Mood Bracelet, Anti-Anxiety Chair and More Made by Perpich ArtScience Students

What is a Chromatophore bracelet? Glad you asked!

This "mood" bracelet for non-communicative children with autism is just one of many imaginative and innovative ideas created by Perpich Center for the Arts students participating in the ArtScience program.

The program is instituted out of Boston and has international connections in Dubai, London, Paris, Singapore, Boston and Oklahoma, said Perpich ArtScience Coordinator Tory Peterson.

"We are a given a theme each year and a design curriculum to follow, this year's theme was Synthetic Biology," Peterson said. "All students spent a year studying Synthetic Biology, the ethics, the DNA, the engineering, the design, the innovation and all students did an exceptional strong job following through on their projects."

Other projects included  
• A Green Chair: an anti-anxiety chair based on genetically modified plants.
• Colored Cotton: a genetically modified cotton plant that grows in deep hues.
• Filter Bud: a genetically engineered water filtration system using hyperaccumulator plants. 
• BioLume: a Light Therapy Sculpture using bioluminescent light (algae) to remedy Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). 
• Protopia--"Choose Your Own Story" novel based on a synthetic biology.
• Protopian WorldSeamstress: a children's book with a synthetic biology and ethics theme.
The ArtScience program requires students to design in groups, to rely on each other and listen to each other, Peterson said. 

"Collaboration is not a skill taught in many schools, but is a needed skill to survive in the 21st century workplace and world," he said. "Students struggle, but ultimately rise to the occasion and put diffrences aside and focus on the task at hand."

Peterson admitted that the theme of synthetic biology was difficult for students.
"It is a new science and has great moral and ethical questions attached to it," he said. "Students spent a great deal of time debating the need for synthetic biology and how it should and could be used in the in future and what regulations are needed to protect citizens and environment.'

Projects can move forward by individual students or allow them to be left alone. 
"Last year the theme was 'Virtual Worlds' and Callan Hegge designed the anti-anxiety 'green chair' to calm students with ADHD and testing anxiety," Peterson said. "She focused on trying to bring elements of nature indoors to capture the health benefits of what what author Richard Louve defines as 'nature-deficit disorder.'"

That project was continued along with classmate Eden Rome and the focus was to develop a genetically modified plant that would capture the best of all plants needed for the chair--non-toxic, flourishing leaves, indoors climate, limited sun, limited care-taking, he said.

And now the "green chair" has been presented at numerous nature and educational conferences throughout the state.