Ivy Curtain (2020)

Ivy Curtain is a robotic design proposal that promotes better mental health for indoor residents by simulating the natural behaviors of vegetation. This project began with the question, “What if a feeling of being in or close to nature could be sensed within indoors but without the presence of other living beings?”. So eventually, what I envision in Ivy Curtain is a robot that functions as an “alternative-plant” robot that moves in unexpected directions, changing its shapes according to both a user’s physical interaction and its surrounding temperature.

      Ivy Curtain is an alt-plant robot that is inspired by the ivy wall. This project simulates the organic movement of plants and mimics the plants’ seasonal changes in the ivy wall. I used mesh fabric, mulberry tree fiber-based paper, thermochromic paints, and flexible thread-like wires with a microcontroller to actualize such characteristics. So the project looks like a sheer curtain with hanging leaf-look papers. This individual leaf-look paper has three layers, a painted-paper layer, a shape-memory wire-paper layer, and a plain paper layer. On the painted-paper layer, I painted leaf vein patterns with thermochromic paints in green, blue, orange, and brown. In the shape-memory wire-paper layer, I sew on a paper with wires which connects to a microcontroller and electricity. With the electrically heated shape-memory wires, each individual leaf-look paper on the Ivy curtain can reform its shapes and change its colors. Lastly, the plain paper layer covers the wires on the shape-memory wires layer. 

      As its title, the project functions as a curtain that is hung between rooms, in doorways, and at an entrance—some people call this kind of curtain ’noren.’ For giving a sample occasion to describe this project, I documented Ivy Curtain at a doorway between a bedroom and a corridor. On this occasion, when you pass through the Ivy curtain, you would not give a lot of attention to its appearance. And yet, at a certain moment, when you recognize a part of the curtain changes its forms and colors, then you might think ’something’ is happening on the curtain because Ivy Curtain slowly but surely moves as the real plants do.