Talking Tardigrades
Over the last couple of years we have, as a team, been talking lots about tardigrades… We’ve also been inviting project participants to talk to the tardigrade. We’ve collected hundreds of audio messages, each describing small actions being taken for a better future.
At the start of many of our conversations, people struggle to think of (or are shy to share) the things they’re doing differently, but after spending a little time making mossy pompoms and chatting with the team and other participants it often turns out that they’re taking a myriad of small actions and we think it’s really important that we share these steps to help and inspire others.
We love listening back to the messages after an event. The are wonderfully varied, full of hope, and rich with inspiration for next steps to adopt. There’s something particularly heartening about the range of voices representing a spectrum of ages, backgrounds and viewpoints. The journey to reducing our environmental impact will be different for each individual.
What will happen to my message now?
We’ve been a bit vague about this next bit because it’s been a work in progress. We knew that we wanted the Mossy Carpet artwork to be interactive, fun, accessible and inspiring. The solution? Talking tardigrades of course!
We’ve created small pin-on sensors which we can attach to the carpet, when they sense some one touching the artwork they trigger the audio files to play through small speakers that we’ve built into textile tardigrades.
This is all still a work in progress, but we were able to share the Talking Tardigrades for the first times in Plymouth at the Big Green Trail, and while we were at Glastonbury Festival. They went down really well with visitors who really enjoyed listening to the messages straight from the tardigrades mouth!
The challenge… a journey!
I (Jenny) took on the challenge of finding an interesting way to record and then play back the messages. I’m not going to lie, it has indeed been a challenge! I have no formal training in electronics but I’ve attended a couple of short courses at Arts University Plymouth’s Fablab, plus Art and Energy’s friend Matt Denton has given me some handy pointers along the way.
I’m constantly learning - especially when things don’t do what I expect them to… for example at Glastonbury it was warm, humid and noisy which kept triggering the sensors resulting in rather chatty tardigrades - but this actually worked quite well so I’m now planning to build in a chatty mode as well as one that waits for people to touch the carpet. At times it’s felt like a case of one step forward, two backwards, three sideways… and occasionally a leap ahead!?
Some of the mini challenges have included:
How to play messages without interruption? You touch the sensor and it starts to play a message, but then you knock it by mistake and it set’s off the next one so you miss the end of the first… or an enthusiastic youngster sets of message after message as they stroke the carpet… resulting not in inspiration but a headache for anyone listening!
The little MP3 board that I’m using to play the audio files is fairly simple so I needed to create a separate logic circuit to stop this from happening. At the moment this is set up using transistors, but I’m in the process of switching over to use an Arduino microcontroller.
How to power the system so that it’s safe, portable, sustainable? I’ve opted to use USB power banks as they’re rechargeable, straight forward to use, and very portable. They are questionable in terms of the lithium and other materials required for manufacture, so I’ve bought high quality power banks made by a Anker who provide a longer-than-most warranty (so they should last longer than cheaper ones), plus Anker have a proactive policy to reduce their impact on the planet. At Glastonbury we kept all our power banks charged using one of our solar artworks - powered by the sun!
How to create a system that survives travel and is flexible to install in various settings? The original plan was for the Mossy Carpet to have pompoms made from conductive thread acting as the sensors. These would be incorporated amongst the thousands of other woolly pompoms, however it quickly became apparent that this wouldn’t work as we would want to vary the position of the sensors to best suit each location - The sensors and other audio playback components would need to be removable and repositionable.
One of the first set-ups we tried had the three sections of the system permanently attached, but the first time we transported it something got caught and one of the connections failed - It seemed sensible to adapt it so that each element could unplug from one another to add to portability and flexibility. I’m currently using audio jacks for this - a plug and play system!
There was also a question of how to contain the components - my natural inclination is to reuse and upcycle whenever possible so I went for a wander round Plymouth Scrapstore, the supermarket and a DIY store. So far the various versions have been housed in wooden wine display boxes (my husband was happy to help me source a few), spice tubs from a certain low budget supermarket, small plastic boxes used to package plumbing components, and the container for fabric dye ( these just happen to be perfect textile tardigrade brain size!). I've also become a real scavenger for broken electronics with components that I can reuse - this is particularly true of wire offcuts that would usually go in the bin. I’m working onto breadboards at the moment - this means that each iteration can be taken apart and the components reused for the next version.
By upcycling and reusing I feel less precious or worried about my material footprint, and it helps to keep things within our budget. It also feels true to the environmentally conscious nature of the wider project - one of my small steps for a better future!
As you can probably tell it’s been an interesting journey so far, and I can see lots more scope for improvements in the future. If you have ideas for how to make the Mossy Carpet even more interactive, fun, accessible and inspiring then do get in touch using the details at the bottom of this page… Plus don’t forget to Tell the Tardigrade about the actions you’re taking - you never know, you may hear your words from the mouth of a tardigrade as part of the Mossy Carpet artwork!
