Re: [DIYbio] Do you have an appreciation of the ocean and are all about open-source?

There is a big chance that when you were still a kid your parents or friends made you believe that by putting a seashell next to your ear you could hear the ocean. The seashell concept was inspired by this. The concept involves augmenting the natural ocean-like sound with a soundscape created by oceanic data. The accessibility and playfulness of the concept would lead to more awareness on what's going on in the oceans.

I would love to hear what you think and how you see this.

Questions I still have for myself:

• How on earth can I put a speaker in a tiny shell? :P
  
• What data is relevant, how do I communicate this and make it understandable and relevant to an audience?
• How could a user 'tune-in' to whatever information he likes to hear? how would they explore the device?
• What action would a seashell imply? What else could you do with it apart from listening?
• Could the product be 're-cycled' by ripping electronics from it and throwing it in the ocean?
• Could people maybe take a sample with the seashell or something? 
• What happens if the seashells would be 3d printed and that the texture, color and shape is determined by other oceanic data?

Picture:

hello frits,
here just what i wondered personally about your project:
you said that 'we' trash the oceans and eat all its fish, but there it' s necessary to have
definition of 'we' and 'us'. if you want to do research on society and its awareness of the ocean,
you need to know who the society is, i guess.
the main problem (just personal opinion) is that people become aware of problems when they
start to be affected by it, but most of the people don't live near the sea and if so even then they
don't necessarily live from it. It is a big issue how our society is built, we suffer from estrangement
from our own environment (not just the ocean), most people living on the continent (away from open water)
don't think about the fact that the fish they are eating was caught somewhere at the pacific and
shipped all that way. neither do we see the possibility that that plastic packaging which we don't recycle
might be the cause of an animal choking. we just don't know and care where our stuff comes from and
goes to! so in conclusion, it's mainly the industry polluting but it's the rest of the consumers allowing them to.

If you search for open-source ways to increase awareness, it is necessary to really get to that people.
As you said yourself that's really not easy, i know. and i'm not really convinced on how much power
open-source can have there, as people that use open-source are interested in the first place and know
about the problems we have (often exactly these people are very aware). so it would be good to find a way
to inform the rest, make them aware that it is their actions and behavior that causes trash and industrial
waste in the seas and rivers of which they are eating from again. awareness that their actions are not just
affecting their environment but that they depend and are affected by the environment (here the ocean) in turn
(people are too selfish to change for smth else when it doesn't affect themselves again, personal opinion
again).

yeah, i'm sorry that this is a real pessimistic point of view and i hope that it helped you at least a bit and i
understood what meant at all :/
hope you keep us informed as i myself study productdesign in germany and i'm really curious what it will
end up in.

kind regards,
helena

> Hi Nathan,
>
> Looking at the way we trash the ocean with plastic, eating all it's fish and
> still think that tropical rain forests are the lungs of the planet seems to
> me that we are in some way disconnected.