A 2nd idea: The Privacy Seed tree
We are at week of fab academy and while I’m waiting for my mould to be milled I decided to write down some of the thought I collected on a new project idea for an artistic installation.
The inspiration
The sources of inspiration are multiple.
While listening to Marta’s and Daniel’s project idea I got curious about artistic projects and the idea of building structures where people could enter it, interact and be part of the performance.
The other inspiration is the Climate Ribbon’s tree that I saw during the COP21 in Paris.
The ribbons tree in Paris 
Pictures from The Climate Ribbons project
The idea
My final idea is to build an artistic installation to challenge the intersections of personal data and privacy, of natural and digital world.
The main part will be a “tree” like milled structure. The tree has a natural shap at the bottom but the branches transform in a shape that resembles the trace of a digital board.
The tree trunk will be hollow so that people can walk inside it.
Inside of the trunk will be an object with the shape of anatomical heart. By holding the heard between their hands people can interact with the structure.
An example is that by holding the heart, a sensor would read the heartbeat of the person and use this signal to light the tree branches, generate sounds.
One last feature is that the person heartbeat would be used to seed a random number generator and publish random number on Internet: in this way personal data transform in anonymous digital information on-line.
The entire project itself would be made with open tools, software and hardware so that could be reproduced by others and start a tree forest :)
Some sketches
During the CNC milling week I started sketching a simplified version of how the tree structure could be built: 
Here are some details of the traces carved on the tree trunk: 
I also built a 3D model of a smaller first prototype that could be built for testing on smaller scale 
During the moulding and casting week I’m thinking to create a heart mould. Will start from sample shapes available on thingverse (eg. Solid Anatomical Heart by huntgather98 - CC-BY-SA): 
Plan and next steps
A simple MVP (to complete pass the FabAcademy exam :)) could be composed of the heart shape, electronics only and a small card board tree.
- Heart shape
- Board with heart rate sensors
- LED lights that make the heart glow
- Small cardboard tree shape
This could be used for testing a later add more features incrementally:
- Bigger tree structure where people can walk inside
- Additional light feedback from the heart, to the trunk and branches
- Random number generator software connected to the Internet
- Website, API and/or mobile app to access the data
- Pressure sensor that turns on the heart only when squeezed
- Sound feedback of the heartbeat