Biodesign

Despite the ever-growing sophistication of synthetic and digital tools, it's the natural world that captures the imaginations of today's vanguard designers. By looking to nature as a teacher rather than simply as a source for raw materials, pioneers in the emerging biomimicry movement are developing design methods and materials to create intelligent buildings that emulate life itself.

In Hypernatural architecture and material experts Blaine Brownell and Marc Swackhamer present an international collection of forty-two case studies that illustrate astonishing new applications possible in this rapidly growing field, from Echoviren, a botanical pavilion that was designed to wilt into its surrounding redwood forest in Northern California, to the MIT Media Lab's Silk Pavilion, constructed by the threads of silkworms as they passed over scaffolding. Together, these projects show that by looking to nature, design can be a tool that makes our built environment more efficient, sustainable, and, most of all, livable.

The long atmospheric residence time of CO2 creates an urgent need to add atmospheric carbon drawdown to CO2 regulatory strategies. Synthetic and systems biology (SSB), which enables manipulation of cellular phenotypes, offers a powerful approach to amplifying and adding new possibilities to current land management practices aimed at reducing atmospheric carbon. The participants (in attendance: Christina Agapakis, George Annas, Adam Arkin, George Church, Robert Cook-Deegan, Charles DeLisi, Dan Drell, Sheldon Glashow, Steve Hamburg, Henry Jacoby, Henry Kelly, Mark Kon, Todd Kuiken, Mary Lidstrom, Mike MacCracken, June Medford, Jerry Melillo, Ron Milo, Pilar Ossorio, Ari Patrinos, Keith Paustian, Kristala Jones Prather, Kent Redford, David Resnik, John Reilly, Richard J. Roberts, Daniel Segre, Susan Solomon, Elizabeth Strychalski, Chris Voigt, Dominic Woolf, Stan Wullschleger, and Xiaohan Yang) identified a range of possibilities by which SSB might help reduce greenhouse gas concentrat...

The immune system is built from our cells, organs, proteins and tissue, and it is the sum of the whole that defends the body against illness. In this paper, we introduce the immune system as a site to explore morethan-human design. Specifically, we address the effects of chronic stress on the immune system to explore a set of speculative wearable designs that combine the microbial basis of the human body with that of morethan-human. We reflect on the relationships within living materials and discuss symbiosis and mutualistic care when designing alternative wearable artifacts and trackers. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Interaction design.

Mit der Entstehung der Bio-Art sind die Ausdrucksmittel der Künste reicher geworden, den traditionellen Ausdrucksmitteln sind neue biologische Medien an die Seite getreten, deren Spektrum von transgenen Organismen bis hin zu synthetischer DNA reicht. Biotechnologische Methoden und Verfahren zur Manipulation und Rekombination des genetischen Codes auf molekularer Ebene faszinieren von Beginn an Wissenschaftler und Künstler gleichermaßen. Heute ist die Faszination, Kunst im Labor herzustellen, der Erkenntnis gewichen, dass der Mensch die Welt im Zeitalter des Anthropozän in ein großes experimentelles Labor verwandelt hat – mit ungewissem Ausgang.

Ingeborg Reichle: Bio-Art: Die Kunst für das 21. Jahrhundert, In: Kunstforum International, Kunstnatur | Naturkunst. Natur in der Kunst nach dem Ende der Natur, 258 (2018)

El avance tecnológico, la desmaterialización del arte, los procesos de diseño y la poetización artística de la ciencia han revolucionado la forma de pensar las disciplinas contemporáneas. Gracias la dificultad de identificar los límites entre el arte, la ciencia y la tecnología se fortalece el concepto de interdisciplinariedad. Este escrito analiza la obra “Inmortalidad” de Joaquín Fargas y reflexiona sobre las combinaciones de dichas áreas contemplando como eje principal la didáctica interactiva, la ciencia aplicada al arte y su convergencia categórica en bioarte.

