After designing shoes for W11 Composites Week, I've decided to focus my final project on designing dancing shoes. These shoes will utilize force sensors within the shoe that will allow the user to compose the music to the rhythm of their dance.                               

Due to recently learning that final projects need to be completed independently, I've chosen to consider redeveloping my project statement and what I would like to achieve for my final project. Although working with bacterial cellulose and algae-based textiles is incredibly interesting to me, it would require research that may not be possible within the timeline of Fab Academy. For now, I will continue with this concept.                               

For my final project for the Fab Academy, I, along with a fellow participant, plan on developing a self-contained growing unit that has the capability to grow either algea, hemp and/or kombucha. This was inspired by the work produced by Suzanne Lee, who investigates the growth of clothing through the use of bacterial cellulose. Lee uses the cellulose produced by millions of tiny bacteria grown in bathtubs of kombucha tea. For this proposal, we plan to design, make and develop a self-contained open source system which allows the easy extraction of either a bacterial leather, and/or a hemp/algea fibre in order to be used as a textile. Depending on the progression of the project, it would also be interesting to investigate the possibility of creating composites using the extracted materials.