Archives for October 2021

Final Product(temporally):

Raw Material: ABS pieces.

Step 1:

We built two wood frames to hold the melted material.

Step 2:

Looked up the destiny of the ABS piece, and measured the size of the wood frames and calculated the volume. At the end we got the amount of mass for the ABS pieces we need. Which was 166g.

Step 3:

Measureing

Step 4:

Put the ABS pieces in the frames, label them in the oven.

Since the frames weren’t tall enough, we had to add the ABS pieces separately.

Step 5:

Compress the melted ABS pieces.

Step 6:

Form the shape and let them cool down.

(in the picture we put weights on it to apply force to the melted ABS).

Step 7:

Because the wood frame burned in the oven, it was hard to separate the melted ABS from the frame. So we had to cut the wood parts off.

Final Product:

Success and Failure:

The new material itself we made is a success, after a series of tests we made sure it is strong and reliable. It won’t brake easily, in fact I tried so hard and I still coulnd’t break it. 

The failure would be setting the temperature of the oven to be too high that it burned the wood frame, also left burned marks on the material’s surface. That’s also something we can improve in the future. 

My Pinterest Account Link: https://pin.it/4ALOQRL

• Find References

Interesting Sustainable Solutions:

Ideas I found on Pinterest:

1. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/914862411594989/
2. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/914862411594989/
3. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/914862411594989/

My Ideas

1. Collect abandoned blue jeans, and use them to make other types of clothing or artifacts. 
2. Collect plastic bags and reuse them to make “Plastic Bags”.
3. Break the waster paper and mix them together, use the dried mixture to make “new” blank paper that people can write or draw on. 

• List of trash that I can collect from the AB, the community, the dorms, or my house:

1. Plastic bottles.
2. Plastic Bags.
3. Package Plastic Covers.
4. Masks.
5. Plastic Food Container.
6. Plastic Gloves.
7. Empty Tooth Paste Tube.
8. Cardboard Boxes.
9. Tissues. 
10. Chopsticks.
11. Food Trash.
12. Aluminum Cans.
13. Paper Bags.
14. Wood Pieces.
15. Rubber Materials.

According to the preview studies I have done, I decided that I will be using the plastic materials I collect to make new materials. I will be melting the plastic material and adding pigments to the mixture, so I can create material that has the color I want. 

• Learn from China(Waiting for Update). 
  As part of your research for your final project, find local craft techniques, and find local materials that Chinese people have been using. You can also add them to your pinterest or tumblr account. Select the three most interesting and describe its potential. Is there any technique we can replicate using plastic? Do you think we can replicate those materials using plastic?
• Experiment(Waiting for Update). 
  Create a new material conducting a series of experiments based on what you have learned so far during the lectures or the references you found. How is this material relevant to your research? What is its potential? How could this material be used in other projects in the future? (Reminder: in two weeks you will present a bunch of experiments you have made to create your first prototype)

Bon Appétit               

Our idea is to speak up for the marine animals. Each year, thousands of marine animals died because they accidentally eat plastic garbage in the ocean. Why? because they thought these were food. So, we decided to make the kind of food that humans eat,  but made of plastic garbage. When humans sit in front of the table, looking at the “delicious” plastic food, hopefully, they would feel how these marine animals felt. 

We collected a bunch of plastic garbage, which includes bottles, cups, bags, and rings. Then we started brainstorming: what kind of food can we make out of those materials? they should be ubiquitous and easy to recognize. Eventually, we ended up making eggs, fries, pasta, and burger. The manufacturing part wasn’t too hard, we actually spent more time on coming up with an interesting theme. 

During the exhibition, we borrowed a desk from the cafeteria and organized the food on the desk. Everything we did was to let people feel how is it like eating plastic foods.

 

Our ultimate goal has always been to let people put their shoes in the marine animals’ shoes. To let them imagine how is it like eating plastics. 

We feel like that we were pretty successful in the way that creating foods that are highly similar to real food, at this point people would start thinking that these can be the kind of food that they eat daily. However, we thought that if we would have invited our audience to really come to sit on the chair and begin the process like they are really having dinner, it would definitely give them a better experience, and create a stronger impact. 

The biggest difficulty was finding the perfect materials. For example, we had a higher expectation on the appearance of the burger bread, but due to the limitation of resources, we couldn’t make it to reach our expectations. 

The takeaway would be to do a pre-exhibition before the real exhibition so that we can make reflects on where we could have improved. Like said, we wish that we could invite our audience to come and sit in front of the table, and really begin the process like they are going to have dinner. There’s not much that I would change, besides if we could, we would find a better material for the burger bread and do more interactions with our audience. Because the goal is to let people feel how is it like to eat plastic, so that it may raise a sense of empathy.

Community Research