Maestría en Diseño Interactivo
Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo
Universidad de Buenos Aires

Pamphlet outlining the speculative building codes applying to Panarchistic Architecture's 'Pyro-resistor' architectural and urban design genus pyroarchetype variant for use when exploring how the architectural and urban resilience paradigm may work in policy and professional practice. Part of the wider suite of Panarchic Codex® materials available via www.panarchiccodex.com.

DER BLICK IN DIE NATUR: BIONIK UND BIODESIGN

Sowohl für die Kunst als auch für die Wissenschaft und Technik galt die Natur lange als Vorbild, das es nachzuahmen oder gar zu übertreffen galt. Während in der Kunst über Jahrhunderte eine exakte Nachahmung der Formen der Natur – ermöglicht durch ein genaues Studium der Natur – als höchstes Prinzip erachtet wurde, ging es Wissenschaft und Technik weniger um ein Nachbilden der Werke der Natur als vielmehr darum, zu verstehen, wie die Natur funktioniert, und im nächsten Schritt gleichsam wie diese zu verfahren. Lenkt man die Aufmerksamkeit auf aktuelle Forschungszweige wie die Bionik und das Biodesign, so scheinen diese doch höchst unterschiedlichen Zugriffsweisen auf die Natur gegenwärtig zu verschmelzen.
Der Blick in die Natur zielt dabei auf das Entdecken und Verstehen von durch evolutionäre Prozesse optimierte Verfahren der belebten Natur, die in der Folge gezielt für die Lösung technischer oder energetischer Herausforderungen in den Natur- und Ingenieurwissenschaften, aber auch der Architektur und des Designs zur Anwendung gelangen sollen. Dabei steht die Übertragung von geeigneten Struktur- und Organisationsprinzipien der belebten Natur in technische Verfahren und Prozesse sowie deren Artefakte oder architektonische Strukturen im Zentrum des Interesses.

The philosophy of biomimicry, I argue, consists of four main areas of inquiry. The first, which has already been explored by Freya Mathews (2011), concerns the “deep” question of what Nature ultimately is. The second, third, and fourth areas correspond to the three basic principles of biomimicry as laid out by Janine Benyus (1997). “Nature as model” is the poetic principle of biomimicry, for it tells us how it is that things are to be “brought forth” (poiēsis). “Nature as measure” is the ethical principle of biomimicry, for it tells us that Nature places ethical limits or standards on what it is possible for us to accomplish. And “Nature as mentor” is the epistemological principle of biomimicry, for it affirms that Nature is the ultimate source of truth, wisdom, and freedom from error. Within this overall framework, I argue that seeing Nature as physis – understood as “self-production” or “self-placing-into-the-open” – constitutes the requisite ground for the poetic, ethical, and epistemological principles of biomimicry, and that biomimicry thus conceived involves a new philosophical paradigm, which I call “enlightened naturalism”.

Representing a true portrait, the death mask simultaneously memorialises life and death, offering the living a sense of connection to the dead. Following the invention of photography, the practice of creating death masks languished as a way of preserving the visage of the deceased. However, designer and architect Neri Oxman, along with the group Mediated Matter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have sought to revitalise the practice using new imaging technologies such as multi-material 3D printers and generative computer algorithms. The resulting posthumous portrait represents not the face of the deceased, but rather a symbolic image drawn from the cultural and religious substance of the subject, and is further inspired by archetypal art and architectural structures. Future development earmarks the capture of the microbiome of dying breath, creating a biological interface, to live within the mask long after death. This paper will investigate the transcendence of the death mask from corporeal image to incorporeal relic, considering its implications for human memory and relationality, and its potential to signal a post-anthropocentric vision of humanity

