Iris Lee

We went to plastic workshop to start building models for our project. We started by building the plexiglass battery box to put beside the found electronics like tv, lamp, fan, etc. We still need to think about soil and plants that goes inside the box, and the layout for our critique space. The details on materials and building process is in the past posts so I’m not going to describe it in this post. There was a slight change though, after group discussion we decided to give variation in size of the plant battery boxes instead of making the same sized boxes and stacking them according to the amount of energy used. Instead, by giving variations of size of boxes we can still show the energy amount. Here are some pictures of our group members starting to build our first “power plant” battery box part. (We are thinking of our project title as “Power Plant”)

Plastic workshop

Calculations for figuring out ratios between size of object and our box.

Resin to put the cut plexiglass together, making box, leaving top part off to put plants and soil, connecting electric cords for plugging in to devices.

I quickly sketched figures when model made different poses with body in class. Also, I looked at facial features of myself and other people to make observation of anatomical structures, light and shades on facial features and skin.

This is photo of avocado plant I have in my room right now. It’s March and it is still growing, and I noticed the leaves has become bigger and greener over time. I keep inside my room now because I have to keep the plant in warm temperature. I can clearly see the details of veins on the leaves now.

It was interesting to see the process of growth because I was not aware of how much it grew over months. The structure, texture, and also smell of plant are also interesting to observe. The veins of leaf reminded me of human blood vessels or maybe like nerve systems. When the leaves first came out from seed, there were little fluffs on the leaves that could only be seen with closer look and the leaves were thin, it was so fragile so it reminded me of human skin, especially something like baby’s skin since it was so soft and gentle.

Now the leaves feel like it has more wax coating on top, and it stretches little bit more. I feel like it is just like human skin, as humans become mature, their skin changes too, it is natural to have wrinkles and thinner skin as humans age. Same goes to plant leaves, there were no more fluffs but wax was covering the mature leaf. Although leaves were not thick and strong as before, I could sense that the smell became stronger and there were more baby leaves on top to grow taller. I plan to keep growing the plant and see what happens over years.

When I took the photo during sometime in November, I noticed there were more leafs grown. Since there were too many leaves, I had to trim some of the leaves off and move to different pot because the flower pot was too small to carry nutrients and water to all the leaves.

My group so far is working towards the idea of creating a plant box to show how much energy is required to power up a device. However, since we want to raise a discussion of how much energy we are spending without realizing it, we decided to work with several objects that are seen in everyday life and create a living room setting. Inside the living room we are going to put the electronic devices along with non-electronics, and beside the electronics, we are planning to put the plant boxes according to amount of energy used. So for example, a tv found in living room might need 8 plant boxes to equal the amount of energy being used to energy produced by plant, where cell phone would need 2 to charge. We are planning to stack these boxes beside the found objects so viewers can see how much energy is spent and compare to other objects as well. 

When I was looking at the picture of avocado plant leaf, it reminded me of bone structures of humans, so I decided to sketch out some bone structures of human and compare it with leaf structure. And maybe make photoshop leaf image to make it seem similar to human ribcage.

Below is original avocado leaf picture that I got inspiration from;

I started by sketching some human skeleton in class studio day and searched up some names for the bones,

then I looked at and sketched spine, pelvis, and ribcage separately and compared to the leaf vein structure that has been edited to make it look more similar to bones.

Plant has more leafs, thicker stem. This was around November. The picture below shows that it became taller from last time, and each leaf has more veins to it.

As I looked at several of microscopic images of living and non-living things, I felt that all things in life have similar structures. Although the functions of these things may be different from each other, the anatomical structures are pretty similar. There are layers of cells, and these cells create unique patterns. So if all the things we live with have similar structures, what could be the difference between human and other things? Maybe humans are part of nature, part of structure of Earth. I made some photoshop collages thinking humans and nature together and I also looked at some of artists works who applied humans and plant, nature, Earth together.

Some of my rough collages thinking of nature and human:

Examples of artist’s works:

Sarah Eisenlohr

Rocio Montoya

Moki Mioki

After building the mini microscope that has been attached to the cellphone, I tried to take picture of the things around around me.

First, I took microscopic photo of a screw

The texture and colors were interesting to look at because it was not identifiable when looking at the screw with naked eyes. But under the microscope I made, although it was to hard to capture the clear image, different colors and textures were seen on camera. I noticed the texture was pretty rough compared to the smooth surface I felt. With my naked eyes, the screw color was silver, almost to grey, but under mini microscope, it had metallic colors of pink, purple, yellow, green.

