Final Project

During Fab Academy I want to create a collection of wearables that explores tensions caused by the juxtaposition of our private and collective lives. With the world rapidly changing our private lives are becoming more and more public whilst we're becoming less private in public. The individual freedoms that in my childhood seemed a given are collectively being threatened. A lot of people know these things are happening, but they seem abstract and far removed from our daily lives. Through this collection I want to show that these developments affects all of us. Show that the our collective freedoms can only be fought for by collectives of individuals.

So what does this mean for my final project? SPACE WARS! One of the developments threating our freedom is invisible warfare. While we may feel individual freedom on the ground in Europe, above our heads wars are fought in our name. To make this less abstract I want to make a ring that through lights displays information about what satellites are currently above your head, and what they are doing there.

Research

To actually make realize this design 3 topics need researching:

design
fabrication
data

Design research

Wearables are the most private objects we take with us in public. So to find the best form to communicate satellite data I wanna delve into the world of wearables. During the academy I would like to research a range of wearables, both low and high tech. What is the history? What influence has this wearable had on society? How private, or public is it? What does it communicate to the wearer? And what does it communicate about the wearer to the public?

Fabrication research

A very important question is of course how do I make a wearable and what tech can I fit in there? This is exactly what I'm aiming to learn during Fab Academy. Every week I hope to gain a better understanding into the possibilities and limitations of fabrication in both fab labs and on an industrial scale.

Data research

For the data research I'm lucky to be in contact with Dimitri Tokmetzis from Follow the Money who is currently researching satellites as a NIAS fellow. For Fab Academy however the data research might be out of scope and I may use a controlled test environment for my final project.

Specs

shippable consumer product
real time data driven
end of life? recyclable/reusable

Sketch

I've been wanting to learn how to draw on the iPad for a while, turns out is pretty hard. Stay tuned for better sketches, this is embarrassing.

Notes

At Waag there's some really cool stuff relating to satellites happening that could be good inspiration for my final project, here I'll document what I learn while working in the lab.

The Space Lab at Waag is run by Miha, who has kindly sent me a list of inspirational sources and Zoénie handed me the really cool More-than-Planet Atlas a book by the Space Lab that challenges conventional, often technocratic ways of seeing and representing Earth.

Dimitri stopped by our lab for a meet with Henk, our Fab Lab lead and local instructor, to talk about some of the very nerdy details when it comes to satellites. It was really fun to listen to them share information and geek out over different satellite initiatives in the hacker and maker community.

Henk for instance is working on the FabSat: an initiative that aims to develop an open, Fab Lab-friendly approach for designing and building satellites and related infrastructure, making space systems accessible using the tools, skills and global network of Fab Labs around the world. He even gave a talk on this at the Fab Academy instructors bootcamp this year.

Dimitri in his turn tells us about the Common Space project: is a civil-society initiative that aims to build and operate an independent high-resolution Earth-observation satellite constellation dedicated to humanitarian, crisis, climate, and public-good uses, providing open, trusted satellite imagery that isn’t controlled by governments or commercial licensing restrictions.

Henk tells Dimitri and me about SatNOGS (Satellite Networked Open Ground Station), an open-source project that builds a global network of low-cost satellite ground stations, allowing anyone to receive data from satellites using affordable, often 3D-printed hardware. While this project only tracks known unclassified satellites, Dimitri knows a research paper about eavesdropping on unencrypted satellites.

Resources

Other ideas

Just cause it's fun, here's some ideas that didn't quite make it:

pimp my cargo bike
hand/body size fidget spinner for my neurodivergent babes, other stimming/pressure devices (or like a wapperman machine?!)
cat doorbell (send to Ricardo Marques)
e-ink keyboard
bead curtain interface