With the emergence of Bio Art, biotechnology became part of the art world. By bringing cutting edge technologies closer to the public, Bio Art has provoked wider reflection about the ethics of turning biology into technology and in particular has raised questions about the aesthetic and ethical status of manipulating living organisms. By showing transgenic organisms in galleries and museum contexts, Bio Art drew attention to the fact that biotechnology had already crossed the divide between the artificial and the natural back in the 1970s. Unsurprisingly, the selective manipulation of living organisms for artistic purposes provoked passionate debates about the shifting concept of life, a concept that has changed dramatically since the arrival of biotechnology within the frame of technoscience. Art emerging from the laboratory opened up non-normative debates about life and its limits in the crossover between Bio Art, ethics, sciences, and the humanities, and also framed controversies about the growing influence of science and technology and a bioscience-based economy on our societies as well as on the fine arts. Whereas in the early days Bio Art primarily sought to reveal the state of the art of biotechnology or tissue engineering, current Bio Art practices interrogate the limits, boundaries, frontiers, and frameworks within which life can exist and how fragile these limits are in an age that some have termed the Anthropocene. Altering nature deliberately using biotechnology – in a scientific laboratory or in the kitchen at home – is still a vital topic in Bio Art. However, because we have transformed our entire planet in recent centuries into a kind of laboratory where traditional distinctions between natural and artificial, subject and object, human and non-human agents no longer hold when confronted by the enormous ecological problems and challenges that exist today, speculative biology is now becoming a major issue in Bio Art. One of the most promising approaches of bringing Bio Art and speculative biology into a fruitful liaison is demonstrated in the work of the Turkish artist and researcher Pinar Yoldas, who has lived in the USA for more than a decade.

The growing field of bioart and design raises significant questions for artists and designers working with life as raw matter. What is necessary in such practices is that critical discussions centered on ethics and power are integrated into broader cultural dialogues in the creation of objects and products that design or redesign biological parts, devices or systems. This paper will examine specific examples of wearable art produced by architect and designer Neri Oxman. Using generative software to develop the series titled 'Wanderers, An Astrobiological Exploration', computational growth patterns give rise to undeniably biomorphic designs that emerge as external-organs-as-outerwear. Articulated as an imaginative set of prostheses hosting their own synthetic biology, these pieces represent a new frontier worn at the threshold of the skin. In the appraisal of these examples, I register speculative critical design as a methodology that interrogates the underlying assumptions of bioart and design processes as they converge with the life sciences. I ask what happens when the human body presents as a parasite to the apparatus upon which it depends? And further, what status can a prosthetic organ achieve if it becomes a co-participant in life? This paper will pursue these questions and examine whether the symbiotic relationships established between humans and their wearable prostheses could enable us to transcend corporeal difference, effectively challenging some the key analytical challenges facing a biotechnological future.

This article presents a Biomaterial Design Methodology based on the idea that common people can produce objects using bio-based ingredients to create biomaterials and digital fabrication technologies as tools to drive the design processes. The emergence of biomaterials open-source recipes in maker communities and digital fabrication laboratories open new approaches for design, raising the idea that designers can become cookers, controlling all design process and its potential outcomes. The methodology presents four steps to develop recipes and biomaterials to achieve a final product design without requiring any previous knowledge. Also combines different digital fabrication techniques to produce new material expressions, systems, functionalities and products.

The nascent field of biodesign creates novel applications of life sciences through design methods. Biodesign has the potential to shift interactive computational systems from using purely digital components to systems that integrate living organ-isms. However, there is a lack of understanding of biodesign and how it advances HCI. We present a review of 41 papers published in ACM Digital Library, IEEE Explore digital library and the Design and Applied Arts Index. We found that existing literature describes aspects of biodesign theory, design processes and artefacts, and educational environments, but not holistically. Based on the findings, we define biodesign as the application of the bioaffordances of an organism. We contribute the Bio-Inquiry model: a methodology connecting user-centred, scientific and critical inquiries to inform the design of interactive artefacts. We discuss the opportunities at the intersection of biodesign and HCI to consider the nature of future technologies.

