Industrial designer and graduate student from Hadassah College, Naomi Kizhner has done something I find very interesting. She has designed jewelry that is theoretically supposed to extract energy from the wearer’s own body. The jewelry is supposedly embedded into the person’s veins and uses their blood to turn small wheels inside the device. When I first heard of this instrument, I thought it was actually really cool and a creative idea, but then again the idea of using blood to make energy was very nerve cringing. This thought is very nerve cringing because, the idea of using this device on people against on their own free will is disturbing and is unethically acceptable.
The designer states that the jewelry is not supposed to be a practical energy source but a discussion piece, “about how far we will go to in order to ‘feed’ our addition in the world of declining resources”. She also stated, “There are lots of developments of renewable energy resources, but the human body is a natural resource for energy that is constantly renewed, as long as we are alive…I wanted to explore the post-humanistic approach that sees the human body as a resource…”
The name of the project is called “Energy Addicts” and is made up of three pieces of jewelry, which are the following: The Blinker, The E-Pulse Conductor, and The Blood Bridge.
The Blinker
The blinker is a piece of jewelry that is placed on the bridge of the nose across the eyelids, and is apache of transforming the energy generated during the opening and closing motion of the eyes into electricity.
The Blood Bridge
The blood bridge is a piece of jewelry that has spikes at each ends that would be inserted into a vein in two places on the lower arm, thereby redirecting the blood past a wheel inside the casing. Just the movement of the blood is able to turn the wheel to create movement that is converted into electricity.
The E-pulse Conductor
The E-pulse Conductor is worn on a person’s spine and it harvests energy directly form the electric pulses sent by the neurological system.
These pieces of jewelry are embedded on the surface of the skin to harvest energy from simple movements of the body, transforming blood flow to useable energy. This technology looks really amazing, but again the ethical applications are just way over my head and don’t really approve of it.
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