Spark

2026

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Collaboration with Shelly Liu and Bryan Pang

Integrate and Implement
Professors Soojung Ham, Chaki Ng, and Griffin Van Horne

MA Design Engineering (Brown and RISD)
Spring 2026

Skills:

Fusion 360
3D Printing
Prototyping
Problem identification

Spark is a hyperlocal story-collecting installation. Using stories as input, a Raspberry Pi collected sentiment and shared a poetic output that encompassed the vibes of all the stories told before.

Our team came together through our love of public art. My experience working in the public sphere and fabrication skills complemented Shelly’s hardware knowledge and Bryan’s coding. Through problem definition and research, we narrowed down to this: public spaces are physically shared, but they rarely make room for emotional connection.

Cities often measure public space through movement, safety, density, and function, but they rarely capture how people actually feel in those places. As a result, the emotional atmosphere of a location, its memories, tensions, comfort, loneliness, joy, or sense of belonging, often goes unrecorded and unshared. We were inspired to change that.

My experience working in the public sector reinforced this idea. I found that community engagement, actually going out and speaking with constituents and community members, is the most effective way to make a project supported and accessible.

We wanted to inspire people to think of others’ experiences in public space and encourage them to share their own.

My role was to build the physical shell for the embedded technology. Using Fusion 360, I created a parking meter-inspired module that housed an e-ink screen, a Raspberry Pi, and a button. I iterated on many forms of the final product, from the tech encasement to the overall aesthetic and installation.

RISD Grad Show Exhibition

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