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electrocute

@electrocutelab

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〄 computing as craft ☻ ✿
└ art · design · engineering
⁂ experiments in poetronics
⚙︎ tinkering @craftcomputery

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how to touch electricity ⚡️
soft circuits for soft beings ✿

this zine began from a desire to soften how electronics are usually taught. instead of rigid language and flattened diagrams, it invites touch, feeling and care into the learning process.

created for experimental publishing: tutorial as art, this project treats instruction as a poetic and tactile form. the zine focuses on a small set of gentle gestures like pressing and tracing, paired with simple paper circuits made from copper tape, @chibitronics led stickers, graphite and a coin cell.

rather than asking how does this work? the zine asks
what does electricity feel like when we meet it softly.

this version is a test toward a better iteration and i’m looking forward to refining the zine, printing more copies and distributing them irl ☻

full documentation + process:
print-code.netlify.app
pdf version available ✿ by @electrocutelab

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10 months ago

tinytinker.tools is officially live! and open source!

a soft toolkit for curious makers ✦ a growing collection of tiny, focused utilities for electronics, coding, generative text, color, zines & more.

everything runs 100% locally! no backend, no accounts, no ads, no tracking + nothing leaves your browser

some tools you can play with:
✦ resistor decoder + ohm’s law calculator
✦ timestamp converter + json formatter
✦ markov text generator + glitch text
✦ color palette generator + accessibility checker
✦ zine imposer for mini zines

this project became officially open source through taking Open Source Studio at @itp_nyu taught by @daniel.shiffman and grew into something meant to be shared, remixed, and contributed to.

want to contribute?

→ add a new tool (each one is just a single self-contained file!)
→ improve existing tools or fix bugs
→ expand docs, accessibility, or design
→ suggest ideas via issues or the built-in tool request form

don’t have github? no worries — you can still contribute by emailing me your ideas, tools, or feedback :]

everything is free to use, remix, and build on. check it out and tell me what you think! → https://tinytinker.tools/

crafted with ♡ ✿ by @electrocutelab

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5 months ago

the soft computer (2026)

a textile-based computer designed around care, not command. four soft buttons with haptic feedback. a soft pressure trackpad. a flexible e-ink screen sitting on a machine-knit panel. a tiny operating system inside, generating poetry one word at a time, made from a corpus i built by hand. when you walk away, it prints you the poem on paper. a memory to carry away.

i wanted to make something that didn’t want anything from you. no notifications. no metrics. no internet. just a soft object that asks you to slow down, sit with it, and stay.

this thesis was the most fun i’ve ever had making anything. it lives at the intersection of everything i love — software, hardware, textiles, language, and the long lineage of women who made computing soft long before it got hard.

the entire project lives at thesoft.computer, releasing open source soon. because more than anything, i encourage you to make your own — soft or otherwise. something built around your values, not someone else’s.

—

presenting today at 6:24PM
https://itp.nyu.edu/shows/thesis2026/livestream.html

also exhibiting at the @itp_nyu itp/ima spring show on may 9-10, and the @oshwassociation open hardware summit in berlin at the end of the month. ♡ ☆ ☻

📷: @ice.eski by @electrocutelab

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5 months ago

more from @softer.global digital futures conference in denmark! dreamy, indeed.

✿ ✿ ✿

📸: @siennalorrainegray by @electrocutelab

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2 days ago

a very soft launch of our tiny soft computers workshop at @softer.global ✿

heart is full after co-teaching at SOFTER Digital Futures 2026 with @alannabean, my creative partner in thread and circuits. we spent a whole crafternoon making tiny computers by hand, turning code and soft materials into something you could hold, stitch by stitch, soft enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

endless gratitude to @softer.global for giving us the space to bring this workshop to life, and to every wonderful participant who showed up curious and open to exploring alternative forms of computing with us. i’m still in awe of what bloomed around that table. the tiny soft computers they made turned out so, so beautiful. if you spot yours here, send it my way so i can tag you!!

