Alex’s craft-related rant

I began thinking about those guys who came by with their $100 laptop-charger and I was thinking about charers that would work with things that we allready do. I had a simple idea for a bicycle powered charger for any USB device. Too good to be true. I checked the internets and sure enough, in addition to a handfull of DIY’s (of varying degrees of success), Motorola has just unveilled a bike powered charger that seems to work well. Here’s the motorola thing
Here’s one of the DIY’s that seemed to work in the end
I still think a simpler DIY might be worth persuing, but I’d like to cme up with something more original.
My second Idea was more of a Man versus Machine kind of thing. A modern day John Henry or something (without the trying so hard that I die). I thought it might be interesting to compare a mass produced, machine made product- something available in Crate and Barrell, for example, to something that I make by hand.

I thought this project might manifest itself in video-form. Something that both shows the two processes, and tries to determine if one is in fact “better”. Hand-made glass is slower, more expensive, and has a lower success rate, but it looks so sexy:

I wonder if it is possible to prove that it is worth the extra everything in some way. Perhaps I can relate it back to this idea that buying one of something that is so nice that you keep it forever is ultimately one of the most “environmentally friendly” ways to consume.

My idea from the “up-cycling” project was to make an item out of trach that made it valuable so that it would be kept. The challenge was to do it with a glass beer bottle. So I made these three objects that are kind of related and try to maintain some connection to the object that they came from. It’s one of those things where the farther from the original form it gets, the less efficient the process gets (although glass shops are by definition, huge bottomless pits of energy consumption, probably negating the environmentally friendly aspect of this entire project). I was also interested in making something that was no longer a traditional “vessel” out of the bottle, but what I ended up with were a cup (very “traditional vessel”), a bottle shaped jar with a lid, and something that I’m not quite sure what it is, but could possibly make a nice lampshade. All kind of disappointing in terms of straying from the vessel thing although the lampshad starts to go somewhere.