Category: Critical Making

1.1 Background

Fast fashion is a phenomenon that has been booming since the past decade. There are many problems with fast fashion, one being that it is negatively affecting the environment. The fashion industry is the second largest consumer of the world’s water supply, and pollutes the ocean with microplastics. More than 5,000 gallons of water is used to make a T-shirt and jeans and cotton requires tons of water to grow. Additionally, too many clothes are thrown away due to the cheap material. This causes people to buy more clothes, resulting in overconsumption. More than 50% of fast fashion garments are disposed of within a year of being produced and an average American disposes of 70 pounds of textiles and clothes every year and producing clothes has doubled since 2000. Overconsumption leads to wastefulness, both in manufacturing the clothes and throwing away “old” clothes, resulting in negative environmental impacts.

Continue reading “Final Project – The Neverending Cycle”

My original concept for the final project was a virtual dollhouse. The user can explore the dollhouse, which is drawn through Processing, using an Arduino button controller to go forward, left, right, and back. The Processing sketch will have multiple rooms of the dollhouse, so as the user navigates with the Arduino controller the sketch moves with the controls. Essentially, the user will go into each room, but every room will have something wrong with it. For example, one will be littered with clothes with no room to walk around in. The other will be flooded with water because the washing machine never stops.

Continue reading “Extra – Arduino and Processing”

1.1 Background

Fast fashion is a phenomenon that has been booming since the past decade. There are many problems with fast fashion, but one being that many clothes are thrown away due to the cheap material. This causes people to buy more clothes, resulting in overconsumption. People buy 60% more clothes but keep them for half as long compared to 2000. Additionally, producing clothes has doubled since 2000. Overconsumption leads to wastefulness, both in manufacturing the clothes and throwing away “old” clothes, resulting in negative environmental impacts such as wasting water. Washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the ocean each year, which is equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles. Essentially, fast fashion is destroying the planet and making people spend recklessly on clothes that they think are worth the money because of how cheap and “trendy” it looks.

Continue reading “Homework 6 – Arduino Motor and Concept Document”

For the LCD display I wanted to play around with the potentiometer so it changes the text based on the level of brightness. When the screen is bright, the text is “Last chance to buy!” and it scrolls across the screen with this text. I experimented with scrolling and including the text multiple times, so the whole screen says “last chance to buy!”. Then when the potentiometer is turned so that the brightness of the LCD goes down, the text changes to “Are you sure you want it?” At first when I got it to work I felt a little creeped out because it didn’t change immediately after I turned the potentiometer. Also, I wanted “Are you sure you want it?” to display when the text is dimmer, so it gives off an eerie feeling. The whole idea of this ties back into my previous prototype, which was the tilt sensor that makes consumers more aware of if they really need a shirt that’s on sale. While “Last chance to buy!” is bright and draws your attention to buy it, the “Are you sure you want it?” questions the necessities of buying that fast fashion item.

Originally, I wanted to use a pressure sensor to tie back to Homework 3, which was the button with a pile of clothes, but I couldn’t find the pressure sensor, so I tried the tilt sensor. My idea was inspired by an article I read from my reading list, which was about how your brain reacts when seeing a “bargain” for cheap clothes. On one hand, your brain is satisfied with purchasing something, but on the other hand spending money is a bit painful when you’re on a budget. Therefore, the green and red LED represent the two conflicting sides that happen within your brain. One idea for this prototype I had was to create a device for your wrist and as you lean or tilt in to reach for a piece of clothing you like, the red LED flashes like it’s warning you to not buy it so impulsively. Another idea was to have this device like a coin tossing game that goes between “buy it!” and “don’t buy it, it’s not worth the money.” I think it would be interesting to add text to this prototype if I were to continue developing these ideas in the future. 

My idea for this assignment was to demonstrate the wasteful amounts of clothes that are being thrown away because one, the quality of fast fashion apparel is not meant to last and two, according to one of my articles, “How Fast Fashion is Destroying the Planet,” more than 80 percent of clothes aren’t donated and instead go to landfills. Essentially, what I wanted to show was how the amount of clothes being thrown away continues to pile up onto the button. The more weight that is on it, the more likely the button is going to be pressed and light up the LED. So when there is enough weight, the LED will constantly be lit up and there is no way to turn it off because the button is covered by the clothes. Therefore, as the light blinks constantly, it gives a sense of urgency and a call to action. I also changed my LED from green to red to further emphasize the urgency and the severity of how fast fashion is affecting our environment (but in the photos my LED is green). 

I couldn’t get the LEDs to turn on when I put on the shirt, but it did turn on before I added it. The idea is that I want to illustrate a shirt that has two different lights that will turn on based on passing another shirt that is “fast fashion.” So, if someone with fast fashion clothing walks by, the red LED will turn on. If someone with sustainable clothing walks by, the green LED will turn on. The idea is to make people aware of how fast fashion is taking over the clothing industry and how prominent it is. However, my art piece has a lot of loopholes to it, as it doesn’t have a sensor to figure out which clothes are fast fashion. I think it would also be interesting if I made the LEDs as part of hoodie strings instead of on a T-shirt. That way it would be more subtle compared to two LED lights sticking out of a shirt.