12/15/2020

The word of "storage' inspired me, When I opened my refrigerator and tried to find something to drink, I found that except for refrigerator, what else can be stored in how many different ways? Therefore, I separated "storage" into physical, digital, conceptual, and Philosophy ways.

Starting from the "storage", the first thing that I thought was how many ways that could restore in our society, so I divided them into 4 parts, which are physical, digital, memory, and mind. I considered these 4 parts as the concept that could store things. After this processing, the supermarket and warehouse remind me of goods can be stored. For instance, we can see drinks, foods, fruits, snacks, ice-cream and so on that stored in the supermarket. These things are normal and we could get it easily so I put them into the physical category. For the next question in this category was how does these kinds of goods that could store in the supermarket? Oh! we have refrigerator in the supermarket that could store things. The upcoming question was what is the use of a refrigerator for food? I figured that out, which is keeping things fresh in a low temperature. Also it reminds me of the word "slow down" that if we want to restore something that need to slow down the iterate. All the fresh things are representing things are not expired and the expiration was connecting with the date which is the numbers that often shows on the food, fruits, drinks and ice cream. When things got expired, some people will abandon it but I want to reserve it or keep it.

The research of keeping things:

Here is some usual ways that we keep things that I researched:

1.Bank: Usually people store their "expensive" things to the bank.




2. Mini warehouse: People usually use it in public space.




The way to "slow down" things getting rot:

Plastic wrap keeps strawberries from getting rot fast.




Bottles can store sauce.



Coffee capsule can store ground coffee.



Pills can store medicine

For the digital part, I think there are many ways that could represent storing. For instance, we can create our own social media account to keep our information in a digital way. For instance, we usually use Slack, Facebook, Instagram, Wechat and so on. Therefore, we can search ourself or our friends easily through the internet, because we have already been collected by the big data from the server. Also the cloud server will be an brand new way to collect and store huge amount of data, and I think it is a good way to remain our unique thing in the world. I cannot escape from death, so the "storage" in digital form also reminds me of my 7 in 7 project of "unique password" for us. I think the digital way can store things about us as long as possible. For instance, we can import my videos or pictures into computer or the cloud server which only belongs to myself. Although data will expire one day, I believe the digital form is the best way to remain things entirely so far.

Back to myself, in fact, my thoughts are another way to store them, but they are only for myself, which is more conceptual. It can be regarded as memory, but the word memory is too broad or even vague for us, so I want to express this form by using camera instead of my memory. At the same time, the camera can be used as an expression of our memory, it can be the materialized thing of our memory. The camera can also be divided into the form of pictures and videos. They are also the most intuitive embodiment of our memory, which makes us visualize the word memory.

The sightseeing keeps in my mind and I recorded it by camera and it turns into my memories.

Based on my inspiration, I did some expand with it, which after these 3 types of "storage", there is a core question with it. I considered it as "why people are trying to store things?" We are trying to extend this thing last longer, but here is the thing, which people's life are totally different from the others, such as animals, fruits, food etc.

Sometimes, people storage something because they don't want this thing to get expired. Therefore, I would say the definition of "storage" is to extend the value of things. For instance, when our pet dies, we usually bury her body or its urn in the soil, or even plant seeds on the soil. The plants or substitutes grow out to represent the continuation of the pet's life. We can also say that we store something like this in another way, making it different.

Based on the "expired", I figured out that things got expired are related with time. For example, when foods is out of life, then we call it expired. The life span of fruits, animals and food is different from ours. For example, people can live to be 70 or 80 years old, but animals may live for more than 10 years, like cats and dogs. 2-year-old cats and dogs are equivalent to what stage and when we are human beings. This is the topic I want to explore this time, and it is also a very interesting aspect. I will use Apple as an experimental body to explore the corresponding human time period of apple in each time period.

As the day that I took out an apple from the refrigerator, I was wondering what is 24 hours means to the apple, because we all know that human lives are totally different from any other creatures, food, fruits, and so on. Therefore, I was thinking if we can test what stage does 24-hour belong to in apple's life and what kind of situation is it equivalent to human beings.



I used Fritzing to build up my prototype, which I picked humidity sensor to test the situation of the apples. Next, I am going to use the Arduino to make installation that could tell the time of the apples. Since it is an experimental project, I will take photo for the apple daily to see what is the difference from the appearance to the inner. 

After Observing the apples for 2 days, I picked one red apple and cut a small piece as my experimental object. Before I inserting the humidity sensor, I made an prototype to test how does the humidity sensor worked. I used water instead of apple at the beginning to test if the sensor worked. I used 30 minutes to test the moisture reduced gradually in the apple, and I found that the humidity in the apple are decreasing.

Arduino code for humidity sensor:









As we can see from the video, we made it! so let's jump into next part, which I took piece of apple instead of water.

Before plugin the USB:



Here is the data of the humidity with time counter:



As we can see from the data, the moisture in the apple is decreasing in 30mins, which means the apple is getting "old" and it is much faster than human. At first 10 mins, the humidity decreased slowly, but when the time started from 1:32 a.m, the moisture in the apple decreased faster. Also, after 5mins, the moisture decreased down to 846.

After the experiment of humidity of apple in 30 minutes, I put this piece of apple in the plate and just see what will happen in 3days. As we can see the image, we found that the apple became dry at day 8 and there are some scars at the side of the apple, because of the loose water in the apple. There are also some wrinkles with the skin of the apple. therefore, we can make a conclusion, which is when the apple getting dry, that means the apple is dying or getting old.

It is diversity for me to choose any sample from daily life, but I want to choose apple because apple is one of the things that could obviously see the difference in short time. Also, I think the apple could be my sample since I consider it as a life form, and apple has their own shelf life. Just like human, but human seems to be much longer than apples. Therefore, before apples are getting expired, I hope that I could find a way to storage them, so that they could last longer in different types of form.

As we all know, when the bottle are full with water, the sound would be thick, and when the water are less in the bottle, the sound would be ethereal and echoing.

After the bottle with water part, I started to build up my installation by using Arduino, which I used Ultrasonic Distance Sensor. When the users' hand put closed to the sensor, the light will turn on, that means the sensor is working, and it the "voice" of the apple will play. Based on the last part, I took the sound from the bottle with water, different water level in the bottle generated different sound, and the water level in the bottle represent the water in apple. With this exchange, I play the sound on Processing, so that while the users are shaking their hands in front of the sensor, it will play the sound. That also call back to my topic, which is storage. I used the sound to store the apple in a ideological way instead of just store apples in general way, since I mentioned before, everything has their own shelf life. For last them longer, I choose to store them in a sound.