Integral to the reproductive processes of the biota of several forest, shrub, and grassland biome-types, wildfire ignites some 3,400,000km2 of Earth’s vegetated surface annually. Though a highly complex phenomena coupled with not one, but several Earth systems, human actions are both directly and indirectly changing wildfire frequencies, intensities, severities, and behaviours, and to the detriment of both environment and society. Nowhere is this felt more so than the wildland urban interface, which home to roughly 1/3 of the nation’s populous and 40% of its housing stock, is the fastest-growing land-use type in the conterminous United States. A place where fire-averse architectures meet increasingly fire-prone lands, loss of lives, properties, and livelihoods to a series of wildfire complexes of proportions unprecedented in living memory have rendered there an urgent need to reconsider the challenge of living with wildfire as a vital landscape process. The product of a transdisciplinary study which converged state-of-the-knowledge from fields as diverse as the fire, ecological, and wider Earth sciences; information, communication, computing, and related technologies, both digital and biological; evolutionary, smart and living materials, architectures, and urban systems; philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and policymaking, this thesis presents a new wildland urban interface paradigm modelled on the biochemistries, behaviours, and systems of fire-adapted flora and the fire regimes they form. Migrating biomimetics from the level of species to systems, relying not on generic notions of nature and its workings, nor assumptions more generally, but on rigorous interrogation of the interplay between biotic and abiotic processes from the molecular to landscape to planetary scale, and across both human and geological timescales, several original theoretical and technical architectural and urban concepts are discussed, together with their possible applications and implications both within and beyond the wildland urban interface. Integrating insights from local and global indigenous and ancient fire cultures, the findings conclude that not merely is a reconciliation of human and non-human systems at the interface of fire-prone wild and urban lands possible, but therein resides potent ecological, social, and technical potentialities that merit further research in the years ahead.

Chapter Overview: Having discussed the underlying paradigmatic principles of a tri-part pangenical approach to architecture and urban design in the wildland urban interface of the western U.S., this chapter explores the codification potentialities, both present and possible future, through discussion, scenarios, and speculations.

Bioplastics are biodegradable materials that come from renewable sources and can be used to reduce the problem of plastic waste that is suffocating the planet and contaminating the environment. This module presents an emerging approach to design based on research from the life-science and incorporates the use of living materials into structures, objects, and processes for the first time. Working in group for one week, we focused on how natural biological processes are considered as viable alternatives to those of more conventional technologies. We designed and experimented a new product,

This paper deals with the relations among neurology and biorobotic research. The result here presented is a new equipment which can measure the status of neuromotor control. In particular, the finger motion may be observed as the result, of the activity of sensors, of actuators and of the control system. The methodology of research has applied the results of robotics and of bioengineering to the human touch. The touch expresses the action of the brain, of the neural activity and also the attention and intention of the human acts. The goal is the "touch soft" of a button.

Dipandang ruangan untuk merokok tidak efektif karena ruangan tersebut tidak memberikan perlindungan terhadap perokok pasif. Berbagai rancangan bangun ruang khusus merokok (smooking area) umumnya hanya berfungsi untuk ruang isolasi tanpa dilengkapi dengan penyedot debu yang mampu menyedot atau mengatasi permasalahan asap rokok. Asap rokok merupakan polutan bagi manusia dan lingkungan sekitarnya. Asap rokok mainstream mengandung 4000 jenis bahan kimia berbahaya dalam rokok dengan berbagai mekanisme kerja terhadap tubuh. Dibedakan atas fase partikel dan fase gas. Fase partikel terdiri daripada nikotin, nitrosamine, N nitrosonorktokin, poliskiklik hidrokarbon, logam berat dan karsinogenik amin (Sitepoe, 2000). Sedangkan fase yang dapat menguap atau seperti gas adalah karbonmonoksid, karbondioksid, benzene, amonia, formaldehid,hidrosianida dan lain-lain (Sitepoe, 2000). Kebiasaan merokok di Indonesia sudah membudaya dikalangan masyarakat dan sulit untuk dihilangkan. Maka dari itu diperlukan adanya suatu solusi berupa ruang khusus merokok (smooking area). Untuk itu kami membuat karya tulis ilmiah yang berisi metode yang efektif dan efisien dalam permasalahan asap rokok yang ada pada ruang khusus merokok (smooking area).
Salah satu metode yang bisa digunakan adalah metode akuaponik. Akuaponik adalah sistem pertanian berkelanjutan yang mengkombinasikan akuakultur dan hidroponik dalam lingkungan yang bersifat simbiotik (Rakocy et al., 2006a). Biasanya sistem akuaponik digunakan dalam ruang lingkup pertanian dengan tanaman pertanian. Namun, aquaponik yang kami gunakan adalah tanaman hias antipolutan yang memiliki kemampuan untuk mengurangi kandungan asap rokok. Penggunaan tanaman yang berfungsi sebagai antipolutan untuk mengurangi polutan asap rokok di ruang khusus merokok (smooking area) belum pernah dimanfaatkan untuk ruangan tersebut. Apabila ruang khusus merokok (smooking area) dilengkapi penggunaan akuaponik tanaman antipolutan dalam ruangan tersebut maka pemanfaatan akuaponik dengan tanaman antipolutan merupakan salah satu solusi terbaik untuk mengurangi dampak polutan asap rokok.

