| TUUR VAN BALEN |
Biotechnology
Three speculative scenarios exploring the future of biosensors, and how numbers might be measured, performed and known.
A design proposal for Intel Research and the Sociology department at Goldsmiths College. In collaboration with Revital Cohen.
Biotechnologies like synthetic biology can give detailed insight into our metabolic processes and introduce new interactions with our body. In this project, these interactions are proposed as a new form of cooking, to tailor an emotional experience for a specific person at a specific time.
Cook Me - Black Bile proposes a recipe for controlling the feeling of melancholy. Using synthetic biology, bespoke yeasts are designed that measure chemicals in the blood and alter levels of serotonin accordingly, making one feel less or more melancholic. To do so, the dish is cooked from a leech that has first fed itself on the body. An instrument specially designed for this recipe allows the leech to feed on the forearm and is then used to cook a blood mousse from the parasite's body. The blood mousse is accompanied by oyster mushrooms, a redcurrant sauce and blood sorrel.
The city is a vast and incredibly complex metabolism in which the human species is the tiniest of fractions; tiny and yet intrinsically linked into an organic embroidery beyond our understanding. It is within this complex fabric that (future) biotechnologies will end up. Pigeon d'Or proposes the use of feral pigeons as a platform and interface for synthetic biology in an urban environment by attempting to make a pigeon defecate soap.
By modifying the metabolism of pigeons, synthetic biology allows us to add new functionality to what is commonly seen as “flying rats.” A special bacteria is designed and created that, when fed to pigeons, turns faeces into detergent and is as harmless to pigeons as yoghurt is to humans.
Through the pursuit of manipulating pigeon excrement and designing appropriate architectural interfaces, the project explores the ethical, political, practical and aesthetic consequences of designing biology.
Synthetic Biology's potential to make healthcare more personal and participatory might turn us into our own doctors and pharmacists; constantly monitoring and tweaking our body. It might even allow to externalise our immune system by outsourcing metabolic processes to external micro-organisms. These micro-organisms, for instance yeasts, sense and diagnose anomalies in our body to produce and deliver chemicals accordingly. Such a Synthetic Immune System would be tailored to one's genetic predisposition, age, lifestyle and therefore risk.
Only a small amount of the pharmaceuticals and chemicals we swallow are taken up in our bloodstream, most of them pass through our bodies into the city's wastewater. Since wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove pharmaceuticals, the contents of our medicine cabinets eventually end up in the drinking water. This results in local differences in tap water, based on the food we eat and the drugs we take.
I branded tap water from three different areas: Notting Hill tapwater benefits from the highest density of organic shops, tapwater in the city of London is enhanced with various stimulants and Golders Green 'produces' a very fertile water due to the low concentration of people taking anti-conception pills.
This branded tap water was then sold on a sunny Saturday morning on Broadway market and people were asked to also put their tap water on the map, speculating it's special qualities. On the project website, people also added stories about their tap water to the map. The result is a new map of London, revealing potential local city-body ecologies or biotopes.
This is part of the 'My City = My Body' project, a design research project on how the rise of bio-technologies might influence our future interaction with the city. In this part, I created a series of public interventions to critically engage the audience in a future scenario, balancing fiction and reality.
download the big map (A0)
visit the project website on www.londonbiotopes.com
'Urban biogeography' is the study of the distribution of urban biodiversity over space and time. Maps and data of these urban biotopes might influence property prices, council tax or the cost of your health insurance. Urban biogeography enthusiasts, both amateur and professional, make use of emerging technologies to measure local city-body ecologies. One of the techniques often used is 'sewage monitoring'. This tool allows one to pump up a tiny amount of sewage into the little bottles and scan it for different pharmaceutical and chemical traces, all without even having to lift a manhole cover.
The tool uses synthetic biology* to detect oestrogen, anti-biotics, viagra or prozac: modified bacteria-solutions in the bottles change colour when detecting the chemicals or hormones. Since synthetic biology is both open-source and modular, the tool's functionality can be extended by downloading the DNA code for other detectors from a database on the internet.
This is part of the 'My City = My Body' project, a design research project on how the rise of bio-technologies might influence our future interaction with the city. In this part, I used this speculative scenario and fictional application of synthetic biology as a starting point for collaboration and confrontation with the department for Bioengineering at Imperial College in London. Many thanks to James Chappell and Vincent Rouilly at Imperial college for the bioengineering and introducing me to the wonderful world of Synthetic Biology.
Frank Derryl produces special cells in his body. He inherited this from his father, who mysteriously disappeared after his refusal to cooperate with a big pharmaceutical corporation. When Frank finds out about his special powers, he decides to use them and becomes AntiBodyMan.
Dressed in a suit and mask that help him harvest the antibodies he produces, AntiBodyMan moves around the city to fight the engineered viruses, dna stealing parasites and other pandemics produced by his enemies.
Superheroes reflect on our interaction with the city and embody society's dreams and fears about technologies. This project explores how the technologies emerging out of laboratories today might shape the superheroes of tomorrow.
A big fan of AntiBodyMan, Isaac hardly takes his costume off, even when he goes to the supermarket.
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Thanks to Jamie Tiller for the photographs and Bali Engel for the illustrations.
Download the comic here
My City = My Body is part of ongoing research into future biological interactions with the city. The increasing understanding of our DNA and the rise of bio-technologies will fundamentally change the way we interact with each other and our environment. Today, DNA is a tool for identification, you can have your DNA analysed over the internet and we are creating new types of bacteria by reprogramming its DNA. But what does this mean for tomorrow? Will we have DNA-surveillance and discrimination? Bio-identities and communities? And what will our new interactions look and feel like?
In search for these new biological interactions with the city, I started looking into Thames Water, London's largest 'drinking water and wastewater service company'. Making use of the Design Interactions work-in-progress-show, I staged an intervention, creating a map of London which contains biological information. Offering tapwater (kindly provided by Thames Water) I have asked visitors to donate a urine sample and give me their postcode, extending my biological map of London.
GenSupport is a service for a future charity-scenario. It allows you to create real, genetical family relationships as an extension to child development charities. First, you choose an orphan out of a global catalogue of orphans. Secondly, you donate your genetic material to be implemented in your orphan. This implementation involves minor treatment. As the genetic material is passed on, the orphan will inherit physical characteristics, the eyes, from it's supporting parents, to emphasise on the family relationship.
