Biodesign:State of Our Environment

State of our Environment

This workshop will be conducted by the ArtScienceBLR at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology.

In this workshop, we will look at different ways of gathering and disseminating information about pollutants in water. We will build devices to test for water quality,design maps and conceptualize ways of visualizing this data. We will also collect stories about water sources and water sheds. This workshop is ideal for students interested in Visual communication,Film, product design and those interested in environmental activism.

Within the broad framework of the Biodesign project, these were the concerns: how do you get community participation in gathering data?How do you make this data more meaningful?- These are concerns that have been raised not only during the course of the workshop but were also raised when we visited LifePatch.

This is the documentation from the workshop.

1. Collecting Data.

For the workshop, we decided to focus on water bodies around Yelahanka:

Puttenahalli Lake ( 13.112 N, 77.578E )

Allalasandra Lake ( 13.0912 N, 77.5844 E)

Collecting Data can be a fun community project. Inspired by Gabrielle Levine's bots, we constructed a boat-bot to collect water samples:: Instructions on how to build the boat can be found here:

2.Analyzing the Data.

We used the ORLAB arsenic kit on the water sample.

Here are the results for the 2 samples:

Table??

We also analyzed the samples under Akbars Micam. Here is what we saw.

Puttenhalli sample

Allalasandra sample

The pH of Puttenhalli lake was 6.9 and for Allasandra Lake it was 8.8 .

Once this data was recorded, the next step was to design a data-base that would serve as back-end for the maps. An important requirement in the design of this database will be its ability to serve other kinds of data -not just numbers and values but also images and videos- these images and videos will make this whole exercise more engaging to the viewers.We took the first step in designing the basic architecture of the database. A snapshot of it is given below:

--Data for Human Beings.

--Mapping the Data.

--Making Maps.