Kata Kunci : Asap Rokok, Smoking Area, Akuaponik, Antipolutan

Das Verhältnis von Kunst und Wissenschaft war immer vielschichtig und ist heute im Zeitalter der Technosciences überaus prekär geworden. So erstaunt es nicht, dass schon vor Jahren zahlreiche Künstler das Arbeiten im Atelier gegen das Forschen im Labor eingetauscht haben. Seither begleiten Künstler die Transformation der modernen Naturwissenschaften hin zu den Technosciences seismographisch. Oszillierend zwischen der Technisierung des Lebendigen in den Biowissenschaften und der Verlebendigung der Technik innerhalb der Erforschung des künstlichen Lebens haben sich Protagonisten der Transgenic Art und der Artificial Life Art an die Aneignung von Methoden und Verfahren der Life Sciences herangewagt und immer neue Kunstformen entworfen.

Die umfassende Aufarbeitung dieser neuen Kunstrichtungen stellt Künstler und Künstlerinnen wie Suzanne Anker, Louis Bec, Oron Catts und Ionat Zurr, Catherine Chalmers, Jaq Chartier, Kevin Clarke, Critical Art Ensemble, Joe Davis, George Gessert, Peter Gerwin Hoffmann, Eduardo Kac, Pamela Davis Kivelson, David Kremers, Steve Kurtz, William Latham, Reiner Maria Matysik, Jon McCormack, Steve Miller, Simon Penny, Jane Prophet, Marc Quinn, Oliver Ressler, Ken Rinaldo, Christa Sommerer und Laurent Mignonneau, Gary Schneider, Pam Skelton, Nell Tenhaaf, K. D. Thornton, Gail Wight und Adam Zaretsky und viele weitere Kunstprojekte umfassend vor.

It is a common opinion that humans often are the sole source of normativity in the world. This attitude encourages a bias in favor of the interests of members of the predominant species (who becomes the main subject), against those of other species, generally defined as non-human objects (such as animals, plants or microorganisms). This anthropocentric background is recurrent also in design field, where we primarily see human interests as the praxis to develop solutions, without considering the footprint the we leave on the non-human environment. Moving from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism could help us to re-establish the importance of “the other” in the web of life and to render designing products an interface for multispecies co-existence. Philosophical theories such as new materialism or the perspective of entanglement suggested by posthumanism are crucial to stimulate a mind-shift finalized to support and to embody different subjects that have been traditionally ignored in design processes.
If we start conceiving design in its overlapping with the biological realm, we can in fact develop alternative methods, not through top-down strategies, but with approaches literally emerging “from the ground”.
The paper will explore some Biodesign practices that can be used as a means to understand the complexity of human and non-human inter-actions and to open ourselves to what lies beyond rationality, cognition, knowledge and human mastery.

Pamphlet outlining the speculative building codes applying to Panarchistic Architecture's 'Pyro-evader' architectural and urban design genus pyroarchetype variant for use when exploring how the architectural and urban resilience paradigm may work in policy and professional practice. Part of the wider suite of Panarchic Codex® materials available via www.panarchiccodex.com.

Pamphlet outlining the principle traits of Panarchistic Architecture's 'pyroevader' pyroachetype for use when exploring how the architectural and urban resilience paradigm may work in policy and professional practice. Part of the wider suite of Panarchic Codex® materials available via www.panarchiccodex.com.

