Disobedience is an smartphone app which holds a database of acts of civil disobedience.
Based on how you are feeling about the current system and what mood you are in, it will suggest an act of disobedience ranging from non-consumption of material goods to acts that might get you arrested.
The Lightstick is a row of 60 addressable RGB LED lights controlled by a small computer.
Designed to be portable and battery powered, images and generative art can be loaded into it and be ‘painted’ anywhere using long-exposure photography.
It is currently being used to produce my ongoing “What’s In It For Me?” project, and other interventions.
The Focus Lamp was a small device I designed for myself to help with studying and writing during my MSc in Interactive Media.
It was the result of an excercise in product design and User Centred Design. It also reflected my interest in Calm Design and technology.
I wanted something with no obvious interface and no noise that would disturb me from work. Instead the lamp would sense which way it was turned or placed on the table and use gently changing colours to alert the user.
When flipped, it would change to a soft green colour. After 45 minutes had elapsed, it would slowly change colour to let the user know that they could take a break. When you wanted to take the break the user would flip the lamp again and the sequence would run again for 15 minutes.
In the early 2010’s when amateur drone technology was was becoming affordable, and before legislation was enforced, I built a series of drones that were offered out for public use.
They have been used to get accurate counts of turnout for protests and to peek behind hoardings to see what property developers were actually up to.
Since then, access to drones has become much easier, and laws to their use have been introduced. This has opened up this field of investigation to the general public and my original drones await another purpose.
As a supporter of the Pro-Choice movement, since 2011 I have been looking into alternative ways to get the messages out.
Using persistence-of-vision LED designs, I produced bicycle-mounted and handheld devices to display images and to sneak messages onto journalists’ cameras.
In another area, I have developed Twitter bots to highlight the numbers of Irish women travelling abroad for services unavailable in their own country, and hidden wifi hotspots with information and messages for those seeking help.
In May 2018 a majority voted in a referendum to repeal these laws.