Illustration by Ella Cinjarevic, used with permission
One summer, halfway pregnant, I visited a conference called SciFoo in Silicon Valley. Actually, it was called an unconference and it wasn’t like anything I had been to before. There were magicians, physicists,biochemists and historians. We made up the program together the first morning.I joined sessions on origami and pigeons reading mammograms. A group of crafters gathered to think through what we make together. Each session brimmed with curiousity and conversation. Looking back, many of the questions we pose in Upcycled Clinic stem from encounters I had at this conference. I met a historian who knitted morse code, questioning how we sensorialise data. I met the CEO of Maker Health, bringing making spaces into hospitals. And I attended a session by the inventor of the Foldoscope, a paper microscope used for malaria detection.
This was in 2015. Five years later I would see some of the same creative people sharing ideas for the pandemic with the world. MakerHealth released their pattern for the Olson mask (see Fabric Face Masks). Many started sewing. And then another invention hit the news articles, a welcome relief amongst the tide of pandemic doom: the snorkelling mask respirator.
As patients struggled to breathe, others were thinking with the tools they had. Manu Prakesh, an Indian bioengineer based in the U.S., and inventor of the Foldscope, was one of them. Alongside another team in Italy,they repurposed snorkelling masks to make protection devices for hospital staff. The designs received formal authorisation for medical use. Another team in Paris, through a French industrial consortium adapted these designs, addressing problems they encountered and using 3Dprinting. They have shared instructions for use openly via their dedicated website.
We have just scratched the surface of this invention, and on this page you can find links to the research articles investigating the use of the device, as well as a link to instructions for making it. I am also intrigued to learn more about those behind the initial designs. How did these come about?What were the conditions which led to the inventing, making, manufacturing,sharing and scaling up of this creative repurposing of sports gear for hospital staff? And what got in their way? And what happened after 2021?