and this is just the beginning. we’d love to keep crafting tiny soft computers and bring them to new places. if you’d like to host a workshop or join one, reach out. ☻ ☆

may our computers stay soft ♡ taken in Rødvig Stevns by @electrocutelab

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16 days ago

this is a preview of my new zine, poetronics: notes on slow computing & calm tech 🧵

computation is older and bigger than ai, and building with rules and state can carry the sensibility of a poem. poetronics is the name i give to that practice: diy computing that leaves its seams visible, alternative interfaces, hand built hardware, circuits that wait instead of optimize.

the soft in software, literally: knit panels, threaded ferrite cores, buttons that feel like fabric. machines that produce one small, unrepeatable gesture and then stop, instead of chasing a metric.

it’s also about language and electronic text: generated poems, markov chains, words as another material to build with. treating ambiguity as a feature, not noise to train away. a generated line that could mean two things is still a line worth reading. a lot of this practice is just old craft wearing a new name: punch cards are knitting patterns, a loom is an early computer, a thread is a bit. none of it is anti-technology. it’s a way of asking what computation is actually for?

eight pages: a history of craft x computation, a thesis, a text experiment you do by hand, and a few objects i’ve made.

swipe through for a peek, print version coming soon. ☻ by @electrocutelab

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10 days ago

this past summer, i worked on a different kind of project: my first simulation game, and my most personal one yet. 👾 🩸 🍵

iron bloom is a short pixel narrative game in the spirit of the games i grew up playing. over six days, you move through small tasks at home, and some days feel heavier than others.

i’ve lived with heavy menstrual cycles and anemia since i was young. the idea started while i was getting an iron infusion, wondering what it might mean to make the invisible visible.

water the plant, brew raspberry nettle tea, take your iron, write in your journal. tend to what you can, rest when you must, and somehow, something blooms.

built in javascript. this is just the beginning, and i’d love to keep expanding it with more visual polish and effects. feedback is very welcome ☆

for anyone who menstruates or lives with chronic fatigue or illness, i hope this makes you feel a little less alone. the hard days do pass, even when it doesn’t feel like they will. ♡

water the plant.
rest the body.
begin again.

play it free on itch:
https://electrocute.itch.io/iron-bloom

#tinygame #cozygame #womanshealth #games #programming #javascript #pixelart #retro by @electrocutelab

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5 days ago

once i was exposed to risograph printing, there was no turning back!

i love everything about it: the fluorescent inks, the grain, the way two colors overprint into a third, the slightly-off registration that makes every print feel handmade. no two pulls off the press ever come out quite the same, and that's the part i fell for.

i care a lot about the handmade web, the kind of internet that feels made by a person and not a template. so i wanted to bring that feeling to the browser. ☻

so i built fluoro 🩷

it riso-fies (almost) anything. instead of slapping a filter on top, it rebuilds the print process the way the machine does it: each ink gets its own layer, every layer is screened to 1-bit with halftone dots, a dither or grain, and then they're overprinted on paper with a little misregistration, just like a real second pass through the press.

→ use the tool to riso-fy your own images, pick your inks, and pull reprints
→ or add one line of html to your site, and a riso-fy button prints the whole page in two inks, live. text stays selectable, links still work, and even videos and animations get printed as they play

the inks are yours to choose. there are presets like pink + blue, orange + teal and green + purple, or any two colors you want. and since two inks can only reach the colors between them, changing the pair changes the whole print, just like on paper.

it's open source and on npm as fluoro-riso:

━☆ﾟ.*･ npm i fluoro-riso

swipe through to see how a print gets built, from the source image to the final overprint.

