Can Recycle Anot? is a searchable recyclables guide for Singapore. (The title is Singlish for “Can this be recycled or not?”) It is a personal project motivated by the difficulty of finding out whether or not something is recyclable in Singapore.

To make this app more meaningful, I am looking for small-batch, volunteer-run recycling organizations in Singapore to partner with. These organizations tend to have a much higher rate of recycling as opposed to large companies whose primary expertise lies in waste disposal. The aim is to make Can Recycle Anot? a field guide for ground-up recycling initiatives in Singapore.

Try the app on a microsite built on Replit

Wireframing and prototyping on Figma.

Plasplus is an ongoing project looking into artisanal small-batch plastic recycling in
urban high-density areas. It is highly inspired by work done by Precious Plastic.

Plasplus aims to reimagine plastic as a precious and artisanal material that is reclaimed from urban waste streams. The name is a play on the suffix “++”, often used in computer science to denote a new version (as in C++). Plasplus is currently still in the research and development phase. We are hoping to launch a few products using 100% recycled plastic by the end of 2021.

In the process, we have built our own hydraulic press, PID-controlled oven, and several aluminium and steel molds.

I was part of the BeFantastic Together Fellowship in 2021. It is an international art fellowship that invited “collaborative practitioners in art, design, and technology to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML), data & networks around the theme of the climate crisis.” The fellowship ran online from August to December and connected artists, designers, and technologists from all around the world. I got to collaborate with Srishti, a filmmaker, Swati, a playwright, and Vinko, a software developer. The former two are based in India while the latter is based in Spain.

Stories from your Future is an interactive text-based narrative set in 2050 Delhi addressing the crisis of water scarcity. The participant makes difficult choices as they navigate through the story. A provocation to reflect on the climate emergency and the agency we hold today.

Stories from your Future references choose-your-own-adventure books, or more recently, Netflix’s Bandersnatch. The work requires participants to make decisions at various points as the story unfolds. Each decision made by the participant leads them down a separate path in the narrative.

The medium that participants will experience Stories from your Future through is a fictitious AI chatbot companion known as cloudbee. Cloudbee is imagined as an app used by governments to ration and allocate resources to citizens in a world where countries and cities are fast approaching or living past Day Zero (defined as the day where water levels go so low that municipalities are forced to shut public access to tap water).

Experience Stories from your Future on its microsite

I worked on the design of cloudbee, from the initial wireframes to high-fidelity Figma prototypes. I also helped to hack Twine so that it matches the needs of our project.

Find out more about my art practice on Luke Warme

Kamp is a collaboration among a few friends interested in urban composting.

Vermitube is a worm compost accessory for indoor potted plants.

Vermitube is an add-on accessory to any existing potted plant that transforms them into integrated vermicomposters. It works by adding vegetable food scraps and allowing pot worms or earthworms to compost the food waste. The resulting compost is embedded within the soil in the pot and fertilizes the plant.

Usually, vermicomposters (e.g. worm bin) and the potted plant are separate objects. Vermitube integrates them together to increase convenience and improve user experience.

I designed the Kamp website and also created the branding, logo, and image assets.

Find out more about Vermitube on the Kamp website

Yara approached sparkpluck in 2019 to work on the development of Yaralrix. I am under an NDA for the project, below is an excerpt from Yara’s press release:

The YaraIrix system includes a free-to-download-app (for Android & iOS), which uses the smartphone camera to determine Nitrogen demands of different crops in early growth stages. For later growth stages, the app is supplemented by two hardware options (a smartphone clip and a Bluetooth N-Tester).

I am credited as an inventor on the patent for the project. View the patent on the European Patent Register

Find out more about Yaralrix from Yara’s press release