The Makey Makey Cure for Insomnia; Or, the Reverse Jigglypuff Alarm Clock

I am super excited about the project I have been working on for the last few days, because now it finally works! Behold, the makey makey cure for insomnia! Or more concretely, a reverse alarm clock using a 3D printed Jigglypuff! Here is a video displaying it's remarkable effects:

How did I come up with this idea? In the Pokémon anime, it is a recurring gag for a wandering Jigglypuff that dreams of stardom to run into the main characters and start to sing. The problem is that a Jigglypuff's song causes anyone to hear it to fall asleep, thus causing the Jigglypuff to always get angry that people are falling asleep during their set. I wanted to recreate this scenario with the 3D printed Jigglypuff I made last week, and I thought the makey makey was the perfect solution!

So how does it work? First, the makey makey is connected to "Earth" (i.e. my finger) via the green alligator clip. Then, the blue alligator clip is connected to "Space" and the Jigglypuff object. I was having trouble with this endeavor at first because the filamnet that the Pokémon was made out of was not conductive. So I solved that problem by putting copper tape on the Jigglypuff's ears and completing the circuit by attaching the blue alligator clip to the copper tape on Jigglypuff. 

Now, whenever I touch the top of the Jigglypuff, the space bar on my computer should activate. How can I play a song with just pressing the space bar though? I already downloaded Jigglypuff's song online, so I could simply pull up iTunes and have it play the song when I pull up the file. But I wanted more of a challenge, so downloaded the application Soundplant and actually assigned the mp3 file for Jigglypuff's song to the space bar. With Soundplant in the background, all I have to do is just tap Jigglypuff and the song plays on its own!

It's just like an alarm clock, except it makes you fall asleep instead of waking you up! A cure for insomnia indeed! 

11. The Boy's Club is Adjourned

Last week had a significant portion devoted to lab time, which I considered both a blessing and a curse. While everyone else in class had projects they were dutifully working on, I was trying to brainstorm my next steps, wondering if I should dabble in the hacking fashion challenge or simply come up with a new project to fill up the time. After fiddling around with a piece of clothing I deemed “the jacket of many zippers,” trying to determine whether I could create an arm cannon á la Samus Aran, I decided to abandon my floundering project and turn to a 3D printing project. I wanted to create a 3D printable Pokémon alongside its own 3D Pokéball and spent much of the time modeling the Pokéball in Tinkercad before realizing I would not have enough time to print both the Pokémon and the Pokéball. I then decided to use a 3D model design for a Jigglypuff I found on My Mini Factory and the print turned out beautifully!

I think all of the focus on projects let to a much more muted and brief conversation on the readings last week, focusing on the juxtaposition of the disparities of the maker movement highlighted in Leah Buechley’s talk and inadvertently in the Make: media kit alongside the utopian visions of childhood wonderment in Innocent Experiments. I think one of the most important takeaways of the conversation was how women are perceived as the bane of curiousity and experimentation, which we see manifest in the targeted audience of the maker movement. The perception that dominates is that men, specifically white men, will be the ones designing and implementing the next great experiment and to practice innovation in our society is to leave these handymen to their own devices so they can create the next big thing. Yet, the formation of the “boy’s clubs” of science and making truly distorts the historical and contemporary experience of women, and people of color, as contributors to these disciplines and ways of doing. It’s the revisionist history that cherishes Watson and Crick, but fails to mention Rosalind Franklin. What I like about Rebecca Onion’s work is that she accepts these perceptions as intentionally created to exclude and define what truly is a tinkerer, an experimenter. It certainly isn’t the mom who is constantly worried her son will blow up the house (what a mess that would be!).

I think what the last two chapters of Innocent Experiments does well is to highlight the ways in which childhood curiosity is shaped and how it’s often not simply a formless phenomenon. The librarians using science fiction to appeal to space cadet kids knew that their actions “implicitly and explicitly claimed importance for their own field, which was doing such crucial work in helping children connect with science.”[1] Guiding children to their natural curiosities and allowing them to interact how they want with objects and the lessons they imparted was also a goal of Frank Oppenheimer and the Exploratorium. Onion zeroed on Oppenheimer’s desire to make science accessible to everyone, stating “if the Science Talent Search sought to support a new cohort of young scientists by creating a youth culture that accepted and rewarded their “talent,” Oppenheimer wanted to heal a larger culture separated from what he saw as the basic human instinct toward curiosity.”[2] In this, the ethos of “everyone can be makers” is brought to fruition with children exploring their interests through the narrative world of science fiction or the physical world of the museum. The boy’s club is permanently adjourned as the shapers of curiosity bring everyone from the next generation into the fold.

