After seeing my flatmate use liquid latex to make scar look-alikes for her uni project, I became interested in this material and how I might be able to use it for my project.
For the sake of trying out the material and getting to grips with how it works, I started brushing it on to my hand, making more and more layers, leaving short intervals for it to dry. As it took quite long to dry, i started to add tissue paper as I understood this strengthened it and made it more rigid. As it was becoming bigger and bigger I had the idea to add what looked like really prominent bones which made the hand look really old and wrinkly, with the help of toilet tissue that had a pattern on it. I was able to peel the latex off really easily but it left me with a big chunk of this wrinkly latex. When i put it on now, it just sits on top of my hand and doesn’t form it’s previous tight position on my hand.
An artificial replica of skin seems almost like an extension, like a prosthetic and something you can use to hide. This would be sort of doing the opposite of what my flatmate is doing; not creating scars but trying to hide them or similarly, trying to hide other forms of ‘scars’. In the case of my project which focuses mainly on type 1 diabetes, I have the idea that maybe using this material, i can look at ways to hiding Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs). As they’re very discreet, I think the addition of latex would make it look like a smooth bump, especially if you did it carefully and built up smooth layers. The question would then be how to be able to put it back on again. But, this could be figured out later.
Design Year 3 