Transforming milk into fiddling necklaces

Transforming milk into fiddling necklaces was motivated by my physical and social frustrations during breastfeeding when my child wanted to fiddle with the other nipple. I desired to make fiddling necklaces out of our human breastmilk, so that by taking away a breast, I could give something from the breast in return. Material experiments include making casein plastic from cow’s milk and various techniques to preserve our human breast milk.

Fiddling necklace designs — Sketches of fiddling necklace designs

Fiddling necklace made from milk — Prototype made with knotted knitted icords and casein plastic beads from cow's milk

Transforming milk into fiddling necklaces — Model of a nipple made from cow's milk and dyed with spices

Transforming cow's milk into casein plastic

Casein plastic nipples and beads from milk — Casein plastic nipples and beads

Saving unusuable breastmilk to preserve — Saving "unusable" breastmilk and skimming fat of the top

Failed attempt at extracting casein from breastmilk, naively learning more about the compositionally differences and historical entanglements as a result

"Magic powder" purchased online to solidify and preserve breastmilk

Preserved breastmilk from proprietary ingredients — Preserved breastmilk from proprietary "magic" ingredients

preserved and pulverized breastmilk — Pulverized breastmilk to be mixed with resin to make beads

Mixing preserved breastmilk with resin to make beads, but uncomfortable to use them as the process smelled toxic and the preservation materials are unknown

Team exhibition of project, including motivation, inspiration, sketches, and process — Team presentation of motivation, inspiration, sketches, and process

Jars of solidified and preserved milk in the form of beads, molds, and powders

Publications & Creative Outputs

Karey Helms. 2021. Entangled Reflections on Designing with Leaky Breastfeeding Bodies. ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2021), Virtual Event. (Special Recognition for Diversity & Inclusion)
PDF, DOI, Video (10 min), Video (30 sec)

Vasiliki Tsaknaki, Karey Helms, Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard, and Marianela Ciolfi Felice. 2021. “Vibrant Wearables”: Material Encounters with the Body as a Soft System. Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice.
PDF

Karey Helms. 2022. A Speculative Ethics for Designing with Bodily Fluids. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI 2022, alt.chi) New Orleans, LA, USA.
PDF, DOI, Video (8 min), Video (30 sec)