Printable sensing devices

I developed this collection of about 60 designs for printable sensing devices at Fathom in collaboration with Silklab and the Laboratory for Living Devices at Tufts University.

Our collaborators at the lab invited us to explore ways to encode and visualize the groundbreaking inks they’ve invented for biological and environmental sensing.

The inks are made with a tuneable silk protein nanostructure that dynamically senses ambient indicators (pH, temperature, lactate enzyme), rapidly changing the ink colors in response. Early explorations with this technology include wearable fabrics and large-scale tapestries and murals.

This mechanism suggests a new relationship between art and material science, where design elements like color, form and pattern can drive sophisticated health and environmental monitoring technology, and in turn, everyday surfaces can express the living processes all around us.

To experiment with this space, we explored a spectrum of ideas: from lo-fi sensing stickers that display an accurate and non-invasive readout of a patient’s health – to immersive installations oriented around fashion and architecture.

I created a large suite of designs for these printable sensors, each one less of a fixed image and more of a fluid system of possible readouts or patterns, as the changing color palette reflects a transitory combination of the inks’ biological indicators.

We also built a web tool for interacting with this process, where our collaborators at the lab can sample how the designs evolve across different chemical environments.