Since this result was very surprising as I did not expect to see different result from what I saw with my naked eyes, I decided to try with live material, like plant leaf.

In class, we had a guest speaker, Andrew Pelling. The presentation was on his project and the processes, and we also had workshop on creating a mini microscope for cellphone made from CD ROM drive.

Below are pictures of disassembling the CD ROM drive to get the small lens for the cellphone out. The processes for disassembling parts were very interesting, it was like having dissection of machine like anatomical dissection of live things in labs. The layers of screws, boards, and tapes were like organs and blood vessels, and there were interesting and complex patterns on the board like how human nerves create certain patterns.

Step 1: Take the top of CD-ROM drive off

Step 2: Take the board out from the device.

Step 3: Disassemble everything and take out lens for making microscope.

In previous class, I had chance to look at plant with my eyes and with the microscope provided for class.

When I was looking at the plant I wondered about the structures and how similar the structures the plant could be with humans. 

When I looked at the plant under microscope, it was creating very interesting patterns and these patterns were all different depending on the different magnification level.

Lower magnification (Orange peel)

Higher magnification (Orange peel)

Lower magnification (Leaf)

Higher magnification

Higher magnification

This picture was taken sometime in late September. Started to see sprouts, roots, leafs. During this time I kept outside the room most of the time with lots of sunlight and water.

When I was searching for the organisms that could live in the ecosystem we make, I found interesting article on altering the bacteria so it can connect to electronic devices by responding to electrical stimulation. In the article below, it talks about the ways the bacteria can be controlled and respond to electrical device. Researchers are working on their ways to connect the bacteria with electronics so we can make energy for our devices. This works valuable for devices that works inside the body to find the harmful bacteria in the body.

Other than the idea of creating a battery that contains ecosystem, maybe thnk of human as ecosystem itself? To represent this, we could represent the plexiglass box as human skin, and there could be holes drilled into box to represent the cycle of energy from outside and inside. Thinking about the energy and tensions between humans. The size can be big enough for someone to go in and experience the inside of the human body or skin.

We developed our first idea on creating the enlarged battery to charge a device that we use for everyday life. This was to raise up a conversation of how much energy and electricity we are using everyday. To develop this idea we were thinking maybe we could start to think about the cycle of energy so the relationship between nature and human life, questioning if energy from nature can be a replacement for our energy use for everyday life, and if so, how much nature do we need. The sketch shows that we decided to create a small ecosystem inside the model of enlarged battery made out of plexiglass to see inside. Soil and plants are going to be placed inside this plexiglass box, and the electric cord will be coming out to connect to the plug in and the device we are planning to charge such as cell phone. Also, after discussion with Andrew Pelling with my group member about our bioart project, he suggested to grow a small ecosystem inside the battery maybe look into electronic bacteria or other microbes to help growing a small ecosystem in the plexiglass box. So my next step is to look into microbes that could help in creating the ecosystem or produce electricity and think about if it could be possible to bring it to our project.

After first group meeting with new members and topic, we talked about ideas we had, such as transfer of energy between humans or between all plants and human, or between all living organisms. We also talked about renewable energy sources so how energy is being used and produced again. Lastly we talked about how this energy can be applied to our art project, such as thinking about wearable piece or installation that creates a critical thinking about energy consuming or an interactive piece where viewers can experience the artwork.

In the second group meeting, we came up with our own ideas. The first idea came up from both my group member and myself, and it was to create an enlarged version of charger or battery or some device that could charge another device to talk about energy efficiency and thinking about how much we use and need energy for everyday life. The group members were all interested in this idea and we are going to look for ways to develop this idea and more critical thinking. To develop this idea, we have to think about the size and ratio of the enlarged object and the found electronic device, the materials that we need for the main charger and cord. Maybe cardboard box or plywood or even acrylic or plexiglass to see inside the main charger. 

My second idea was to create an installation piece, a battery curtain or mobile that goes on ceiling so viewers can walk through. My thought was to have an object like tv, and think about how much energy in needs per day, and convert that amount to number of batteries and connect these batteries with rows of strings. To develop this idea, we might need to think about how many objects we are going to consider, the materials for hanging up on ceiling, and also finding lots of batteries such as used batteries. Overall, the group was interested in first idea more, but in future, we may be interested in applying this concept to the first idea.