Portfolio at NYU

Posted 05.07.07
Hungry Scientists

By Rollo Romig

At a crucial point in the process of making chocolate, the batch is heated to around 110°F, and the molecules of the molten cocoa butter need to get organized. One way to make this happen is to educate the cocoa butter, by dropping in bits of finished chocolate from an old batch. The cooling cocoa butter molecules pick up on the pattern, and fall into an arrangement suitable for confection.

On a rainy night in SoHo, in a room with whitewashed walls called Location One, a couple of hundred science fans, technology buffs, and curious wanderers likewise organized themselves in folding chairs, ready to be educated. In the back of the room, the refreshments table looked like an all-nighter in a chemistry lab: Cheetos, Tostitos, Chips Ahoy, and coffee. It was (according to Dorkbot founder Doug Repetto) the 32,112th New York meeting of Dorkbot: People Doing Strange Things With Electricity. The format of Dorkbot has been the same every month since it began in 2000. Three people present their science projects with the aid of an overhead projector. Beyond that, rules are few. From dorkbot.org:

q: i make cold, hard, intense, machine-robot-skull-hammer music, and am bent on the annihilation of the human species. can i participate in dorkbot-nyc meetings?

a: yes, although annihilatory activity is prohibited.

Gabe McNatt, a handsome, unshaven young man with fuzzy hair, presented a computer program called Wind-Composition. "One day I was walking in Chicago and it was really windy, and the wind was really loud," he said. "But in the distance, in the wind, I could hear this melody, really faint, and I couldn't tell where it was coming from, and this was what it sounded like."

He pressed a key, and the room filled with windy sonic swirls, howling, weaving, whirring, chirping, and humming. Almost imperceptibly, a melodic drone, something like an organ, appeared and disappeared.

Above McNatt, the Wind-Composition interface was projected on a screen, and he fiddled with three layers of controls: pink for volume and pan, brown for adding sound layers, white for modulating preset soundscapes. "I got the idea for the color scheme from Neapolitan ice cream," he said. One layer was labeled "GRAIN SILO." Another was "BIRDS (angry)." "I always play with this on airplanes," he said.

Someone asked if he was a musician. "I play guitar," McNatt said, "but I'm not any good, so I liked the idea of making music that couldn't be compared to anything. No one's going to say, 'Oh, he's not very good at creating a wind composition.'"

Caitlin Berrigan, an elfin young woman in a white silk jacket with lapels shaped like feathers, came to the presentation table with a large glass candy store jar. On the front of the jar, in gold leaf, there was a flowery version of the symbol for hazardous materials. The jar held fifteen malignant-looking chocolate bon-bons.

"I'm not a molecular biologist, I'm an artist," she said. Her project was called "Viral Confections," and her chocolates were molded in the shape of the Hepatitis C virus -- round and spiky, like a lychee, or a sea mine.

"The rhetoric is always about fighting the virus," she said. "I wanted to see what would happen if you befriended it. Would it be like one of those good/bad friends who never call you back?"

For the past few months, Berrigan has been holding public "tea parties" where she offers the chocolates along with information about the virus. "The most common question I get is, 'Do they have Hepatitis C in them?'"

They don't. "A lot of people are totally disgusted," she said. She's used to this reaction. She once made a five-foot tampon out of marzipan. "People were really grossed-out, but it wasn't bloody or anything." In Paris, she had a model wear a dress made of prosciutto. "People were just outraged."

Berrigan said she was interested in the notion of befriending Hepatitis C because some ancient viruses have become incorporated into human DNA. Someone asked, "Do you think you're increasing awareness and somehow alleviating suffering, or are you really just making light of a sad incurable disease, in a way that's offensive?"

No one else seemed bothered. People lined up to buy the chocolates for $3 a piece, and snapped pictures of her food-grade silicon chocolate molds.

Zach Smith, a smiling young man with a bowl haircut, a dark blue work shirt with a patch over the pocket that said "Geek," and a tattoo of an Ethernet port on his inner arm, presented a work-in-progress. First he explained several biological concepts: self-replication, self-assembly, and symbiosis. "Take, for example, two species that have enslaved mankind," he said. He showed pictures of a wheat field and a chicken yard. "Wheat has gotten us to eliminate all its predators. Chickens have gotten us to build them coops to live in."

This was all prelude to his concept: RapRep, or Rapid Replicating Prototype Project. A rapid prototyping machine is a printer that prints 3-dimensional objects. Existing models typically cost around $100,000. An international team of scientists is working on RapRep, and they hope it will cost under $400. What's more, Smith said, RapRep will be able to print all of its own component parts; in other words, it will replicate itself. Once the team has completed the basic design, RapRep will be released to the public as an open source project. Each advance in design will build on the original. "You'll be able to use a version 1 machine to print out the parts you need to make a version 5 machine," Smith said. "It probably won't be available until next year, but it's already making some of its own parts."

"What else can you make with it?" someone asked. "I mean, besides itself."

"Hmmm," Smith said. He thought. "You can make cones..."

"Ice cream cones?" someone asked.

Smith said he hoped that one day, RapRep would be able to print both plastics and electronics, and thereby print entire working devices in one go. "There's been talk about using all kinds of materials: ceramics, metals, plastics." He suddenly looked hungry. "And chocolate," he added.