✿ try it: fluoro-riso.vercel.app
✿ npm: npmjs.com/package/fluoro-riso
✿ code: https://github.com/yafira/fluoro

lmk what you think!! ♡ by @electrocutelab

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22 days ago

Introducing the first facilitator for our upcoming Softer Digital Futures conference: Yafira Martinez of @electrocutelab ! 🫶☁️

Yafira is a NYC-based design engineer and creative technologist with a B.S. in Computer Science and a master’s from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Through her independent creative practice, Electrocute Lab, she explores what she calls poetronics — treating electronics with the sensibility of a poem. Working across hardware and software, she combines physical computing, embedded systems, soft circuits, and generative text to create experiences that invite curiosity, reflection, and play.

Drawing on the histories of computing and craft, she questions what computers should look like and how people engage with them, creating tactile, approachable technology that blurs the boundary between tool, artwork, and interface.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁

Softer Digital Futures
1-3 October, 2026
Rødvig, Denmark

Tickets on sale at 🔗in bio! by @electrocutelab

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2 months ago

a few days ago i applied for a design engineer role, and the pre-interview challenge was to build a product i wished existed.

i didn’t move forward with the role, and that’s okay.

i’m honestly more excited about what came out of it: cache, my latest web tool!

there are already great tools for the creative process— @pinterest is for discovery, are.na is for collecting, and figma is for designing. but i love making quick moodboards, and opening a heavy app just to throw ideas together always felt like a drag.

inspired by the free-form curation of @aredotna, the speed of @figma, and the playful feel of classic desktop UI, i wanted something frictionless. cache is a web-based moodboard where you simply paste, drag, and style inspiration exactly how your brain works.

best of all? everything stays local on your browser. no accounts needed.

create a patch ⬩ collect your stash ⬩ keep everything cached!

my only regret is not building it sooner.
if you give it a try, i’d love your feedback! ☻ ♡

app: https://cachecraft.io/ by @electrocutelab

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3 months ago

ever wondered what’s the magic happening inside soft electronic components? ⋆｡°✧

we see them in e-textiles everywhere, but how do they actually work?

i’m building soft components — a digital library of soft electronic components: buttons made from felt, potentiometers made from fabric, and sensors you can squeeze.

each demo is interactive and explores both how the component works and the physics behind it — from material behavior to electrical principles. every interaction is designed to feel true to the material, with real spring simulations tuned to move the way soft structures actually move.

press the felt button. drag the fabric potentiometer. heat the thermochromic patch. squeeze the sensor. the haptic motor buzzes.

this project leans heavily on open e-textile documentation — especially kobakant’s “how to get what you want,” hannah perner-wilson and mika satomi’s archive of DIY e-textile sensors and actuators that’s been freely shared since 2009. so much of this field learned to build soft sensors by hand because of that work, mine included. ✧

still a work in progress — more components are on the way! comparison pages, textile LED diffusion experiments, shape-memory actuators, and more explorations into soft computation.

this is solely for educational purposes + feedback is always welcome, especially from anyone working in e-textiles, physical computing, wearable technology, or material-driven interfaces. lmk what other soft components you’d like to see! : )

✿ https://soft-components.vercel.app/ by @electrocutelab

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3 months ago

a little milestone ✿

just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's been following along. whether you've been here for years or just found this little corner of the internet recently, i really appreciate you being here. ♡

electrocute lab started as a place to document my projects so i could revisit ideas, techniques, and lessons learned. somewhere along the way it grew into something much bigger — a space where i get to share electronics, soft circuits, creative coding, physical computing, computer science concepts, fun tech facts, tutorials, experiments, and all the weird little ideas that make their way into my work.

one of my favorite parts has been curating little collections of inspiration too — sharing projects, work, and ideas from other artists, makers, engineers, and curious people who are exploring the intersection of creativity and technology.

i honestly don't know where this is going, but i'm really excited to find out.

also... this is a little soft launch for the new website! i had way too much fun adding microinteractions throughout the site. it finally feels like electrocute lab has a home that matches what i've been imagining all this time. ☻

more projects, experiments, tutorials, and tiny electronic oddities coming soon.

thank you for being here. it really means a lot. ✿ ✿ ✿

go check it out and click around! :)
→ https://electrocute.io/ by @electrocutelab

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3 months ago