OPEN Expo: Red Energy
This project was made by Daphne Wong-A-Foe, Veerle van Reisen & Peng Song
Hi, there! Thank you for your interest in this project. On July 4th, 8pm CET we were featured on a talkshow featuring works by creative student researchers of the Media Technology MSc program at Leiden University, exploring the theme "OPEN", that was streamed live from our Media Technology Youtube channel.
Check the front page for more information about the OPEN expo.
About 'Red Energy'
The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the challenges of social injustice and our personal relationships. A great reset is needed to shape the post COVID-19 era, prioritising the need to redefine how we treat our planet and our social contract.
So, we need to take better care of ourselves and the world by starting with letting go of our anger and thinking about our footprint.
Psychologists strongly advise to express one's anger as it has many benefits to avoid repressed emotions. It is proven that it is possible not to only control anger but also to transform it into effective action --> generating sustainable energy.
At the same time, we, as creative researchers, exploit this project as a survey to find out what people are really angry about. By combining research, art and technology, we aim at creating a better reality. So, WHAT ARE YOU ANGRY ABOUT?
Our project lets you SMASH some stuff and LIGHT UP A WHOLE CITY or charge your phone!
Technicalities
There are a multitude of different battery technologies available: disposable and rechargeable. We use LiPo (Lithium Polymer) battery which can store power generated from piezo electric sensors. When pressure is applied to certain materials like crystal, electrical charges are generated in proportion to the friction applied (see image below). The word "piezo" is derived from the Greek word meaning pressure.
Furthermore, our program gives the user feedback and motivation on the sustainable generated energy. Via the Arduino, the Processing environment gets information on how many times the user is hitting, which translates onto the loading of the visually displayed battery. This has nothing to do with the charging of the LiPo battery with the piezoelectricity sensors, but is purely for visual purposes.
If interested, please view our Arduino and Processing code of our feedback system hosted on GitHub. And lastly, in the illustration below, you see the schematic diagram of the piezoelectricity sensors circuit.
PROCESS & SET-UP:
As creative scientists we went through an iterative process in order to come up with the best possible
solutions for our project. We first visualised our ideal set-up in a public environment and worked towards that.
Furthermore, we came up with a bunch of different hitting object ideas, as a common hammer would be to heavy,
dangerous and perhaps boring. In the illustrations below, you get a look and feel of our ideation.
All in all, it all came together as we wanted as can be seen in our after movie.
Lastly, we also provided our visitors and audience in the park with a flyer that tells them more about
the project, expo and our studies. The flyer contains a QR-code that they can scan and which will lead them
to our portfolio site (this page). It also invites them to join our live talkshow, so consider this an
extra promotion. Below, you can find the A5 flyer that was printed and handed out to over 30 people.
DATA COLLECTION & USER EXPERIENCE
It was very evident that people were really angry. 2/3 of the audience were more angry about something personal.
They had the opportunity to write it down on a sticky note and rampage on it. These sticky notes were kept as art
on our sign and as data for our creative research. See the image below to get a feel of what makes people angry.
During our exposition in Van der Werfpark Leiden, 16 participants interacted with our project (11 male and 5 females).
Most participants were between the age of 18-30 years old. Participants could choose between three options. They could
use one, two or three options to release their anger, namely Covid-19, Black Lives Matter and something personal that
could be written on a post-it. As mentioned before and shown below most people chose a personal reason. Two
participants used all three options.
Although some personal reasons were Corona related, it is interesting to see that not everyone is angry about the
Covid-19 situation. One participant said that he was satisfied with the current Corona situation, because of
different benefits including working from home. The personal reasons were divergent. Some were specific, such as
the names of people whereas other were more global, such as deception.
All our participants were enthusiastic about the project and had a positive experience. Some participants even mentioned that their mind condition improved.
FUTURE WORK:
A restriction of our project is that you have to be at a location. An online version could be a solution for this, where sound (screaming) or force (hitting the keyboard or mouse) makes sure that people can release their anger. Because of time constrains we couldn’t realize an online version.
Besides this, in this project there is only one way to release your anger, this is by hitting with a hammer on the subject placed on the table. There are also other ways to release you anger, such as hitting a punch bag or shouting. These ways could be more appropriate for certain people and can be added to the project.
Furthermore, the energy that is created is enough to turn on small led lights or charge you phone, but generated energy is not enough to, for example, illuminate all lamps in a house.
Additionally, to improve the analysis, more participants are needed and a follow-up interview would be valuable to get insights in the reason to choose for certain options and mind condition of the participants.