My Time in Aesthetics

This class has an incredibly unique structure. As a student you are given full creative freedom to construct whatever you can imagine without being group based. For the first time in my academic career at CU Boulder, I did not have to fight with other teammates on conflicting opinions or the direction of a project. I was able to make the mistakes on my own, find the right resources, source materials and cover organization. It was difficult at times to stay on top of writings when battling other classes and work outside of school, but Professor Hertzberg is incredibly forgiving. All the students taking the class seem incredibly interested in the course material but are also very willing to help with projects. I am not the best electrical engineer, but I was able to turn to pod-mates for advice and received countless tips on how to improve my projects. The presentations are helpful to not only see what other students are working on but also their progress. It is really interesting to see how different people work at different paces, yet they all create creative and unique work. It also helps when you can see other students asking for help or running into similar barriers as you. Below is a highlight of the two projects I was able to create in this class. For a more in-depth run through of each project, you can see my previous blog posts.

The first project criterion was upcycled material. You could do anything you wanted so long as you used waste material or used materials that were intended for another purpose. About a week after being assigned this project, my roommate and I found a cast iron skillet rusting away in boulder creek. I thought it would be a perfect material for upcycling, so I pushed my way through shrubs and climbed into the river to retrieve the pan. I then went through a restoration process to get the pan into a usable state. I did not think that just restoring the pan was a change in purpose enough for upcycle, but I also did not want this pan to go to waste. I then designed a cutting board that the pan interfaces with to hang on a wall. This clears up counter space in my very tight apartment, but I am also able to use it as a compact camping cook set. The cooking set up can hold multiple nonperishable items to take camping without taking up much space.

The second project was much more open ended. The only two criteria were that you must be able to interact with it in some way, and that it could not be a weapon. I gained major project inspiration from a coffee shop on Pearl Street. There was a lamp in the shape of a mushroom and had a single button for turning on and dimming the light. I thought it would be much more interesting if the top of the mushroom could rotate to create the dimming functionality. For the rest of the semester I went through multiple iterations figuring out how to make this functionality come to life. I reached out to designers and woodworkers for advice, as well as electronics experts and have ended up at a prototype that matches what I had envisioned when seeing the mushroom lamp for the first time early in the semester.

Links to Project Blogs:

How: Mushroom Lamp

What: Mushroom Lamp