Find the 'Introduction', 'Method', and 'Literature Review' chapters in eBook format in the 'All' section above.

Integral to the reproductive processes of the biota of several forest, shrub, and grassland biome-types, wildfire ignites some 3,400,000km2 of Earth’s vegetated surface annually. Though a highly complex phenomena coupled with not one, but several Earth systems, human actions are both directly and indirectly changing wildfire frequencies, intensities, severities, and behaviours, and to the detriment of both environment and society. Nowhere is this felt more so than the wildland urban interface, which home to roughly 1/3 of the nation’s populous and 40% of its housing stock, is the fastest-growing land-use type in the conterminous United States. A place where fire-averse architectures meet increasingly fire-prone lands, loss of lives, properties, and livelihoods to a series of wildfire complexes of proportions unprecedented in living memory have rendered there an urgent need to reconsider the challenge of living with wildfire as a vital landscape process. The product of a transdisciplinary study which converged state-of-the-knowledge from fields as diverse as the fire, ecological, and wider Earth sciences; information, communication, computing, and related technologies, both digital and biological; evolutionary, smart and living materials, architectures, and urban systems; philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and policymaking, this thesis presents a new wildland urban interface paradigm modelled on the biochemistries, behaviours, and systems of fire-adapted flora and the fire regimes they form. Migrating biomimetics from the level of species to systems, relying not on generic notions of nature and its workings, nor assumptions more generally, but on rigorous interrogation of the interplay between biotic and abiotic processes from the molecular to landscape to planetary scale, and across both human and geological timescales, several original theoretical and technical architectural and urban concepts are discussed, together with their possible applications and implications both within and beyond the wildland urban interface. Integrating insights from local and global indigenous and ancient fire cultures, the findings conclude that not merely is a reconciliation of human and non-human systems at the interface of fire-prone wild and urban lands possible, but therein resides potent ecological, social, and technical potentialities that merit further research in the years ahead.

Pamphlet outlining the principle traits of Panarchistic Architecture's 'pyroendurer' pyroachetype for use when exploring how the architectural and urban resilience paradigm may work in policy and professional practice. Part of the wider suite of Panarchic Codex® materials available via www.panarchiccodex.com.

Pamphlet outlining the principle traits of Panarchistic Architecture's 'pyroresistor' pyroachetype for use when exploring how the architectural and urban resilience paradigm may work in policy and professional practice. Part of the wider suite of Panarchic Codex® materials available via www.panarchiccodex.com.

DNA origami enables the precise fabrication of nanoscale geometries. We demonstrate an approach to engineer complex and reversible motion of nanoscale DNA origami machine elements. We first design, fabricate, and characterize the mechanical behavior of flexible DNA origami rotational and linear joints that integrate stiff double-stranded DNA components and flexible single-stranded DNA components to constrain motion along a single degree of freedom and demonstrate the ability to tune the flexibility and range of motion. Multiple joints with simple 1D motion were then integrated into higher order mechanisms. One mechanism is a crank–slider that couples rotational and linear motion, and the other is a Bennett linkage that moves between a compacted bundle and an expanded frame configuration with a constrained 3D motion path. Finally, we demonstrate distributed actuation of the linkage using DNA input strands to achieve reversible conformational changes of the entire structure on ∼minute timescales. Our results demonstrate programmable motion of 2D and 3D DNA origami mechanisms constructed following a macroscopic machine design approach.

Panarchistic Architecture proposes that the wildland urban interface is populated by architecture and urban infrastructure which, modelled on fire-adapted flora that is native to the regional fire regimes, coevolves with the 'rhythms' of those regimes. Both materially and informatically, and conceptually and technically, the proposed WUI schema synthesises architectural and urban systems with ecological and wider Earth systems, such that the biochemistry, behaviours, and overall functioning of the former are synchronous to those of the latter. Further information is available at www.panarchiccodex.com

Pamphlet outlining the principle traits of Panarchistic Architecture's pyroarchetypes - pyro-evaders, pyro-endurers, and pyro-resistors, for use when exploring how the architectural and urban resilience paradigm may work in policy and professional practice. Part of the wider suite of Panarchic Codex® materials available via www.panarchiccodex.com.

