Metabolism Cage Project I Black Box Labs
From my sophomore to senior year, I worked as a research assistant at Black Box Labs on a metabolism cages project with Professor Hatch and other students. For the project's first edition, I created an animation highlighting how a metabolism cage, the device used to study the effects of drugs on rodents, mirrors the flow of commodities in the prison industrial complex.
In my senior year, the lab partnered with Wesleyan’s Integrated Design, Engineering, Arts & Society Lab to turn my first animation into an interactive sculpture called the Metabolism Cage Doll House. The sculpture mirrors a dollhouse with three floors: the prison cell, the kitchen, and the pharmacy, highlighting the idea of play and interactivity. LED tubes connected the floors and would light up when the viewer pushed corresponding buttons to show the flow of commodities between these levels.
I worked with fellow students Julie Wise and Angie Collado on creating the sculpture, while Miranda Derossi lead coding the LED tubes.
Link to project page
ROLES:
Design and Animation
Project Management
Fabrication
TOOLS:
Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, Solidworks, and Lazercutters