Bio Couture: Clothes made from Kombucha Culture

London-based suzanne lee, is a senior research fellow in the school of fashion / textiles, central saint martins, london. She is also the creative director of biocouture which investigates the growth of clothing through the use of bacterial cellulose. Lee’s latest garment – which uses these growing textiles – is the ‘biocouture’ jacket made from cellulose. Instead of coming from plants, the cellulose is produced by millions of tiny bacteria grown in bathtubs of sweet green tea.

I have been growing Kombucha cultures myself for the last year or so and they grow really easily. All they need is tea, sugar and some oxygen. As long as the container is not contaminated with harmful bacteria or germs, this wonder drink will continue fermenting. Suzanne Lee has a TED talk dedicated to making clothes from the culture as well, which you can find at the bottom of this post. Its cheap, accessible, biodegradable and probably even durable. I have always been drinking the beverage, its time for me to try to dry the cultures in to pieces of clothing myself. 

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Biotechnology and Ethics by Paul Root Wolpe

I think it is really important for designer to really be involved in biotechnology discourse. I truly do believe that the materials and processes of design will be merged with biological ones. We are stepping in to new boundaries, but in a sense most radical new technologies have similar potential and issue at the same time. (Niel Postman is an interesting author to look at on this topic)

Biotechnology and synbio will have much more support in plants than animals when we look at design and ethics. It seems perfectly ok to manipulate plants to make new building materials, but when we speak about animals, we consider their autonomy and sensations such as pain. For example the thought of animals as slaves is unattractive. But I believe that both have implications. Maintaining biodiversity seems to be one of these issues that will rise with biotechnology. Food and medicine will not be the only aspect of life that will sound alarming when considering biotechnology.

We have yet to discover our environment, just in the rainforest alone. And yet we fail to mention the cultural implications. An example is the people in the rainforest who have now become “westernized” and choose to no longer pursue their great ancestor’s knowledge in medicine in plants of the rainforest. This means that every year, every month when great medicine men pass away, their knowledge of those plants and animals are long gone with them. How can we access that part of earth where there is the most biodiversity. There are still so many plants that we do not use in commercial medicine that could cure the diseases scientists are researching to cure synthetically. I am not exactly sure if commercialization of these plants (with the type of mass production manufacturing processes we have today – high pressure, high temperature, monocultural farming , just to name a few) will even be possible or sustainable for our future.

And I find that before running off to new technologies, perhaps we must take a look at the problems we have today and how we got here. I am in support of biotechnology and synthetic biology, and believe that designers have so much to offer in this field not simply for application and innovation but also ethics and sustainability of our materials and processes. Every time I see a biotechnological discovery or creation made simply for our own amusement or mass entertainment, i cringe a little.

Vertical Farming

Many people have talked about vertical farming, its time to take a closer look at how it might change our world, its benefits and maybe effects on urban settings. I visited David Benjamin in December and one of his students had ideas for a city with vertical farming and I quickly realized that sunlight is still a problem. If vertical farming exists in urban setting, such dense cities like new york, we can already predict that some buildings will be blocking the sunlight from entering other buildings that are placed in the center. Perhaps the design of the building itself becomes very crucial and instead of lare rectangles the form has to change to address this issue. Perhaps the first floor of a building surrounded by other buildings is not the perfect location for a type of plant that relies on sunlight.

Augmented Ecologies

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Augmented Ecologies is an installation by Guido Maciocci, who connected plants with sensors to create a kinesthetic user experience with movement, touch, sound and light. When the user touches the plants or pressure sensitive moss they create different types of musical notes.

Cocky Eek

Various works by Cocky Eek

ARCHIGRAM

Just came across Archigram a few days ago, incredible ideas– very futuristic from the 60s– It is inspiring to me today.

CAPSULE

 

 

 

 

BLOW OUT VILLAGE

 

AUTO ENVIRONMENT

 

Walking City

Michael Rakowitz: PARASITE

Michael Rakowitz, a New york based artist created inflatable homes for the homesless that work with excess air of the city. His work is a commentary on how the homeless live off the waste of the city. These homes change the idea of space, speak of political and social systems.

“Bill S.’s paraSITE shelter. He requested as many windows as possible, because “homeless people don’t have privacy issues, but they do have security issues. We want to see potential attackers, we want to be visible to the public.” Six windows are placed at eye level for when Bill is seated and six smaller windows for when Bill is reclining.”

George L.’s paraSITE shelter. Made on a budget of $5.00 from trash bags, ZipLoc bags, and clear waterproof packing tape. George requested a system of “ribs” that would be made of semi-translucent trash bags. In between the ribs, he wanted windows to expose the “meat” between the bones.”

The windows are made of Ziploc sandwich bags and serve as pockets to display personal items and signage for the public. Privacy and publicity can be regulated by adding or removing objects.

Design process sketches for a shelter built for Artie, a 62-year-old homeless man living near Madison Square Garden. Artie often stands in line for concert tickets at the request of scalpers. For his paraSITE, Artie requested a domed sitting space for himself and his girlfriend, Myra, connected to a lower, intimate sleeping area for two, “the lovin’ room.”

+ RAKOWITZ

Lucy Orta’s “home”

Lucy Orta’s work considers the home as something that is dynamic and humans as nomadic. These objects become Architecture , fashion, and products all in one, merging the boundaries between them. You can simply pick up your home and while wearing it as a jacket, settle somewhere else.

Here is an interesting paper called “Dress for Stress Wearable technology and the social body” by Susan Elizabeth Ryan

This paper considers the work of artists, designers, and activists who, since the 1990s, have worked with body covering as survival mechanism and social tool. Individually or within collectives, they call their work art, design, or activism; or all three. The result is a “body of records” of technological, biological, and performable wearables that have not received the attention they deserve, both as art and design, and as vehicles for ideas about threats to species survival and collective experience.

