Noah:

A hoodie designed to comfortably provide quick, fast, and easy protection to its user during this insane period whilst also still being fashionable. There're many versions but for the one designed and put together, the project is a hoodie that has a zipper halfway in the hood so when zipped provides a face mask with a removable filter allowing it to wash easier.

The project engages in the whole PPE idea during this crisis going on. Its purpose is to provide easy, reusable PPE for normal people that are on the go and at the ready without taking up space in bags or pockets. The project helps normal people around the globe who can put money towards a multi-use sweatshirt. It doesn’t raise that many questions but some that have come up through the production process have been along the lines of, “How could you design it differently?”, and, “In what ways can you add more to this or make it slightly different?” which made us think about the project differently resulting in us adding and taking away some components to make it better than it was. The hoodie is for normal, everyday people who go throughout their day in the public either in need of a mask, in need of more space, or even in need of a more comfortable way to keep clean and safe. For example, if there was a person who needs to take public transportation but doesn’t feel right going on the train because of their lack of PPE, they could just put it on before they leave the house, zip up, and go about their day on the train or just even outdoors. The basic technology in the project would honestly be just through the diverse ways to zip it, it’s just a hoodie that can zip more than usual but another idea/variant of the hoodie is a pull-up mask. What’s technically innovative about the project, even though it’s just a hoodie, is that it’s more advanced than just a full zip hoodie but still as simple as it. It differs from other hoodies because it provides more protection, space, and comfortability, unlike the normal hoodie. The physical interactions are the zipper used to zip up and down the hoodie, and another one to remove the filter inside the hoodie.

A documentary about avant-garde composer Harry Partch. Broadcast on the BBC. 

American musical iconoclast Harry Partch believed that the 12-tone octave used for centuries in western music was fundamentally wrong, and so developed his own 43-note scale and sculpted instruments on which to play his music. Distancing himself from society, he lived a nomadic existence for much of his life, but his concept of "musical theatre" has influenced composers as diverse as Tom Waits and Philip Glass.

Purpose: Explore how to manipulate materials and sounds through everyday trash, junk, simple tools, and fabrication methods to create a new one-of-a-kind musical instrument.

Description: Students will create a sound device by utilizing household items and recycled materials.

Start by exploring the following:

• Resonance (Experimenting with the size and shape of your instrument)
• Input (Activating your instrument - blow, hit, strum, tap)
• Output (Manipulation of sound by changing pitch and volume)

The Challenge:

Students should be able to perform a well-known composition or an original composition with their fabricated instrument. Get creative!

Deliverables: 

Post to your remote learning portfolio: 

• Instrument name
• List of materials used
• 1-2 precedent images
• Process images
• 1 Sketch
• 2 Final prototype images (try to use a solid background)
• 1 Final instrument demo video 

Optional Next Steps:

Make yourself a one-man-band! Us an app like "acapella" to record over yourself playing your instrument for a fuller performance. 

You’re probably a lot more familiar with the subtle details of your home now than you have been in a long time. From the crack in the living room floor to those same three spices in all of your dad's cooking to the time of the evening when, like clockwork,  your mom turns on the news.

The mundane can either provide comfort or drive you up the wall. It is also a perfect canvas for innovation.

1. Identify one experience, one ritual, and one physical characteristic of your home life, and note them in your sketchbook or on a piece of paper. You may have to write down a couple of ideas before you find one that you like best.

Experience: A direct observation or participation in an event. For example: eating your dad’s mac & cheese, sinking into the softness of your couch, smelling the magnolia tree blooming in your garden, hearing your sister’s zoom meeting from the other room.

Ritual: An act or series of acts regularly repeated in an ongoing manner. For example: calling grandma every Sunday, brushing your teeth every morning, setting the table for dinner every night, eating pancakes every Saturday morning, or watching cartoons with your little brother after school time is over.

Object/Physical Characteristic: A distinguishing trait, quality, or property. For example: the crack in your ceiling that you never noticed before, how you can hear your mom’s zoom calls through the air vent in your room, the one wobbly leg on your desk.  

2. Draw a sketch for one experience, ritual, and object you’ve chosen. For the experience and ritual, it may be helpful to draw a storyboard, or a couple of frames that show that ritual at different stages.
3. Re-imagine the experience, ritual, and object. Some prompts for that brainstorming are:
   • How would you improve or “fix” it?
   • Can you make it more playful or fun?
   • Do you want to diminish or highlight this experience/ritual/object?
   • Can you game-ify it?
   • Can you make it more communal (able to be used by multiple people simultaneously)?
   • Can you add a whimsical element to make people smile?

Write down a couple of ideas for each.

4. For your favorite idea, draw a sketch of how you would create an intervention in the original experience, ritual, and object. Again, a storyboard might be useful here.

Deliverable

For each category (experience, ritual, object) make a post in your Remote Learning Portfolio with the:

1. Title of the experience/ritual/object
2. Sketch of that thing as it is
3. Sketch of your imagined intervention, and what it is intended to do.

Optional Next Steps:

Choose your favorite sketched idea, and make a quick sketch prototype.