Soylent Dick

About

Soylent Dick is a phallus made out of Soylent that ejaculates Soylent when you type self-validating praise for Soylent into the browser. Soylent Dick was erected by Nicole He, Katherine Pan, and Chino Kim during the Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon on February 6th, 2016. You can see a video of the live demo here.



Nicole tastes the Soylent



Katherine tastes the Soylent



Chino receives the Soylent

Why

We are fascinated by Soylent and the culture that surrounds it. Soylent is a meal replacement beverage that was invented in 2013 by a software engineer who “resented the time, money, and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption, and clean-up” of food required. Since then, Soylent has grown in both fans and controversy, both for the product itself as well as for the brand’s techno-utopian rhetoric.

Though the company is now trying to reach broader audiences, Soylent was first created by an engineer for other engineers. What does it mean for Soylent to be adopted primarily by coders to save time, when the engineering field is still predominantly male? What does it mean for people who can afford to eat well to choose to reject food?

How

Soylent Dick was built with wire mesh, aluminum and rubber tubes, bendable straws, Arduino, Node, Javascript, a small water pump, and two bags of Soylent 1.5.

To build the skeleton of the phallus, we made a hollow wire mesh frame and ran an aluminum tube through it. We made Soylent “flesh” by adapting a homemade play-doh recipe, and molded it around the frame. As a finishing touch, we dusted it with Soylent powder to keep it from sticking to surfaces. Via an assortment of rubber tubing and plastic straws, we connected one end of the aluminum tube to the pump, which rested in a tub of liquid Soylent.

The mantras the user has to type in the browser to trigger the ejaculation are all from the release notes that came with orders of Soylent 1.5.

We used Node to run a server that allowed for serial communication between the browser and Arduino. On Github, you can find the code for the project, as well as the recipe for Soylent Flesh.

If you'd like to contact us about Soylent Dick, you can email us at soylentdick@gmail.com.

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