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[1] Onion, Rebecca. Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016), p. 119.

[2]  Onion, Innocent Experiments, p. 152.

Who's that Pokemon???

The .stl file of the Pokemon acquired from My Mini Factory; All design credit goes to user Jacky Chan: https://www.myminifactory.com/users/csl0304

It's Jigglypuff!

I was browsing My Mini Factory and came across this design for a 3D printed object that just happened to resemble my fiance's favorite Pokemon! So I decided to download it and print it out during class!

This was the perfect shade of filament to use! It turned out very nicely!

10. Symbols of Innovation: The Uncontrollable Sewing Machine and the Home Chemistry Sets

Broad and intangible thoughts being sewn together – that’s how I view our class discussions shaping up as we iterate through our reflections and critiques of the maker movement. The prism of science that we are currently looking through with Rebecca Onion’s book Innocent Experiments, and its relation to the tinkering and experimenting ethos of the maker movement, has focused our conversations and has us return to themes we have explored earlier in the course. In our critique of Barack Obama’s (painful in hindsight)“boundless optimism” in regards to the maker movement and scientific innovation, we went back to a theme we have explored before: is the maker movement being used “for good”? Should it? And are our perceptions of “bad” merely partisan? Or do they hold impartial merit? The prospect of the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security coopting the maker movement is troubling for those who see its potential for disrupting consumer capitalism. Yet, our ability to control the direction of the maker movement is out of our hands, simply because the pressure to innovate exceeds the boxes and boundaries we want to demarcate for our own personal agendas.

Think of the maker movement like one of those sewing machines from Lindsey’s class demonstration. After threading the needle, aligning the fabric, and pulling the presser foot down, all of the elements are set for a change to occur based on the interaction of these elements. Yet, this relies entirely on the amount of pressure applied to the pedal that operates the machine. Too little pressure applied – the needle doesn’t even break the fabric; hardly any change has occurred. Too much pressure applied – you lose control of the sewing machine and its rampant needle and the trajectory of the fabric is anyone’s guess. The amount of innovation, creativity, and money applied to the maker movement is like the pressure of a foot on a sewing machine peddle. Right now, the path of the maker movement is boundless as the innovation peddle is being stomped to the floor. Our debate on what the maker movement “should” be doing and where it “should” go makes no difference as more makers become involved in its creative cycle and we lose control of the needle making its interwoven threads.

The irony of using a sewing machine as an analogy for the maker movement is not lost on me. A key symbol of domesticity and femininity meant to resemble innovation seems like common sense in our current era, especially with the advent of electronic textiles. Yet, the historical context that surrounds gendered innovation must be addressed in order to foster the inclusivity in the maker movement that a symbol like a sewing machine allows. Onion’s retellings of the sale of home chemistry sets demonstrates how exclusion was the primary method of defining innovation that labeled boys as the “future” of science in the United States. The marketing and packaging of these materials proposed that boys who bought them were preparing themselves for “manly” career pursuits, as the “nature of science [was] perceived as a military, industrial, and entrepreneurial pursuit.” [1] The predetermining of these boys’ futures through gendered advertising had the effect of separating girls from innovative pursuits, as their goals were perceived to be in direct contrast to the boys’ mischief and experimentation. Onion further details,  “Home chemistry labs—sometimes in truth, and often in legend—existed in opposition to mothers’ efforts at imposing domestic order, a fact that amplified the perceived maleness of the space, further excluding girls.”[2] The lineage that connected boys to the sphere of innovation was not available for girls, whose predetermined path was down the corridor of domesticity. The symbol of the home chemistry set as a tool for tinkering carried gendered elements that ultimately impacted disparities in how girls perceived themselves as being willful participants in the scientific realm. Therefore, caution must be exercised when deciding what constitutes making and what doesn’t, because the tools and materials that we use to make things transform into symbols that include or exclude, thus determining the composition of the future of making and its movement.

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[1] Onion, Rebecca. Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016), p. 47.

[2] Onion, Innocent Experiments, p. 69. 

3-Star Amazon Reviews of Crafted

Some unique perspectives from people who wanted a bit more from this short documentary.: