Reframing by reflecting on my project¶
Towards the end of the first term, I updated the focus area of my project and my design space as “Create technological interventions that reform and improve the relationship between humans and water starting from domestic spaces through optimistic narratives that focus on celebrating the presence of water and the joy it brings to human life.” This is the way I plan to intervene in the system in order to bring about change to local and global water issues and challenge the current tech paradigm in this field.”
As initial interventions of my project, I had the experience of designing and testing a grey water unit, which is a system for reusing greywater (wastewater from sinks, showers, etc.) for non-potable purposes such as flushing toilets. I shared the prototype with classmates and visiting participants during the Design Dialogues session, then brought the unit home and tested it with family members for more than two weeks (still ongoing).
We found that the water tank prototype had several shortcomings, such as a sluggish valve and the it was leaking too much for indoor use. Despite these issues, the community was receptive to the idea of saving water, and the I was able to make adjustments to continue using the system, such as switching to a smaller water tank that wasn’t leaking, that made it more usable.
On the other hand, I was involved in an ongoing project with the Augmented Creativity collective, which aims to explore the possibility of extending human perspectives to more-than-human ontologies and develop empathy with the Other. The collective designed an exploratory experience that combined embodied movement, physical changes to participants’ bodies, and a defined space to bring participants into a context where collaborative practices can integrate the more-than-human. The experience used ambient light, meditation music, a defined distribution of meaningful areas in the space, motion-detecting cameras, and video projections. After the session, we received written texts and audio recordings from all participants describing their experiences. We had some personal and collective reflections on the experience, such as acknowledging our own subjective humanity, some confusing elements of the experience such as assigning corners of the room to different meanings and facing technical issues with motion capture. Overall, the intervention led to interesting discussions and created an important dichotomy for me with the very technical, tangible personal intervention I was carrying out.
As for next steps, I would like to explore the graywater unit further by building a more practical and integrated graywater system for home use. I am thinking about building water bricks that can be assembled into a water unit of any size, and can be 3D printed using recycled plastic.
Our collective continues its journey exploring different ways to create experiences that allow for the embodiment of the Other, thereby creating a space of expanded creativity.
In addition to these 2 avenues, I am thinking about working on an intervention possibly on drinking water in order to expose and create recognition around how wonderful it is that we have access to drinking water in our homes, considering how we constantly dispose of contaminated water.
