MICA - WdKA International Collab
3-Day Project Sprint
Soft Powers
interaction design, biology, electronics
interaction design, biology, electronics
The workshop group that I was a part of, Soft Powers, utilized a "Joule Thief" to steal energy from dead batteries. As for the conceptualization of this circuit, we used the relationship between enzymes and substrates as metaphor.
Just like the joule thief that uses dead batteries, enzyme-substrate relationship in biology uses as little energy as it can to operate.
To visualize the joule thief, we created a set of garments that when connected together, lit up. The formal decisions for these garments followed the principles that govern the enzyme-substrate complex that occur during a chemical reaction.
In three days, we produced a working prototype which included a set of garments that had origami sleeves, a working circuitry, a poster and a presentation.
Project Members: Xi Yu, Grace Kwon, Katey Noone, Samantha Vassar, Gizem Oktay, Iren Cooper
The Joule Thief uses a simple self-oscillating Tesla coil and a dead battery to steal energy from it. It can use nearly all of the energy in a single-cell electric battery, even far below the voltage where other circuits consider the battery fully discarded (or dead).
The enzyme-substrate complex that inspired the formal decisions behind the garment structures follow a similar principle. When an enzyme binds its substrate, it forms an enzyme-substrate complex. This complex lowers the activation energy of the reaction and promotes its rapid progression. After the substrate leaves the active site, the enzyme stays the same and a new product after is produced. Just like The Joule Thief, it uses as little as possible to create change.
