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.

Publications & Creative Outputs

Karey Helms. 2024. Generosity in more-than-human design. DRS2024: Boston.
PDF, DOI

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)

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.
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