A Watched Pot Never Boils

An irreverent wearable

Gallery

A Watched Pot Never Boils, hardware detail

Concept

The popular piece of folk wisdom taken literally. A hot plate that turns off when you look at it. It was presented as a performance that evoked and subverted the 1950s housewife aesthetic.

How it works

A hot plate retrofitted with infrared sensors and a power relay turns off when you look at it.

The glasses acted as a fashionable remote control, with embedded infrared diodes powered by low profile coin cell batteries.

The sensors on the hotplate connected to the power relay through an Arduino Uno programmed to turn it off whenever it sensed infrared light from the diodes on the glasses.

Context

Created as a final project for Intro to Wearables at NYU ITP, Spring 2019.

Credits

Created, fabricated, and performed by Mary Notari