In Leah Buechley’s talk about Art, Craft and Technology, she talks about many different ways of making small electronics. “It is possible for these paper devices to be part of larger and more complex systems.” I would like to see these ideas be brought to larger systems and used on a larger scale. By “epistemological pluralism,” Leah Buechley means that people can be drawn to something in more than one way, and this is much of what this type of work does. Her example shows not only a circuit, but a symbolic representation, and also a sketch. It is important for art projects to be approachable aesthetically, symbolically and physically, because this allows more students to feel comfortable in trying new things and being able to explore. In my art classes, I will always try to design projects that are eye-catching, and students want to learn more about.

Leah Buechly shares three different techniques combining paper art and crafts and imbedded computing and electronics. One technique she shares is called taping circuits, which are made entirely out of paper and tape. The second technique she shares is sketching electronics, which uses magnetic electronic pieces and ferrous paper combined with conductive marker. The final example she shows is called folding, which uses shape memory alloy, a metal that changes shape when you heat it up, using electrical current running through the wire. In my future classroom, I would use these techniques to incorporate light or movement into different types of artwork as multimedia projects. Typically, multimedia artwork would use traditional materials in unique ways, but it would be really neat to incorporate something like this into a painting to make it more interactive, or even a drawing or print to create movement. In my future classroom, I may use taping to incorporate lighting into a drawing project, or in a paper sculpture project to add lighting. I could use sketching to incorporate lighting into a drawn image. I could teach folding for students to make a 3D sculpture have movement.