindrance too, like if you where watching tv the night before and then wanted to watch in the morning but the ants where there, you couldn’t. thats the part that needs work, designing it in a way that the owners stay interested, and can live in harmony with the project.

The stuff we have gone over in class opens your mind and lets you think outside the box. a lot of it is just amazing and instigates this rampant drive to find more about the whole topic until you have watched so many youtube videos that your mind scrambles and you need to have a break. you start to see links from other subjects and topics that suddenly become evident because you have been thinking in a new way. it is over whelming the amount of information and ways in which to form projects because it is such a booming topic.

so over the break i was at a few house parties, and as a designer/ideas man i had an idea while talking to someone i didn’t know at the most inappropriate time. i was standing in a kitchen talking about our subject and trying to explain the link between design and biology and why we were doing what we were…

i found this quite difficult until i spotted the dishwasher. it was one of those slide out dishwashers thats like a drawer. (that means the whole unit slides out like a drawer)

looks good ya’know uh ya’know
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/YsF3R4gxAEY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

so i explained that what i was interested in was the function of those objects or the way in which we interacted with the “biological components”. if you remember in the first couple weeks we watched the videos and there was one with a worm farm that wasn’t supposed to stink?

well i could not imagine that pink ugly thing siting on my bench top in the kitchen. imagine if that looked and even worked as automatically as the dishwasher… just slide it out and insert food scraps. close. and then it could have an LCD screen on the front to tell you what it needs, maybe it needs some banana peels, so it would go… beep beep BANANA!

anyway it would be an idiot proof, good looking worm farm.

it would be good to get somthing like this but automatic…
(excuse the music)
wormfarm[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/fe3xBSIhyB8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

see you all in class…

Rainer

Hi there all.

I think this elective is going to be fun! I love experimenting and getting my hands dirty, its one thing to read a book or info on the internet, but its a whole other thing to try things out for yourself and learn from your mistakes.

The reading actually confused me to begin with but i soon realized that there were more than one person being interviewed. the crossover off disciplines is essential to moving forward in our thinking and learning. it is however difficult to learn three years of biology to match that of what i know about design so i wont pretend to know anything about bioligy other than its interesting depending on the topic. If your year 10 teacher is blabbing on about the color of your hair, it could be quite boring because 1. i have a mirror and 2. i know both my parents had blond hair. but in retrospect i should have paid more attention. when it comes to applying this biology in design, thats where my ears perk up, my tail wags and i need to have a sniff around.

take for example brewing beer. i found some images of home brew kits. the idea works fine. the kit works too. but it just doesn’t look good, and surely there is a better way.

for some reason this image is being really difficult and wont work! so click the link and see the ALIEN PROBE!

so you get the point, they might work well, but who wants to drink something out of what looks like an alien anal probe?
its not just the aesthetics as a designer that im looking at but also the way that the products were to interact with you. i found this crazy you tube vid about this stoner canadian who was brewing his own beer. its a bit long winded but its interesting as to how many steps there are and how careful you have to be with the process. it really does take a lot of effort. one could just walk down to the store and grab a six pack.

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