My plans for Dinacon were to develop An Underwater Studio Practice, but when I arrived and began going underwater to crochet and (thanks to Kitty) discovered plarn (plastic yarn), this practice lead me to write a story about ocean plastic as the result of our human ability to make.

>> https://www.dinacon.org/2018/07/24/crochetteering-a-tale-of-fishy-innovation/
>> https://www.dinacon.org/2018/06/02/an-underwater-studio-practice/
Flickr set >> https://www.flickr.com/photos/plusea/albums/72157696220704072

Chapter 1: The FPEA

One day all the fish in all the oceans complained to all the humans on all the lands about all the plastic in all the oceans. The humans were upset by this complaint be- cause although they had been suspecting for some time that all their plastic ending up in all the oceans was not a good thing, they had not done anything about it. The humans told the fish their complaint was unwarranted and continued to ignore a fact. The fish told the humans that they would result to drastic measures and threatened with bio-terrorism. Their equivalent of suicide bombing would mean swarms of fish would swim to highly toxic water to intoxicate themselves with pollution that would travel all the way up the food-chain to kill “innocent” humans.

This posed a serious thread that the humans could not choose to ignore. A committee was voted into action. This committee met for several week to come up with a very creative solution. And this was their conclusion:

Plastic is in fact a valuable resource and the fish have not been able to recognise this. Humans must educate fish on how they can use this resource to their own benefit.

As part of this Fish Plastics Education Act, makers and plastics technologists were recruited to go underwater and teach the fish how to make useful things from the plastics in their oceans.
After only a few months of running this programme it was deemed a huge success. This fish were thrilled by all the possibilities available to them and had many ideas for “up-cycling” the plastics in their oceans. But there was a problem, the fish were not able to make the things the humans were showing them themselves. Without hand and big enough brains, they could not man the machines or manipulate the materials. The human answer to this dilemma was to hire a fill-time crew of professional makers to spend their days underwater making whatever the fish told them to out of plastic.

Chapter 2: Plarn
Implementing the Fish Plastic Education Act was a huge undertaking that required all the humans in all the lands to cooperate. Although lands in which little or no fish were part of the traditional diet were reluctant to make as much effort.
Shortly after signing the Act, the trans-national Fish Plastic Education Association was founded and began recruiting maker all over the world. These makers put together a catalog of designs that could be made from the plastic in the oceans. The catalog was printed on recycled ocean plastic paper and posted in every body of water.
The orders division of the FPEA began taking orders right away and makers all over the world were put to work to fulfil these orders.
While the first edition of the order catalog contained designs for custom 3D printed prosthesis, sports equipment and educational games, it was soon updated with designs based on what the fish were actually ordering. More than 90% of all orders were for fashion items – clothing and accessories.
Among the first most popular rends were stripy tank tops and cuttlefish skirts crochet from plarn – a yarn made from discarded plastic bags. Especially in coastal regions with high fish populations the FPEA began recruiting large numbers of crochetteers to fulfil these orders.
Crochetteers, as they called themselves, established a whole new profession around the craft of crochet plarn fashion. Quickly moving on from stripy vests to high-tech wearables and PE-Textiles (Plastic Electronic Textiles).

Chapter 3: Crochetteering

Fish, it turned out, were much more tech-savvy than humans, within only a few years every fish in the ocean was a digital native. As a collective super-organism, fish were the first to adopt ocean-wide wearable technology which they used primarily for data collection. Just like everything else that they depended on in their lives, the data they collected, belonged to The Ocean. The Ocean accumulated this data and every fish had unrestricted access so that they could know the effects of their behaviour on their ecosystem.
Crochetteers were at the forefront of developing these underwater wearable technologies and the first makers to fully comply with the fish’s demand for a zero waste, fully circular innovation process. “Crochetteering” because the term used to describe this holistic techno-craft invention process that only considers solutions that solve for the Whole Earth Equation (WEE) with a time-factor of <5 years. This means that every design in the Ocean Plastic Design Catalog has it’s full life-cycle planned in ahead. Resources remain resources. Waste becomes obsolete.

Chapter 4: Fishy Factors

Crochetteering’s success relied on some fishy factors. These became more apparent, the harder humans tried (and failed) to replicate crochetteering’s success for themselves.
Most notable of these factors was the fish’s concept of “The Ocean” – their inability to perceive themselves as individual entities, separate from their habitat, and their inability to to comprehend the concept of waste – proved impossible for humans to replicate.
In attempts to attain such fish states of mind, humans tried many things. Some modified their genes, few went to live among them, many studid them intensely. But to this date human have not been successful in evolving their individuality back into a super-organismic state of mind.
With over 1/3 of the world’s human population now employed by the FPEA, global production of plastics has decreased by more than half, simply because makers are so busy making and remaking ocean plastic designs for fish that they don’t have time to make for humans.
While the majority of makers employed by the FPEA state they are happy living out their lives in service of the fish, there has recently been an increase in makers asking “What Next?” – must humans remain sub-servant to other life-forms in order to fulfil their role in the Whole Earth Equation?

