Slate is a table art installation that helps the user have a better understanding and awareness of the fair trade coffee system.

Fair trade is an economic practice that aims to pay small coffee bean farmers a fair price for their crops. It does this by cutting out several steps of the exporting process that the coffee will take to get from the farmers field to the shelves in the store. This topic is important because these farmers have an enormous impact on our economy, but because of the complicated export chain that is used for standard coffee, these farmers can make up to as little as $2000 a year, while the majority of the money their coffee sells for gets tied up in other businesses. Our audience would be targeted coffee drinkers who purchase standard, non-fair trade coffee, and our impact would educate them on buying a product that is better for the farmers and better for the environment. I can see an interactive art project for this topic being an interactive projection that would be displayed on the counters of coffee shops. Customers could play with the projection while they wait for their coffee. The projection would include a coffee export chain, with links that could be removed by touch interface. The technology for this type of product already exists and would be interesting to explore in this context.