For example, in the early 1990s artists created wearable artworks in the form of survival attire embedded in localized performative events concerned with social connection under adverse circumstances. Lucy Orta is prominent among such practitioners, who formulate clothing the body as critical, social, and ethical practice within an ambient “culture of fear.” (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1) Lucy Orta, Nexus Architecture x 50: Intervention Köln 2001.

I call such work “critical garment discourse” (abbreviated as CGD), a term I propose to mean work in the form of fashion or clothing that concerns not just the body, but notions of dress–and dress, not just as historically viewed or normatively considered, but as experienced, situated and located, and empowered as a medium capable of significant commentary.

MTV Organic by Umeric.

I’m not a huge fan of MTV or any TV channel similar to it, but these advertisements are absolutely beautiful. I like it.

Enrico Dini’s 3-D Printers Sculpture

Enrico Dini’s prototype machine can print in solid rock! His giant printer is the first of its kind that can print whole buildings. It uses sand but someday it’ll use moon dust? The machine is called D-shape, it sprays a thin layer of sand with a magnesium based glue from hundreds of nozzles, the glue binds the sand in to solid rock- building up layer after layer in to a sculpture or furniture or really anything you want. He claims that the d-shape process is four times faster than conventional building, costs 1/3 as using portland cememnt and createles little waste. On top of all that it makes creating curvy structures simple!

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Japan Media Arts Festival

David Bowen’s Growth Modeling Device scooped up the grand prize in the Art Divistion category. The system attempts to replicate the daily growth of an onion plant.While lasers scan the onion from one of three angles, a fuse deposition modeler creates a plastic model based on the information collected. The device repeats this process every twenty-four hours scanning from a different angle. After a new model is produced the system advances a conveyor approx. 17 inches so the cycle can repeat. The result is a series of white plastic models illustrating a simple organic phenomenon from different angles.

Lawrence Malstaf‘s Nemo Observatorium

Common Flowers, by Shiho Fukuhara and Georg Tremmel (of the Biopresencefame), reverts the blue “Moondust” carnation -the first commercially available and purely aesthetic GM product- back to its natural white state using open-source DIY bio-bending methods and procedures.

Photo on the homepage: Flood Helmet Gallery from the series

Objects for Our Sick Planet, by ONG Kian-Peng.

Text by Regine of WE MAKE MONEY NOT ART

All pictures from the Japan Media Arts Festival.

Synthetic Aesthetics: Art, Design and Synthetic Biology

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is a designer, artist and researcher. Her work  exhibited at the final show, The Synthetic Kingdom, explored how design could contribute to a field that most of us find a bit intimidating and distant from our daily preoccupations: synthetic biology.

Among Daisy’s latest activities are a residency she recently completed at SymbioticA, a collaboration with James King and Cambridge University’s iGEM 2009 grand-prizewinning team and then there’s Synthetic Aesthetics. This project investigates shared territory between design and synthetic biology, invites exchange of existing skills and approaches, and makes possible the development of new forms of craft and collaboration.

Synthetic biology is a bit of a daunting area of research. It seems to be highly technical and almost too abstract. How much background in Synthetic Biology would the designers and artists who apply for the residency need?

Synthetic biology is the application of engineering principles to biology – living matter has become a new material for engineering, a new technology for design and construction. The promise is that we can simplify the way we engineer life, making it predictable and useful (though biology’s complexity still challenges us, for now). The discussions today are creating a framework that could influence biology and nature for generations to come.

The deeper I get, the more fascinating and complex it becomes and the faster the field is evolving. For the last two years I have been engaging with the construction of this potential future and the ethical implications it presents. My RCA projects, The Synthetic Kingdom – a proposal for a new branch of the Tree of Life – and Growth Assembly, with Sascha Pohflepp, investigate this (both currently on show in the Wellcome Trust’s windows).

Dunne and Raby, WHAT IF…, window display, 2010.

The principles behind synthetic biology are straightforward: standardization, abstraction and modularity. Synthetic Aesthetics is not looking for designers or artists necessarily expert in genetics, rather, how might design and art work in dialogue with the evolving science?We’re interested in the overlaps between synthetic biology and design, the ways that we can explore and interrogate science, opening up new thought areas and processes. We’re asking: how would you design nature?

Synthetic biology is multi-disciplinary, from computer scientists to mechanical engineers. As design advisor with James King to the 2009 Cambridge UniversityiGEM competition team (International Genetically Engineered Machines), we joined undergraduates in Maths, Physics, Engineering and other subjects in a two-week synbio crash course last July.

Patricia Piccinini: The Story of Science

Part I: Laboratory Procedures, 2002
Science Story
Type C colour photograph
100 × 200cm
(small format) 70 x 140 cm
Edition of 15

Part II: Ethical Issues, 2002
Science Story
Type C colour photograph
100 × 200cm
(small format) 70 x 140 cm
Edition of 15

Part III: Research Methods, 2002
Science Story
Type C colour photograph
100 × 200cm
(small format) 70 x 140 cm
Edition of 15

Part IV: Thesis and Conclusions, 2002
Science Story
Type C colour photograph
100 × 200cm
(small format) 70 x 140 cm
Edition of 15

+ Patricia Piccinini

Arntzen’s Paper Beauties

Paula Artz 

fantastical hats: Philip Treasy

Jenny Tieaho

illumination : sakura story

 

 

 

VISIT : Gwenael Nicolas – Curious

Krystian Czaplicki

 

Doha Chebib Log bowls.

 

 

+ TOXEL

Recycled Camera Bracelets