Emma Harriet Wright

Home Grown is a bio-based collection of objects created as alternative tools to interact with our digital products. Inspired by the lack of mindfulness regarding the sourcing and recycling of materials for technology, Home Grown has been sourced from local materials from the UK & Ireland and created using traditional craft techniques. It uses ambient technology as a visual language to uncover the relationship between these objects and the user, exploring how levels of care towards these within our daily interactions, can create a deeper understanding and longevity within the everyday object.  

This work explores local conductive and bio-based materials that could create speculative alternatives for the current multinational ingredient list within technologies today, replacing the metal components and interfaces whilst reducing the material, and the making process, to a localised area. 

Generating stories and thoughts on mindfulness towards the everyday objects in our home, not treating the object as ‘us and them’ but a cohabiting together. Bringing mindfulness into our daily interactions with the environment.  

Essentially Home Grown is not about generating a ‘Hero’ solution or idea to save the planet, but stimulating alternative materials, methods and stories of interaction to create more mindful approaches towards the everyday object. 

Although this object may not be a speculative alternative for a traditional home object, this story creates an awareness of how many objects provide selfless acts of care to the end user. 

This blanket is mindful of user interaction with it. If placed on a chair it detects movement with pressure sensors, sending a gentle reminder if the user has not moved, or changed position in a while, which is needed within many stationary working positions.  

Although this blanket does not require much fuss, it does require a medium level of humidity within the room. It sends a gentle reminder to raise humidity levels when they are low, giving it a gentle spritz when needed. 

This blanket is designed to remind us to respect the objects we use around us by providing a more active form of care for the objects needs, even if this doesn’t directly relate to ours.

This touchpad is part of a series of objects that incorporated this bio-based technology with tapestry weaving techniques, to create a series of stories about mindfulness and co-designing with the environment.  

Using seasonal performance within the biomaterials to initiate ideas around co-designing with nature and its seasons, moves away from universal design practises, and applies concepts that orientate around a community’s local materials with traditional making techniques. 

This touchpad enjoys resting but also enjoys user interaction. It can withstand long hours of use, however there is still a limit. If the user has been continuously at work with no breaks, the touchpad becomes unsettled and in need of a break, sending a reminder to the user when the limit has been breached.  

This object creates a gentle reminder to be more mindful of the objects and space around you, and how you interact with them, without taking advantage. The care relationship is reciprocal, with the touchpads need for a break reflecting the needs of the user.  

This light switch questions the multinational ingredient in many of today’s technological products using locally sourced naturally conductive materials, reducing the extensive ingredient list to a select few, as well as replacing the exhaustive mining of metals with natural circular material streams.  

This is also the perfect example of an everyday object that goes unnoticed but plays a key role within our homes. This light switch enjoys people's company and interactions, but if it is switched on for a period of time without anyone present, it will become upset as it has been forgotten about.  

The light switch will send a signal to alert the user that it has been left unnoticed and wasting energy, creating a reminder that we must always be aware of the everyday habits that have the potential to manage our energy consumption. 

A key development was the visual language and what this would look like between the user and the object?

Sound interactions required extra components such as a speaker. Whilst a written language seemed sterile compared to creating a visual language that would change colour and movement over time.

When it came to creating these material conversations between the object and the user, Emma tried to capture the movement of the sea developed from her research and mark making. With the materials emotional ‘states’ changing and developing as the user interacted with the object over time.