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Following a “Greenie”

I spent a few hours with my most food conscious friend to understand why her groceries cost three times as much as mine. Becky does most of her grocery shopping at places like Whole Foods and Brooklyn’s Marlow and Daughters. She claims that she wants to know where her food comes from and know that there are no pesticides being used on her fruits, veggies and meat. At Marlow and Daughters, they use all parts of the animal in their shop and distribute the meat to restaurant around New York City but also sell their products within the small store. The butcher has relationships with all the farmers where they get their meat from, so they know how the animal was raised etc. I can validate her reasoning for shopping at Marlow and Daughters…but Whole Foods? Whole Foods is a grocery chain (it is) that finds the most organic and least processed products for their stores. Ok, but then why is it more expensive then? If its going through less process then why does it cost more? I didn’t get a straight answer.
Ok, what are the challenges of eating in New York City when you want to know where the food came from? She basically answered that she ends up going to the same places all the time, and if other places she wants to try don’t have enough information on them, then she just wont eat there. Limiting where you eat is annoying and you end up paying more for food and groceries.
Do you think its worth it? For her lifestyle and moral obligations, yes. But its not for everyone, because there are so many factors that can effect why someone can’t always eat locally grown organic products.

Posted 03 February 2010 † Ania § If Products Could Tell Their Stories ‡ Comments (0) °

Time – Biological Cycle “Clock”

For this weeks BioCycleClock I teamed up with Patricia. We both were interested in the cycle of plants gathering nutrients/ water but also incorporating the idea of relativity within a plant. Plants have micro climates within them, and we wanted to create a physical way of representing that to show the different “times” within the plant. We came up with the idea with “planting” the moss onto a piece of wood, which would also frame the piece. We embedded soil moisture sensors, made from two wires and plaster paris, into the moss and wired some LED’s to them. The LED’s blink at different rates depending on the moisture of the sensor to represent the different micro climates in the piece.

Here is a video of the process:

Moss Pulse from Patricia Adler on Vimeo.

Images of the process:

Making the insides of the soil moisture sensor.

The soil moisture sensors attached to the straw casing before being filled with plaster paris.

Drying. I hot glued them to the table so the plaster wouldn’t seep out from the top. Shhhhh…

And the casing is off!

Testing the sensors and getting some values.

The underside of the piece.

Posted 31 January 2010 † Ania § Time ‡ Comments (0) °

My Carbon Footprint as of Today

I wonder how much this will change at the end of the semester after this class.

Posted 30 January 2010 † Ania § If Products Could Tell Their Stories ‡ Comments (0) °

LCA for Tissue Paper

I found a Life Cycle Assessment of Tissue Paper which ended up having many interesting conclusions. Their were three main objectives for the study:

- If using virgin versus recycled fibers was more environmentally preferable?
- What other opportunities are there to reduce the environmental impact of tissue products?
- How severe are the impacts that tissue products make on the environment?

The company in particular was interested in trying to see where in the cycle of this product they could lower the environmental effect. The LCA study concluded that there was little impact between using virgin versus recycled fiber.

The basic cycle of a tissue product begins with forestry, planting and managing a forest the harvesting, gathering the crops and moving to the virgin pulp mill. From there, tissue production begins and where recycled paper joins the process. After the production process is finished, the product moves to retail, consumption and finally waste management.

Consumers use these products in various ways and in order to truly arrive at the best results, three scenarios where developed. Each step in the system has a different environmental impact, so each scenario created was an extreme. For example, if the company only used recycled paper to create their product versus if they only used virgin paper.

The impacts that the company studied were related to air and water pollution as well as water consumption, resource availability and waste. Much of the data collected was directly from the companies suppliers and facilities.

In conclusion, as stated in the beginning, there was little difference on the environmental impacts between the virgin and recycled fiber used in the production of this particular product. Ultimately, the company hopes to take action to improve efficiency, minimize the use of raw materials, use better forestry standards and source recycled fibers from de-linking plants.

Posted 30 January 2010 † Ania § If Products Could Tell Their Stories ‡ Comments (0) °

Hospitable Room – Wheelchair Tracking Assignment

Scott and I teamed up for the first assignment in Hospitable Room. After visiting the site we came up with a few ideas about using video tracking to develop a game that kids in wheelchairs could interact with and gain a sense of accomplishment and self esteem. We were mostly inspired by older video games such as Pong, Atari Pole Racer and Defender. We are also interested in using the wheelchair as a micro-controller, rather than it being a static seat and developing a game around a hand controller.

After getting inspired and sketching out some ideas, we picked three that we wanted to present in class and develop further. Also, it was important for us that our game build coordination skills, a sense of accomplishment and be fun. The first idea is a game similar to the Atari Pole Racing game in that the wheelchair becomes like a car wheel to maneuver down the race track.

The second idea is a game like pong where the user moves forward and back on the chair to hit the ball coming from the other side of the screen.

The third idea would be a static piece, similar to Scott’s ICM final from last semester. It could be a more developed idea and catered toward children with disabilities.

Poppy Pop from 39forks on Vimeo.

And lastly, is a side scrolling game that could take may forms and also be educational. The tube in this representation is eating the green dots, but not the red ones and would be controlled by moving the wheelchair forward and back. Other variations we were thinking about are making it a mathematical game, and eating the right number/ answer. Or the mouth could be a mouth of the animal, like a fish for example and the user has to eat the right kids of food to collect points.

Each of these ideas will include levels and difficulty settings so that it can become more custom to an individual child.

Also made a quick cardboard mock up of the space.

Posted 25 January 2010 † Ania § Hospitable Room ‡ Comments (1) °

The Theory of Relativity

Assignment 1: Explain the Theory of Relativity to my grandmother.

Two issues with this, I myself need to understand this and second, my grandmother doesn’t speak English. So I began with research and watching everything I could on the internet and reading anything I could get my hands on. The theory is complex, and being able to simplify it in order to explain it to my grandmother or a child is quite a challenge. The more I read and saw, the more confused I became.

Things began looking up. My confusing led to clarity and a WAY better understanding of the Theory of Relativity. After watching the NOVA documentary, I learned that Einstein came up with this theory, but not on his own. Scientists in before him had the pieces and he was able to combine them together in the early 1900’s. The first thing you need to understand is that it deals with space and time. Space is the third dimension and time is the fourth. For example, if we are standing in one place, we are in the third dimension. But once we move, we are in the fourth dimension, which is time. The video above explains it really well. So now that we have that down, the next thing to understand is the relativity part. So, if one person is sitting on a bench and another passes the person on the bench is experiencing a different sense of time than the person passing by. However, if they begin walking together, they are now experiencing time and space in the same way. So time is relative to the person experiencing it.

This is where is get more complicated. So Einstein goes to say that if we could travel at the speed of light, time would seem normal to us, but to someone on earth, it could be hundreds of years. So our minute and their minute are relative to time.

While listening to the radiolab episode on time, there were many other examples that explained relative time. My favorite one that kept being brought up was actually a question, do humming birds experience time differently than a turtle, based on their natural movement or motion? Does one minute for a turtle last longer than a minute for a humming bird? Also, when we are children, time seems to take soooooo loooooong, and the older we get the faster it goes by. I can’t tell you how many times I think, I wish there were more hours in the day. When as a child, I couldn’t wait to get out of school, it seemed like an eternity.

In the end, the way I would explain this to my grandmother is: there are a lot of ways of explaining this theory, but ultimately, time is ones own perception based on space and movement.

Posted 23 January 2010 † Ania § Time ‡ Comments (0) °

Back to School

And back to bloggin’. I am taking some really interesting classes this semester which will take up all my time, so that’s awesome. Hospitable Room is a class about developing assisted technologies for a recreational room in a pediatric ward for kids that are recovering from anything like a physical trauma to metal trauma and post cancer treatment. The first project it to create a game that tracks a single wheelchair in a space. Working with Scott Indiana on that, so that will be a good project.
The second class is Data Flow with Hans, who is one of the developers of the Pure Data software. Going to take a stab at creating some audio pieces this semester and learning a different type of programming.
Last, so far because I havn’t had my Monday class yet, is Time. This is the one that will make me think way too deeply about my watch. Its basically about thinking different types of time and the devices we use to track time.
Welcome back to school and the end of my free time.

Posted 22 January 2010 † Ania § Other ‡ Comments (0) °

ICM Final

Below is a quick process video we threw together for our ICM Final. Neil and I wanted to create a piece that would be an intervention in the urban environment. We used edge and blob detection in our code to create the piece. The set up includes a camera, to track movement, and a projector to project onto the wall. In the end it looks like your body is drawing onto the wall as you pass by. We want to continue working with this and getting it set up some place outside this coming spring.

Posted 24 December 2009 † Ania § ICM ‡ Comments (0) °

Heart Beatz

So after my traumatic night before the presentation of the Heart Beat Broach, I got it to work again with the cord connected to the computer. Its not wireless, but Ill keep on it. Anyway, thanks to Hana I have this video of it working during the presentation in class. Awesome, thanks girl.

Posted 10 December 2009 † Ania § Physical Computing ‡ Comments (1) °

The Dreaded RED Presentation

For Red’s class we got a really great speaker to create a reaction presentation too: Bob Greenberg, the hear of RG/A. His talk was very inspiring and we came out of it with a lot of positive energy as well as some criticism. We narrowed down our thoughts about the talk into a question: Society is evolving rapidly. What do you see the designers role in the future being?
We don’t have an answer for this, but we wanted people to walk away thinking about what their roles are in the future and how they want to represent designers. Matt, Rune, Fu and I were also interested in creating a fun presentation for the class. So we came up with the concept of a mockumentry of the Objectified documentary about industrial design, as it was a major part of our discussion, and created Subjectified. We wanted to show the extremes of what design probably shouldn’t be and hope that it would inspire people to think about what it should be.
This was filmed and edited in a day. It was a lot of work, but I think worth it, we are all really happy with the result and the presentation.

Subjectified from Matt Ganucheau on Vimeo.

Posted 09 December 2009 † Ania § Other ‡ Comments (0) °