Energy
This week I had to ask myself "what is energy?" and make something that relates to that. I thought about energy and my main ideas about it were that it is something that you can't see, something that has the potential to become something else, to induce change. I feel that it's also something very "present" (temporally) and transient. I thought about a friend of mine who once told me she thinks about people in terms of energy, and that certain people to her emit a negative energy, and she doesn't feel very good when she's around them. Their energy really interferes with hers. After having this conversation with her, I started paying more attention to that, and seeing it in my interactions with people. I feel like there is certainly some truth in the notion that people have "energy fields," or whatever you might want to call it, that influence their interactions.
I wanted to make something to express that idea. One of the side effects of this "theory" is that there is a sort of feedback loop that is created when two people 's energy fields interact: two positive fields will both become more positive. Two negative fields will both become more negative. A positive field and a negative, I'm not sure what will happen. I guess it depends on which is stronger.
I made two necklaces, each with an LED and a photoresistor. When people wear them, the photoresistor faces the other person's LED. The LED represents the externalization of the person's energy field. A positive energy field (lit LED) will cause the resistance of the other person's photoresistor to drop, making their LED shine brighter (raising their positive energy).
We also had to keep track of our waste for the week. It was a somewhat unusual week for me in which I cooked, and had enough leftovers to keep eating the same food for a few days so I didn't have that much to throw out. I did throw out the peels and pits of the vegetables/fruit, things that are compostable, but in a tiny Manhattan apartment, that's hard to do (and I would have no use for the compost). Maybe ITP should have a floor compost. I also threw out a yogurt container every day. The last day I actually kept it and washed it, thinking I might use it for a project, but I eventually threw it out as well. I used to buy bigger yogurt containers, and scoop out as much as I was going to eat every time, but then I would forget about it, or not feel like eating yogurt for a while and it would go bad and I would throw out the yogurt with the container. So it's definitely a trade-off. I also waste quite a bit of water, and I hadn't been very conscious of that until now. Not having to pay for it has that side effect I suppose. I'm sure I used and threw away many more plastic cups than I should have (on the floor -- it was a bit harder to keep track of my trash outside of my apartment). I should buy a nalgene bottle. I tend to reuse plastic water bottles a lot, but I have heard that's not very healthy.