Designing with Alganyl:
A Hands-on Exploration of Biodegradable Plastics
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Call for Participation - registration closed
We invite you to participate in the Studio on Designing with Alganyl at the ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI). Due to the rising concerns regarding the environmental impact of plastics in the packaging, fashion, and electronics industries, designers, material scientists, and HCI researchers have started to explore new materials and methods that consider designing with sustainable alternatives to plastic. In this studio, we will explore a bioplastic called Alganyl, a highly customizable material made from an algae extract called agar. Through this studio, we hope to actively teach participants about sustainability and material-centered design methods through working with Alganyl in a hands-on manner. Together we will create completely biodegradable environment sensing wearables and discuss our somatic experiences when working with a new material.
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(Journal Paper) Fiona Bell, Ella McQuaid, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Alganyl: Cooking Sustainable Clothing. Diseña 20: Design and Somatic Sensibilities. Article 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.20.Article.4
(Conference Paper) Fiona Bell, Latifa Al-Naimi, Ella McQuaid, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Designing with Alganyl. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3501308 (Daejeon, Republic of Korea (virtual) Feb. 13-16, 2022).
(Conference Workshop) Fiona Bell and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Designing with Alganyl: A Hands-on Exploration of Biodegradable Plastics. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1-5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3503669 (Daejeon, Republic of Korea (virtual) Feb. 13-16, 2022).
Studio Agenda
Intro: We will introduce ourselves and participants will get to briefly get to know each other.
Overview of Alganyl: We will give an overview of Alganyl (how we developed it, customized it, and made applications from it).
Making Alganyl: We will go over how to make Alganyl from scratch in the kitchen. (Note: We encourage participants to make Alganyl samples at home from scratch before the workshop so that they can make Alganyl applications during the workshop. Please refer to our instructions for how to make Alganyl)
Making with Alganyl: Participants will then retrieve their Alganyl samples and we will teach them different fabrication techniques such as cutting and heat sealing for making applications from Alganyl.
Hands-on Exercise: We will walk participants through the creation of Alganyl flowers as a way to get comfortable making with Alganyl.
Alganyl Applications: Participants will be given time to either make or think of future creative applications for Alganyl.
Discussion: We will facilitate an open discussion regarding the participants' experiences making and making with Alganyl and the impact of biomaterials on HCI research.
Closing Notes: We will debrief what we did and say goodbye!
Organizers
Fiona Bell - ATLAS Institute, University of Colorado Boulder
Mirela Alistar - ATLAS Institute and Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder
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