Crochetteering – a tale of fishy innovation
A good-night story for Dinaconnaisseurs

europe is at peace here
i’m going to need to add wine to the stew
we should have our own ali express and sell our sinuses to china

we are sensors
squeeze, we need to squeeze
maybe there was another civilization before…

do you want to solder one?
yeah, yeah, yeah

i’m in love with machines but i’m fighting with it,
because what does it have to do with people

whatever is bitter is calming

you exhale all your breath and then we go in the water
the cold water helps the oxygen to go into every cell
every lazy cell

3D printing is all about making fast objects
ephimeral sculptures that grow

i’m not talking about the global dumpling
planetairy dumpings, every culture has their own fillings
food, a medium for understanding how we make sense of the world

sedimentation, fermentations, destillation
i thought they were green last night

observe what is happening right now
on the toilet, the seat keeps falling down
common sense

there’s an elegance to a circuit having minmal components
maybe the stop button can be added afterwards, this is just reset
i really like that machines run on electricity

psychoactive plants of the northern hemosphere are more demanding
i always imagine jumping into the other wall and bouncing off
the effect is more pleasant than the first one

can i have some of your thyme?

while downloading the plan we listen to radioactivity
it was really custom toys in russia, burning plastic bags and dripping
fermenting knowledge, to preserve it and make it more digestable

where does the abuse start?
power in the hands of a giant company
it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

knowledge is value
i just want to enjoy
YOLO

soca souvenier
made by an artisan 3D printer
we created something that will be here for at least 100 000 years

tina, tina, what’s up?
we have a plan
next year we will sell out sinuses to china

i still have to shave

The Library of Missing Parts is an ongoing and ever-expanding effort to represent real-world phenomena in a symbolic language compatible with the flow of electricity.

The field of electronics sorely lacks symbolic representations for some of the most relevant parts of any electronic circuit. These missing parts include humans, animals, nature and the built environment – including all objects and artifacts that make up the everyday reality of our lives and the circuits that inhabit it.

This lack of common symbols to represent the full spectrum of inter-dependencies in which each electronic circuit is embedded has lead electrical engineering to develop an extremely narrow perspective. As a result, the electronic devices in our lives are becoming less and less nuanced, more and more bland.

Time’s Up circuit diagram:

PIFcamp 2018circuit diagram:

Making Sense Together circuit diagram:

Sense Yourself Making circuit diagram:

// At some point I would love to provide a footprints and schematic symbols library for KICAD and other PCB design tools.

While running KOBAKANT’s KOBA ETextile Tailorshop, I attempted to capture a behind-the-scenes window into my expectations for the project and how they changed over time as we interacted with our customers and continued to dream about potential future customers.

I used my typewriter and twitter to write and publish these letters on an irregular, but sometimes weekly basis.

Links:
#dearFutureKobaCustomer >> https://twitter.com/hashtag/dearFutureKobaCustomer?src=hashtag_click
KOBA >> http://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/
Photos >> https://www.flickr.com/photos/plusea/sets/72157703356103685/

KOBA Schneiderei für Elektronische Textilien is a tailor shop for electronic textiles and wearable technology in Berlin. Instead of speculating about a future in which technology is tailor-made, we want to make this scenario a reality and see what people can imagine. We opened in December 2017 and closed in January 2019.

>> final commissions PDF
>> KOBA website
>> Dear Future Customer

Shop logo:

After one year of running the tailor shop, we closed in January 2019. These are the commissions we realized:

Dominique’s Crochet Resistance
>> http://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/crochet-resistance/

Boris’s Trombone Breathing Vest
>> https://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/trombone-breathing/

Arne’s Lazy Programming Gloves
>> http://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/a-lazy-programmers-datagloves/

Deborah’s Burning Bollero
>> https://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/burning-bolero/

Tom’s EMF Listener Hoodie
>> https://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/emf-listener-hoodie/

Sebastian’s Party Geometric Jacket
>> http://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/sebastians-party-geometric-jacket/

Wim’s Storytelling Vest
>> http://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/storytelling-vest/

Abele’s Handbag Fix
>> https://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/handbag-fix-for-a/

Maurin’s Shepard Matrix
>> https://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/maurins-shepard-matrix/

Xavier’s Discolele Costume
>> https://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/discolele/

Tom’s Extra Digit Sensor
>> https://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/extra-digit-sensor/

A WEARABLE STUDIO PRACTICE WEBSITE

Now is a perfect time for electrical engineers to become mobile with their practice. It’s not just electronic parts that have become smaller and smaller, but also many of the tools used in electrical engineering (power supply, multimeter, oscilloscope, programmers… ) have become more compact and portable. Many practices closely related to hardware such as software/programming and CAD/design have been liberated from static infrastructures because laptop computers – their primary tools – are powerful and lightweight. Co-working spaces and FabLabs offer temporary workspaces all over the world. There is an awareness of the benefits of local production and site-specific development.

Wearable Studio Collection

A collection of wearable and portable accessories that allow the electronic textile engineer to travel, build hardware on-site, incorporate local craft techniques and resources, experience different cultures, encounter and collaborate with other disciplines and share their skills with others.

The items in this Wearable Studio Collection are in various stages of development, but shall eventually be documented in great detail, so that they can be reproduced by others. I hope to encourage copies, modifications and improvements to these designs.

Body modifications…

>> https://www.flickr.com/photos/plusea/collections/72157671954961281/

>> How To Get What You Want