Case Study Configurations? ethnography, actor network theory, Social practice theory, art interventions, digital methods
## Theoretical Repertoires
The impact of my literature review is the enriching of theoretical repertoires, which means all of the above can be unpacked. I pay attention differently now.
- Just using mass produced waste or an existing manufactured item like this rather than building a fresh expensive photo-lithographic microfluidic plate, using 'cheap' domestic sources, similar to Alex's students using vinyl records, means discussions can be had about everything from supply chains, to the 'social' cost of mass manufacturing and it's histories of imperialist labor extraction
- This coincides with the of tracking supply chains and energy toxicity; Adrian and I have suggested adding fields to the BOM
.tsvfiles to include where it was made, by whom and some sort of energy/carbon useage. - So for my wearable sensor badge we'll be calculating and including this information as part of the tutorial and documentation of the kit. We want to normalise the practice of including bodily material histories.
- Coomassie Blues: an idea Rod & I had about exposing the supply chains and histories of the day to day materials used in microbiology lab practices
- Staying with the trouble by using things
already-dug-out-of-the-ground - Callback: The Biol387 students use Wilkos as their source for studying the genetic geneaology of yeast
- They help me when I need to explain critical kits to science students and scientists
- Using an ESP32 integrated circuit attracts makers interested in IoT; it's the arduino of IoT. It can start conversations about scale & micromilling in electronics production; and then alongside:
- Why the algae? why the annoying externalities excluded from manufacturing?
- A good chip needs to be isolated from the world and you need to make a million of them before young people can access them... etc
- How do we protect rivers from the market imperative to make LEDs for £0.001?
- Adrian McEwen and
- It's part of a series of FoldScope 'add-ons' that I've been making inspired by Lucy Suchman's 'artful integrations'
- Pi Zero Camera Twitch streaming Add-on based on Makespace Live
- A wearable add on to help steady foldscopes in the field for wheelchair users
- Microfluidic stickers to capture microfluidic environments
- Deciding to place my work in the 'domestic' or on a golf course, or in a makerspace; i.e. definitively in the social and not some independent ontology of art is a specific decision. It's a political 'cut'. My enriched repertoire has made me see what cuts I am making.
Unboxing the PDMS Death Disco: A Case Study of FoldScope by making add-on Kits
Critical Kit PDMS tweet with video of algae
I have been making microfluidic environments by making impressions of discarded electronics in the makerspace, based on Alex Benedetto and I talking about doing this in domestic environments; like kitchen cloths electronics, utensils or textiles.
This is partly a review of the FoldScope which Im using as a case study in my literature review.
It has all the intersections of biology, engineering, well meaning utility and agency for frugal science in 'intractable' places