Skip to content

12. Skin Electronics

Research

As a maker, I love the idea of letting nature do it's thing instead of telling it what I want it to be - studying its tendencies and leaning into them - guiding it gently but letting it do most of the work.

Years ago I'd seen the work of Gavin and Alice Munro and it left a big impression on me. Gavin and Alice graft their own chairs out of vines. It can take more than a decade to create a single chair! But the results are so much fun.

1

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/29/style/video/full-grown-furniture-trees-art-cprog-ldn-digivid

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerrainBuilding/comments/hxw4v8/its_not_nearly_as_impressive_as_most_of_the_build/#:~:text=the_horned_wolf-,It's%20not%20nearly%20as%20impressive%20as%20most%20of%20the%20build,shrapnel%20makes%20good%20tiny%20crystals.

In architecture this process is called baubotanik and it's the process of using plant growth the create joints and stabilize a structure. The term was coined by Dr. Ferdinand Ludwig, a professor at the Technical University of Munich. So this is the first place my mind went as we discussed scaffold in the lecture this week.

2

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerrainBuilding/comments/hxw4v8/its_not_nearly_as_impressive_as_most_of_the_build/#:~:text=the_horned_wolf-,It's%20not%20nearly%20as%20impressive%20as%20most%20of%20the%20build,shrapnel%20makes%20good%20tiny%20crystals.

It didn't have a big hand in what I did this week but I'd love to explore this concept more and thought it was a cool reference people should know about.

As far as work that did help me this week I really enjoyed the previous projects of Fabricademy alumni Elsa Gil. Elsa worked with crystals and explains the properties of crystal growing nicely:

https://class.textile-academy.org/2022/elsa-gil/assignments/09.%20Textile%20as%20scaffold/

growing crystals ----

I also used the previous tutorial off Petra Garajova from 2022/23.

I started with crystals.

Annie and I talked about how crystals form.

When water is cold it is more dense than when it is warm. It's molecules move closer together. When it's hot they spread further apart. So if you were to add something soluble to the water, like salt, there is more space for the salt to fit in hot water. As it cools the molecules move closer again. So in theory - the salt won't have any more space to go and instead of dissolving it will form crystals.

picture of molecual chart. 2a

Steps:

So for my first experiment we did two opposite things with Epsom salt. The first operated on the principle of water evaporation to make crystals:

⦁ First I cleaned all my jars and utensils.

⦁ Then I started with 500ml of water in a jar and added Epsom salt until it reached the saturation point at room temperature. Unfortunately I lost my recording of the exact amount, but it was about x6 mason jars of salt. As we added salt, the volume of liquid began to grow because the salt was taking up more space. So we separated this salt water into three new jars. 3,4

⦁ The first two had 250mls of water each. ⦁ They went in the dehydrator which we left at 35 degrees Celsius for 24 hours. (one had a lining of plastic held with an elastic to see if the crystals adhered to its catenary-like shape. The second was a regular plastic container.

The third jar was used to test the principle of going from hot to cool:

⦁ We took this solution and added around 1/4 cup more water and re-heated it up in the microwave. ⦁ This went into a long narrow jar where we added a piece of synthetic mesh-like fabric that had some airflow. ⦁ We tried to glue crystals on it so more would be apt to stick. We left this jar out at room temperature.

5

After 24hrs film like crystals had indeed started forming on the bottoms of my dehydrator containers. It also started floating on the top. I probably could have taken some of these as seed crystals but I wanted it to keep dehydrating so I left this containers where they were.

5aa,a,b,c

My long strip of fabric had a light dusting of crystals where the water line touched the air. It has also stiffened under the water with an every lighter later of crystals but they were very heard to see. I took it out of the jar and hung it to dry.

For my next crystal experiments I used alum and Epsom salt. For both I used a ratio of: ⦁ 1000ml of water to 300g alum/ salt (that's 500ml to 150g of powder) ⦁ I filtered my solutions with a coffee filter and separated it in various jars

I did a bunch of tests as seen below. These ones were alum:

6,7,8,9,10 captions

These ones were Epsom salt:

12,b captions

I put the last of my solution in a few petri dishes and stuck them in the dehydrator. This time I turned it up to 45 degrees Celsius for 18hrs.

