Always a big fan of projects that directly apply new technologies to specific problems for people around the world, I loved this one at first site (Wired's Nextfest).
NOMADS AND NANOMATERIALS
Sheila Kennedy, Principal Investigator, Saarinen Professor, University of Michigan
Frano Violich, Saarinen Professor, University of Michigan
Keith VanderSys, Lecturer, University of Michigan
The NOMADS & NANOMATERIALS project at the University of Michigan explores the intersection of design research, technology development and social action. The project focuses on the needs of the nomadic Huichol (Wirrįrica) people who live in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. Visiting Professors Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich along with 13 graduate students from the University of Michigan embarked on a journey into the remote Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico to meet the nomadic Huichol people and develop prototypes for solid state lighting in the rugged Huichol territories. There, they confronted a series of paradoxes: how to address the need for affordable electrical lighting that would require no fixed installations, how to re-imagine the form and materiality of electrical infrastructure, and how to both transform and optimize solid state technology through design strategies that promote its adaptation and use by a different culture.
The PORTABLE LIGHT project takes a pragmatic approach to these questions; considering how existing HBLED technology in high volume, low cost "first world" markets can be adapted and used to benefit daily life in the "third world". Working directly with high brightness light emitting diodes (HBLEDs) and photo-voltaic materials, students combined ancient Mesoamerican textile weaving traditions and recent advances in solid state electronic technologies to create cost-effective new models for a portable, energy-harvesting textiles--a radically sustainable form of solid state lighting that is integrated into a textile medium. The Nomads project will continue this fall at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Posted by sinergi at January 9, 2006 12:39 PM