biodesign-journal-blog

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Our New Sensory Organs take inspiration from animals and nature. Designed by world experts, they require minimal invasion into the body. Once attached, a whole new range of experiences and emotions are unlocked.

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Founded in 2010 by Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas in 2010, the Cyborg Foundation is an international organisation that aims to help humans become cyborgs, defend cyborg rights and promote cyborgism as a social and artistic movement.

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Your DNA

Your Design

You share 99.9% of your genetic code with every other human on earth. This leaves just 0.1% of your genes which make you.. you.

Dot One analyses part of this 0.1% to create prints and textiles personalised to you on a molecular level.

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Smallpox Syndrome by Pei-Ying Lin

Smallpox, caused by two strands of Variola virus - Variola major and Variola minor. It was one of the most deadly virus with a mortality rate of 30 - 50% for Variola major, and 1% for Variola minor. (Cancer has a mortality rate of 12.49%.) Much effort has been put into fighting the virus as early as 15th century in Asia, where doctors will apply the tissue collected from the pus to healthy people in order to vaccinate them. The Chinese Emperor Chian-Lung even only consider those who have had survived smallpox as the candidate of the thorn. When the Spanish arrived in America, they brought smallpox with them, caused massive deaths among the Aztects. There is no way to treat smallpox except using vaccination as prevention. Thus, the only way to counteract to it is by vaccinating everyone around the discovered patient. Through many years of tracing disease and vaccinating individuals. It has been declared eradicated by WHO in 1979, where the very last case known was reported in Somalia. Although eradicated, the virus is still being preserved in many labs, mostly in United States. Right after the 911 incident in 2001, many feared the terrorists would use smallpox as an agent of bioterrorism. The U.S. government is now taking precautions for outbreak.

The smallpox vaccines we use nowadays are consists of live Vaccinia virus, which belongs to the same family as Variola. The Vaccinia virus can induce antibodies that are cross-protective for smallpox, thus build up the resistant to smallpox virus. However, it leaves a small scar on the skin where the vaccination was applied. Under this context, the underground Synthetic Biology scientists developed a whole new smallpox vaccination technique. By modifying the Variola virus and manipulating the scar formation, the vaccine can not only induce antibodies to protect the subject from smallpox, but also create the patterns desired on subject’s skin.

Later on, the scientists even started a new cosmetic company named VaccineBeauty. All their products can function as smallpox vaccine as well as cosmetics for fashionable people.

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FUNGI MUTARIUM

GROWING FOOD ON TOXIC WASTE

Livin Studio has, in collaboration with Utrecht University, developed a novel fungi food product grown on (plastic) waste, a prototype to grow it and culinary tools to eat it. Please go to FUNGI CUTLERY to explore our culinary tools developed throughout this project.

Fungi Mutarium is a prototype that grows edible fungal biomass, mainly the mycelium, as a novel food product. Fungi is cultivated on specifically designed agar shapes that the designers called "FU".  Agar is a seaweed based gelatin substitute and acts, mixed with starch and sugar, as a nutrient base for the fungi. The "FUs" are filled with plastics. The fungi is then inserted, it digests the plastic and overgrows the whole substrate. The shape of the "FU" is designed so that it holds the plastic and to offer the fungi a lot of surface to grow on.

Its shape has been developed inspired by mushrooms and other plants in nature. The user should be reminded of harvesting mushrooms in the wild when harvesting the "FUs".

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In Stranger Visions artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg creates portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material collected in public places. Working with the traces strangers unwittingly leave behind, Dewey-Hagborg calls attention to the developing technology of forensic DNA phenotyping and the potential for a culture of biological surveillance. Designed as an exploratory project based on emerging science, the forecast of Stranger Visions has proved prescient. For an example of DNA phenotyping at work in forensics check out the companies Parabon NanoLabs and Identitas and read about their collaboration with the Toronto police. Also see Mark Shriver's research at Penn State on predicting faces from DNA.

For my analysis of the issues of structural racial bias embedded in this new technique see my article "Sci-fi Crime Drama with a Strong Black Lead" at the New Inquiry magazine.

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Aqua Vita by Thought Collider

Aqua Vita builds upon ongoing research at the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre and Sino-Dutch Centre for Preventive and Personalized Medicine in systems biology, developing a more holistic interpretation of the human body and the pathways linked to disease.

Contrary to popular belief, urine is not waste but a biofluid rich in information, providing valuable insights into the metabolic state of an organism. Utilising the archival properties of urine, Aqua Vita maps the body’s ever evolving ecosystem, exploring a shift in our understanding of health as a dynamic, resilient system. Merging knowledge from Traditional Chinese Medicine with metabolic profiling of urine, health and disease are merged into one life process, presented and monitored over time through the design of the Metabolic Painting.

Placing themselves as test cases throughout this process, the designers learned to value and reflect upon the daily process of self monitoring, questioning the value of generating such biometric and experiential data. Based on their personal experiences the duo present a series of objects that engage with the abstract experience of daily collection and analysis of data.

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Blood Lamp by Thought Collider

What if power came at a cost to the individual?

The average American consumes 3383kwh of energy per year. That’s equivalent to leaving the light on in 4 rooms for a whole year. The simple flick of a switch allows us to power appliances and gadgets 24/7 without a thought to where it comes from and the cost to the environment.

Blood Lamp began as a material exploration, a personal fascination in the electrical potential of chemical energy. Whilst researching into biological energy processes, including chemi and bioluminescence, we stumbled upon Luminol – a chemical commonly used in Police Forensics to determine the presence of blood at crime scenes. When placed in contact with blood, Luminol reacts with the iron found in haemoglobin emitting a stark blue light. Witnessing the eruption of this electric blue glow triggered an idea:

If we were forced to use our own blood as a source of power, how might this alter our behaviour towards energy?