In the morning not much had happened to any of my suspended elements. The milkweed pod was the only test that seemed to have a few small crystals growing but they were hard to see.

13

The petri dishes however did have a film growing - just like the initial plastic container tests. I left them all to continue evaporating.

24,25,26

In summary I think I will continue playing with my ratios of salt to water. I found I needed a much higher ratio of salt to water than Petra's suggestion of .... to finally start seeing the salt stop dissolving. In none of my tests did I feel like I truly hit the solubility point because with time the salt always just kept dissolving. But it did start to take longer and longer. It might have had more to do with the speed of the water cooling too. More tests are needed to isolate the most likely factor.

For my next "scaffold" tests I went back to my old friend Sodium Alginate + Glycerin. I wanted to experiment with creating a mould like __ __ concrete technique.

I made a frame using fishing line, and a frame with nails. I did a truckers hitch knot which was the best for securing the fishing line since it's slippery.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zvUB6AGWHQ0

14,15,

I also pulled a bunch of offcuts from the trash that someone had used for a different project. They were interesting shapes so I used them as additional moulds.

My base recipe was as follows. 12g alginate 30 g glycerin 400ml water

Plus

Hardening solution: 10ml of Calcium Chloride 100ml water

I ultimately doubled this recipe so I could do different tests as follows:

MILKWEED FLOSS: I blended the milkweed floss thoroughly in a food processor.

Test C 2.07 g Milk week floss 251.64g alginate-glycerin

13a,13b,16

COFFEE: This was my medium particle test I wanted to see how much the coffee reinforced the solution.

Test 1 1 tbsp of Coffee grinds 20g of alginate glycerin solution

13c

Test 2 1tbsp coffee 40g of alginate glycerin solution

Test 3 1tbsp coffee 60g of alginate glycerin solution

Test 4 1tbsp coffee 80g of alginate glycerin solution

CARBON: This was my small particle test. I wanted to see how much small particles reinforced the solution.

Test A 1 1tbsp carbon powder 15g alginate glycerin

Test B 2 1tbsp carbon powder 120g alginate glycerin

SUMAC: This was my "decorative" test. I eyeballed the rations here because I only had a small amount of my "matrix" aka alginate-glycerin left.

Test D: Sumac + alginate glycerin ( my left over amount) I added the sumac "to taste" based on the colour saturation I wanted which changed as it blended.

NOTCHES

For the Notches, my base recipe was:

12g alginate 400ml water

Plus

Hardening solution: 10ml of Calcium Chloride 100ml water

I called these tests "Notches" because the moulds I was focused on had little notches in them. When they dry I'd like to see if they can slot the small pieces together for further reinforcement. I also had left overs but I still considered these additional shapes as part of the "notches" batch.

21

A - 1 tbsp pine needles 2 tbps alginate

B - 1 tps 1tpsp alginate

C-

1tbsp carbon 2 tbsp alginate

16,17, 18, 19, 22, 23

RESULTS:

about your images..delete the tip!!

  1. Remember to credit/reference all your images to their authors. Open source helps us create change faster together, but we all deserve recognition for what we make, design, think, develop.

  2. remember to resize and optimize all your images. You will run out of space and the more data, the more servers, the more cooling systems and energy wasted :) make a choice at every image :)

This image is optimised in size with resolution 72 and passed through tinypng for final optimisation. Remove tips when you don't need them anymore!

get inspired!

Check out and research alumni pages to betetr understand how to document and get inspired

References & Inspiration

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

  • Two images side-by-side

describe what you see in this image describe what you see in this image


Tools

Process and workflow

My sketches are ...

This schematic 1 was obtained by..

This tutorial 2 was created using..

footnote fabrication files

Fabrication files are a necessary element for evaluation. You can add the fabrication files at the bottom of the page and simply link them as a footnote. This was your work stays organised and files will be all together at the bottom of the page. Footnotes are created using [ ^ 1 ] (without spaces, and referenced as you see at the last chapter of this page) You can reference the fabrication files to multiple places on your page as you see for footnote nr. 2 also present in the Gallery.

Code Example

Use the three backticks to separate code.

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
  // initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output.
  pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
}

Results

Video

From Vimeo

Sound Waves from George Gally (Radarboy) on Vimeo.

From Youtube

---

---

Fabrication files

  1. File: xxx ↩

  2. File: xxx ↩