In this paper I will look at current artistic trends, as well as recent developments in biotechnology
that in the future may transform living organisms into objects. The concept of technological progress as a part of a linear perception of history that may exceed its limits is analysed, and the need for re-evaluating the concept of progress is emphasised. The role of biotechnology in technological progress, as well as the potential of biotechnology to change our perception of progress by applying natural processes in most basic terms, is highlighted. The relationship between art and technology is examined and shows that in some cases art explores technological advances before they occur. The work and the views of body artists Stelarc and Orlan are discussed, as well as those of some other artists. Bioethics is introduced as a scholarly way to examine biotechnological development, and it's revealed that not much has been done in respect to issues that are not directly connected to humans. This area seems to be where design can come in and explore the prospects of living objects and their manipulation. The need for a closer relationship between design and biotechnology, in order to produce a better future, concludes this paper.

Pamphlet outlining the speculative building codes applying to Panarchistic Architecture's 'Pyro-endurer' architectural and urban design genus pyroarchetype variant for use when exploring how the architectural and urban resilience paradigm may work in policy and professional practice. Part of the wider suite of Panarchic Codex® materials available via www.panarchiccodex.com.

En créant un espace de mise en présence, et de rencontre avec le vivant et les relations qui le constituent, des artistes comme Pierre Huyghe ou Tomás Saraceno questionnent la division ontologique entre le spectateur et l'oeuvre qui acquiert des qualités agentives. Le vivant, dans leurs pratiques, est quelque chose de partagé, qui émerge dans la rencontre. L'expérience de l'oeuvre est celle de l'être vivant, autrement dit de l'immersion dans une écologie conçue comme entremêlement de relations. En posant les conditions de possibilité de cette expérience (renouvelée) du vivant, en déplaçant nos modes d'attention et en nous sommant d'être nous-mêmes présents à ce qu'ils nous présentent, ils participent à la construction de nouvelles sensibilités. C'est peut-être précisément dans ce qui se joue, là, que peuvent émerger une nouvelle manière d'être-vivant et d'être-au-monde, en commun. Prendre acte du pouvoir originaire qu'a l'art d'informer notre sensibilité au monde invite à interroger une catégorie et une démarche comme celle du bioart, en se demandant ce que le vivant fait à l'expérience de l'art ; et, plus loin, ce que le vivant " à l'oeuvre " fait à notre pensée de l'écologie.

DNA origami enables the precise fabrication of nanoscale geometries. We demonstrate an approach to engineer complex and reversible motion of nanoscale DNA origami machine elements. We first design, fabricate, and characterize the mechanical behavior of flexible DNA origami rotational and linear joints that integrate stiff double-stranded DNA components and flexible single-stranded DNA components to constrain motion along a single degree of freedom and demonstrate the ability to tune the flexibility and range of motion. Multiple joints with simple 1D motion were then integrated into higher order mechanisms. One mechanism is a crank-slider that couples rotational and linear motion, and the other is a Bennett linkage that moves between a compacted bundle and an expanded frame configuration with a constrained 3D motion path. Finally, we demonstrate distributed actuation of the linkage using DNA input strands to achieve reversible conformational changes of the entire structure on ∼minute...

La artista multimedial Paulina Velázquez-Solís y yo, conversamos realizando un recorrido por lugares y escenarios de la creación experimental, que vinculan tecnologías innovadoras y artesanías. La entrevista les invita a conocer colectivos dedicados a estas exploraciones, subrayado el liderazgo de esta creadora pionera en la región centroamericana, algo que no se había puesto en evidencia hasta ahora, debido a los relatos patriarcales que dominan la comunicación de los eventos tecnológicos, donde pareciera que son los hombres quienes tienen las ideas, las enseñan y promueven, guiando a los pueblos hacia “el desarrollo y el progreso”. Estoy profundamente agradecida con Paulina por su generosidad, desde hace tiempo deseaba conversar con ella. Finalmente podemos compartir nuestro diálogo sobre cultura tecnológica decolonial y feminismo.

