Roommates Jane Palmer and Marianne Fairbanks were eating breakfast in their loft one Monday in January, discussing a deep frustration with feeling powerless. Though it would be another month before George Bush would liken the millions of protesters around the world to a “focus group,” the futility of appealing to a president bent on war was already becoming apparent. “Decisions were being made, and it didn’t really matter what an individual was saying or a group of individuals was saying,” recalls Palmer. “We started talking about how power can be given to an individual.”
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The conversation eventually veered from political power to what Palmer calls a “more tangible and physical” kind: “What if you could carry your own power, and you weren’t really dependent on the wall socket?” An idea was hatched–solar garments and bags that could charge cell phones, GameBoys, Walkmans, and the like. These “mini power units,” they figured, could be a small step toward eliminating “our greed and dependency on oil” while keeping individuals connected to the larger culture.
Last winter they contacted Nekola again, for input on the solar garments and bags. He helped them figure out details like voltage and wiring. With borrowed money, the artists ordered small, flexible solar panels from a distributor in New Hampshire and went to work on prototypes, rigging a child’s jacket to power a GameBoy and designing bags that could power cell phones. They spent the next several months refining the bags, which now carry the brand name tiMoun (Palmer says the name is “Haitian-Creole” for “little one”).
“We’re hoping that solar power will trickle down into daily life,” says Palmer, “and the technology will be able to grow and develop and continue.” When that happens, she says, their prices will come down.
