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Bioluminescent algae has long fascinated humans as a beautiful natural phenomenon. This creative project uses bioluminescent algae to push the limit of biomimicry, using the algae not as a model but as a technology. Through experimentation with algae samples and industrial design, two potential applications of bioluminescent algae as a sustainable lighting technology were generated. One design focuses on indoor, private lighting, while the other focuses on outdoor, public lighting. Both outcomes attempt to solve problems generated by nighttime lighting including light pollution, wasted electricity usage, and negative impacts on human and environmental health while retaining the benefits of safety and convenience.
According to Dr. Chris Donaghue, Ph.D., LCSW, CST, “There are a good number of psychological benefits associated with incorporating sex toys into relationships and self-pleasure”. This is also widely accepted across the pleasure product and medical industries. Pleasure products like sex toys can positively impact users’ quality of sleep, self esteem, and relationships. While there is a wide variety of pleasure products available on the current market, few of these options are suitable for people with limited range of motion. This inequity within the sex toy industry negatively impacts the wellness of people with limited range of motion. These negative impacts range from lowered self esteem and happiness to greater stress and conflict within sexual relationships both with others and with themselves. This project seeks to provide a meaningful design solution for people with limited range of motion, and provide insight on the design considerations that must be taken within the pleasure product industry to better address the needs of people with limited range of motion.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has provided a challenge for educators to create virtual learning materials that are engaging and impactful during times of high stress and isolation. In this creative project, I explore the variety of virtual tools and web applications from Esri by creating a Story Map on the Verde River Watershed. This Story Map is intended for an audience of students in late middle school and early high school but can be a resource to teachers for a wider age range. The integration of interactive technology and virtual tools in educational practices is likely to continue past the immediate circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this Story Map is to showcase one of the many uses for geospatial web applications beyond the immediate realm of GIS.
The Student Art Project is art patronage for the 21st century—a curated online gallery featuring exceptional student artists. The Student Art Project is a highly curated experience for buyers. Only five artists are featured each month. Buyers are not bombarded with thousands of different products and separate artists “shops”. They can read artists bios and find art they connect with.
Student artists apply through an online form. Once accepted to the program, artists receive a $200 materials stipend to create an exclusive collection of 5-10 pieces. Original artwork and limited edition prints are sold through our website. These collections can potentially fund an entire year of college tuition, a life-changing amount for many students.
Brick-and-mortar galleries typically take 40-60% of the retail price of artwork. The Student Art Project will only take 30%, which we will use to reinvest in future artists. Other art websites, like Etsy, require the artists to ship, invoice, and communicate with customers. For students, this means less time spent in the classroom and less time developing their craft. The Student Art Project handles all business functions for our artists, allowing them to concentrate on what really matters, their education.
Anthropocentric society faces a multiplicity of environmental challenges, catalyzed and perpetuated by urban-industrial culture. Many of today’s perspectives and sustainable strategies cannot accommodate the challenges’ inherent complexity. Because urban-industrial society is only projected to grow, both in enormity and influence, the only viable option is to elucidate the complexity and employ it.
A potential setting in which to frame this exploration is the intersection of urbanism, landscape, and ecology –an overlap first introduced by the theories of Landscape Urbanism and Ecological Urbanism. Here, urbanization is not just discussed as an isolated phenomenon but one that is embedded within and responding to a variety of systems and scales. The methodologies of Landscape Urbanism and Ecological Urbanism also acknowledge artists and the visual arts as invaluable tools for realizing, communicating, and inspiring the new perspectives and modes of intervention needed to address the aforementioned urban complexity. Such artists who operate within this realm include Sissel Tolaas, Maya Lin, Katrin Sigurdardottir, David Maisel, Olafur Eliason, Mierle Ukeles, Suzanne Lacy, Steve Rowell, Mel Chin, and the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Case study analyses reveal many of these artists begin their investigations with provocative, searching questions situated within the realms of urbanism, landscape, and ecology. This is proceeded by relative scientific research and/or community involvement or outreach. Furthermore, the artists work within and extrapolate from a variety of other disciplines —increasing the scope and applicability of their work. The information they collect via this multidisciplinary approach is then metaphorically translated to the visual arts, where the public can not only physically or sensorially experience it, but understand and deduce its meaning and significance: public awareness being one of the more essential aspects of a sustainable society and at the root of our current struggle.
As a designer and architect, I will engage the artist’s mindset to explore the current and complex issue of resource extraction within Superior, Arizona: a topic at the core of urbanism, landscape, and ecology. While the town is not considered "urban" by standard definition, it and its surrounding landscapes are indirectly sculpted by the needs of urban society —rendering it the setting for this application. Within a group, we will begin with a searching question. We will conduct relative scientific research, engage the community of Superior, and call upon a variety of other disciplines to aid and inform our work. Through metaphor, the research and resulting discoveries will be artistically represented and composed within a designed exhibition of hopeful “things” (See Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik”). This exhibition will theoretically take place on Superior’s currently dilapidated Main Street, amid a more accessible sphere. The eventual goal of the project is to illuminate and understand the complexities of resource extraction, specifically within Superior, while also enabling public awareness and empowerment through lucidity and comprehension.
In a research group, several designers sought to understand the depth and complexity of this highly politicized issue by interviewing a wide variety of stakeholders, including sustainability experts, landscapers, water company executives, small business owners, reservoir forest rangers, and many more. Data synthesis led to the conclusion that residential water use is a lifestyle issue, and the only real way to conserve involves a significant shift in the collective idea of an “ideal” home—lawns, pools, and overwatered landscaping contribute to 70% of all water use by residences in the Phoenix area. The only real way to conserve involves increasing population density and creating communal green spaces.
DR. DISH is a dishwashing device that is meant to fit into the high-density living spaces that are rapidly being built in the face of the massive exodus of people into the world’s cities. To help busy apartment and condominium dwellers conserve water and time, DR. DISH converts a standard kitchen sink into a small dishwasher, which uses significantly less water than hand-washing dishes or rinsing dishes before putting them into a conventional dishwasher. Using advanced filtration technology and a powerful rinse cycle, a load dishes can be cleaned with about 2 gallons of water. Fully automating the dishwashing process also saves the user time and minimizes unpleasant contact with food residue and grease.
This device is meant to have a significant impact upon the water use of households that do not have a dishwasher, or simply do not use their dishwasher. With a low target price point and myriad convenient features, DR. DISH is a high-tech solution that promises water savings at a time when every effort toward conservation is absolutely critical. As we move toward a new era in determining water rights and imposing mandatory restrictions upon each and every person living in affected areas, creating conservation solutions that will be relevant for the lifestyles of the future is especially important, and the agility of designers in coming up with products that quickly cut consumer water consumption will be a key factor in determining whether humanity will be able to adapt to a new era in our relationship with natural resources.