Inspired by this chemical reaction we developed Blood Lamp, a critical design that challenges our perception of energy consumption by relating energy on both a physical and personal level. For the lamp to work one breaks the top off, dissolves the tablet, and uses their own blood to power a simple light. By creating a lamp that can only be used once, we must consider when light is needed the most, forcing us to rethink how wasteful we are with energy, and how precious it is.

Blood Lamp is thus not meant as a genuine consumer product, as has sometimes been incorrectly written, rather a debate piece in its purest form – a product that, via its inherent interaction, makes us question the consequences of our actions.

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Tina Gorjanc - Pure Human

The Pure Human project was designed as a critical design project that aims to address shortcomings concerning the protection of biological information and move the debate forward using current legal structure. Furthermore, the project explores the ability of the technology to shift the perception of the production system for luxury goods as we know it and project its implementation in our current commercial system.

The final outcome consists of a range of conceptual commercial leather products cultivated from extracted human biological material.

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Giulia Tomasello - Future Flora

How can we celebrate the symbiotic relationship between the human body and its microbiome?

Of the human body, 90% is composed of different microorganisms, most of which are beneficial to their host. Microbes, bacteria, fungi and viruses are all part of our natural skin flora, covering both the inner and outer surfaces of our body. Even though they are invisible to our eyes, our micro-flora has a symbiotic relationship with the interface between our body and the environment — our skin.

However, due to the extensive use of chemical based washing soaps and cleansers, we are no longer removing simply bad bacteria from our bodies, but also stripping it of the beneficial ones. This means we are more susceptible and vulnerable to future infections and viruses.

Future Flora is a living culture pad that helps women to balance their own vaginal flora to help prevent and treat the common Candida infection. The kit has been designed to allow women to establish, nurture and harvest their very own personal skin flora at home, becoming not only consumers but also active participants in their own health and well-being.

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Purifungi by Audrey Speyer - A living aid kit for the earth

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How can natural organisms help eradicate industrial pollutants?

Since the Industrial Revolution, we have caused immeasurable damage to our earth. Many of the industries that we have come to rely on for everyday products and services are extremely detrimental to the environment and cause widespread contamination and industrial pollutants. This waste seeps into the earth and means that very little can grow on or populate on the infected earth.

However, recent research has shown that certain types of fungi are not only able to grow in such areas, but also have the ability to track, catch and store industrial pollutants in its fruit, in many cases completely removing it from the soil altogether.

In this research project, I propose how fungi could be nurtured, grown and then harvested to help transform industrial wastelands by removing contaminants, such as diesel and oil from our earth.

Purifungi is a completely biodegradable aid kit that can be deployed in such areas by anyone wishing to remove toxic waste and return the earth to full health.

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Museum of microbes

The only museum of microbes, in the centre of Amsterdam.

You can’t see them, but they’re here. They are on you. In you. And you’ve got more than a hundred thousand billion of them. They’re with you when you eat, when you breathe, when you kiss. They are everywhere. On your hands. And in your belly. And they meddle in everything. They shape your world: what you smell, and what you taste; whether you get sick, or get better. They can save us or destroy us. Microbes: the smallest and most powerful organisms on our planet. We know very little about them, but can learn so much from them. About our health, alternative energy sources, and much more. When you look  from really close, a new world is revealed to you. More beautiful and spectacular than you could ever have imagined. Welcome to Micropia. The only museum of microbes, in the centre of Amsterdam.

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2.6g 329m/s Bulletproof Skin by Jalila Essaïdi

2.6g 329m/s is the performance standard for bulletproof vests, the maximum weight and velocity of a .22 calibre Long Rifle bullet from which a Type 1 bulletproof vest should protect you.

A WORK ABOUT THE RELATIVITY- AND DUAL NATURE OF SAFETY.

Increased exposure to violence through news and other sources of (social)media manipulate our feeling of safety. Giving rise to a culture of fear. The individual and even society can be driven by this feeling to make irrational responses to imaginary threats.

With ‘2.6g 329m/s’, also known as ‘bulletproof skin’, Essaïdi explores the social, political, ethical and cultural issues surrounding safety in a world with access to new biotechnologies – by reinforcing in vitro human skin with spider silk from genetically modified organisms in order to stop a speeding bullet.

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The Future of Meat 2015

Can you imagine a future where only insect meat is eaten and where crickets can be raised at home? Or a future where all of the meat we eat is grown in a lab? This installation aims to inform people about the different ways our future could unfold with regard to meat consumption.

Go to thefutureofmeat.com for more information.

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Hongjie Yang

Semi-Human Vase

This project explores design potentials of human tissue engineering. Presenting human cells growing on a three-dimensional vase-shaped scaffold. Treating human cells as material in this way, to propagate into a designed form, represents a new, if unsettling, frontier. Yang is intrigued by the notion that we are able to derive objects from the self, however fragile and laborious in their making. This may signal a new branch of portraiture or an emerging form of craft customisation. Such an object will share the genetic information of a person, might be as thought a budded, asexually produced offspring.

Mr. Yang foreseen an end to socially coded distinction between human and object in the wake of this new class of designed, semi-human beings. These creation represent a “new vision of the sublime” as the designer sees it, one that blends awe and excitement with a distinct feeling of dread, or fear arising from the uncanny connection between self and object. Project of such experimental character are often signposts for the future, just as bauhaus designers like Marianne Brandt laboriously hammered her tea infusers to shape in 1924, imagining a future of more automated, machine production.