Sticky Innovation is a course in which students learn about the Bee Crisis and Colony Collapse Disorder and work on creative problem solving through engineering and art. This seminar utilizes experiential learning and multiple forms of creative research to engage students fully with the content and encourage creative/outside-the-box thinking.
Buzz Article
Everyday Aesthetics Response
Apiary Field Trip
Ideal Bee Project
This was a project done in a group with Andrew Auffenberg and Isaiah Postenrieder. Together we designed our 'ideal bee', named the HexaBee. This bee has hexagon shaped armor all around it to prevent damage, predators, and mites. The bee's fur is modified so it is stiff and filled with poison (like from the stinger), which flows in a sort of vascular system under the bee's armor to the fur. This system is meant to ward off predators, strengthen the bee, and remove/resist varroa mites. The bee also has a filtered mouth which would filter out pesticides and other air borne or food borne toxins. The aesthetic of the bee is based on the hexagon, a shape repeated in almost all elements of the bee. The bee's look is strong and militarized, with a gas mask inspired face, body armor and imposing geometric build. The Hexabee was modeled in Solidworks and then 3D printed.
Next Lives Here Response
Recently our class attended a concept pitch event as part of the Next Lives Here Conference. This was a great learning experience because we got to see what successful and not so successful presentations look like. Some groups, like Bailout, had fantastic presentations that wowed the audience and put their project in it's most appealing light. Some groups however, like Hemodyn Vascular, were not presented well through illegible/unappealing powerpoints and mumbling presenters. The judges however saw past this weak presentation and awarded second prize to the inventor of Hemodyn. It seems what his presentation lacked in wow factor it made up for in excellence of concept, effectiveness of the prototype, and having a widespread need for real world use. This concept reminds me of something my drawing 1 teacher told us is the most important thing she hopes we take away from her class, "Content comes from Form". It has taken me most of the semester to even begin to understand what she meant by those words, but the idea is that a drawing can only be convincing if it has an accurate framework. It could be immensely detailed and beautifully rendered, but that will not come across unless the proportions are correct and the form is there. This same principle is what I learned from watching the Next Lives Here pitches. The presentation can be beautiful or basic, but that won't be rewarded unless you are working from a strong idea and are able to explain it accurately.
Final Project
Reflection
During the Fall Semester of 2016 I was one of ten students to participate in the honor’s seminar Sticky Innovation. This course mixed art, engineering, and experiential learning to give students a fresh perspective when learning about and addressing the wicked problem of the bee crisis. As a class, we learned so much about different ways of looking at the world and about bees through our field trips to an apiary in Indian Hill and the Sleepy Bee Cafe, through our guest lecture and documentary analysis, our fiction and artistic research, engineering modeling training, and working together as a class.
This course opened my eyes about research and problem solving. I used to think of research and addressing problems like the bee crisis as something very scientific, a lot of reading research studies and scientific texts and coming up with chemical solutions. Research and problem solving do not have to be that way at all! This class helped me break the paradigm of how I saw research and showed me that research can be fun and creative and interesting. Real world experiences are a type of research. Watching a documentary is research. Looking at art and reading about artists is research. Reading a related fiction novel is research. Making a piece of art with a specific purpose is research. And this new view on research has opened me up to a new view on art and creativity’s function in the world. The world’s complex and wicked problems can be dealt with in many ways, and creativity should be at the forefront of how we consider them.
Now more than ever I truly believe that interdisciplinary studies and cooperation between different fields of work are vital to the solution of our world’s problems. In the future I hope to take part in more incorporative classes, work, and collaborations. I hope that integrative learning like this class can continue to be a part of my time here at UC and crossdisciplinary collaboration can be something I push in my future.
This course opened my eyes about research and problem solving. I used to think of research and addressing problems like the bee crisis as something very scientific, a lot of reading research studies and scientific texts and coming up with chemical solutions. Research and problem solving do not have to be that way at all! This class helped me break the paradigm of how I saw research and showed me that research can be fun and creative and interesting. Real world experiences are a type of research. Watching a documentary is research. Looking at art and reading about artists is research. Reading a related fiction novel is research. Making a piece of art with a specific purpose is research. And this new view on research has opened me up to a new view on art and creativity’s function in the world. The world’s complex and wicked problems can be dealt with in many ways, and creativity should be at the forefront of how we consider them.
Now more than ever I truly believe that interdisciplinary studies and cooperation between different fields of work are vital to the solution of our world’s problems. In the future I hope to take part in more incorporative classes, work, and collaborations. I hope that integrative learning like this class can continue to be a part of my time here at UC and crossdisciplinary collaboration can be something I push in my future.