Il paper illustra alcune delle metodologie del design making, attraverso un’indagine laboratoriale che usa, come strumenti della ricerca, le attrezzature e i materiali affini al settore scientifico della biologia. Al confine tra programma e imprevisto, metodologia e libera sperimentazione, il design non si preoccupa solo di realizzare oggetti finiti e industrializzabili, ma esplora mondi, inventando pratiche di progettazione condivisa e nuove manipolazioni della materia. Il paradigma produttivo si trasforma da una vecchia concezione di prodotto industriale verso un nuovo orizzonte di manifattura vivente. Le possibilità offerte dalle più recenti tecnologie di lavorare con organismi in grado di evolversi secondo una propria natura, insieme a una serie di sperimentazioni pilota nel campo della biologia sintetica e della medicina rigenerativa, conducono a nuove frontiere finora considerate inesplorabili. In questa direzione, la ricerca ha esplorato le nuove pratiche della DIY Biology strettamente connesse al settore della microbiologia e dell’ingegneria delle macchine, in relazione alla loro possibile applicazione nei processi di stampa 3D. L’esito della ricerca ha
condotto all’elaborazione di protocolli produttivi al confine tra tecniche di 3Dprinting e bioprinting, attraverso l’adozione di organismi viventi come funghi, muschi, cellulosa microbica.

Architect and designer Neri Oxman has created a series of external organs speculatively proposed for inter-planetary travel titled 'Wanderers, An Astrobiological Exploration'. Using generative software, the computational growth patterns gave rise to a suite of work possessing undeniably biomorphic designs, and which are articulated as an imaginative set of prostheses hosting their own synthetic biology. Embedded with living matter, the 3D printed skins and are designed to interact with, and transform environmental elements into life-sustaining forms of biomass or biofuel, or as a system for expelling bio-waste. Two of the wearables were exhibited in the National Museum Design Stockholm in 2015. The title of the exhibition—'Domestic Futures'—raises interesting questions about the position of the non-human animal within future scenarios; questions which provoke a range of issues pertaining to the politics and rights of the non-human animal.

While Oxman’s prostheses seek innovative solutions to the threat of the anthropocene, this paper will argue that their deployment of synthetic life can be read as a form of alienated labour within a regime of biopower. Accordingly, where engineered life is instrumentalised in the service of human survival, agency becomes an ethical issue worthy of pursuit. Indeed, what status can a prosthetic organ achieve if it becomes a co-participant in life? What would occur if the body presented as a parasite to something that it created, becoming itself the site of the anthropocene? Will this result in an evolution of our own (un)doing, or will it render the prostheses, as Cary Wolfe says (as per Agamben), “killable but not murderable”? (Wolfe et al. 2011)

In examining these questions, this paper will investigate whether humans can configure a relational economy with synthetic life, acknowledge the agential capacity of matter and effectively dismantle the notion of a sovereign and discrete self toward an unfixed, evolving politics of species-being. In doing so, synthetic life can be perceived from within the organizing structures of language and ideology historically reserved for the human, to affect a paradigm shift in life’s other ordering structures—the social, the political, the economic and the cultural. In what may be charged as a utopian vision, such advances in interspecies understanding have the potential to transcend corporeal difference to surpass the challenges of race, colonialism and slavery that have plagued our history and persist as problems for our future.

The nascent field of biodesign uses the biological affordances of organisms to address some user need. These can range from the development of novel materials, which the designer actively investigates, to applications of synthetic biology or the creation of bio-digital hybrid systems. Within biodesign there is a question for interaction design: what will interactive systems look like in a guided and grown environment, rather than a built environment? In this workshop , we will explore new technologies that rely on symbiotic relationships between the user and organisms that participate in interactive systems. The goal of this workshop is to engage the interaction design community in exploring new aspects of designing for living computational systems. Citation: Phillip Gough, Larissa Pschetz, Naseem Ahmadpour, Leigh-Anne Hepburn, Clare Cooper, Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Oron Catts (2020). The Nature of Biodesigned Systems: Directions for HCI, In Proceedings of International Conference...