Mike Thompson’s Blood Lamp offers users a gory way to explore the issues of power consumption and planned obsolescence. Users break open the vial-like lamp and mix a few drops of their own blood with luminol—a chemical that gives off a soft blue glow when it reacts to the iron in hemoglobin.
The project puts a morbid spin on the human-powered gadgets that have appeared or been rediscovered (e.g., a crank coffee grinder) in recent years. While using kinetic energy to recharge a cell phone or prep food for dinner gives people a more direct sense of how they use power (as well as a sense of creation and involvement that transcends flipping a switch), these devices offer people an alternative to a system that has become overly reliant on finite energy sources. The jab of a pin needed to fuel the blood lamp, however, gives users a more intimate understanding of the idea that seemingly small decisions related to resource consumption often mask more complex issues.
Once broken open, the blood lamp can only be used once. Thompson intended this feature to force users to consider when light is most needed and—more broadly—to contemplate the frivolous ways in which they use energy. While created to explore issues related to energy, the blood lamp offers a stinging satire of planned obsolescence. This approach to design and economic development—which assumes consumers will readily replace major items like cars and appliances on a regular basis—has fortunately been called into question in recent years. A lamp that can only be used once gives poignancy and immediacy to the rate at which we discard televisions, cell phones, and cars. Rather than a life of a few years, the lamp becomes worthless garbage—a hunk of jagged glass and a chemical mixture—to its owner within a few hours.