My name is Lena, I have worked with designers and scientists to organise interdisciplinary workshops in institutions (mainly in Europe) for over 2 years. Through the workshops I am promote the need to create space for interdisciplinary projects within scientific institutions.
All of the content we create is open source and looking forward to sharing methodologies with other people organising workshops. This can be a space to exchange workshop methodologies amongst the participants of Biohafabbing.
http://www.synbio.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/colab/view
Proposed activity in session:
I propose an activity to generate series of fiction with the participants of the workshop. Biohackers, in my opinion are already great at creating alternate narratives of science through their projects. We can archive these stories and show case them on online platforms, send it to labs or share it to the world. Speculation is not the Designer’s job alone - it requires input from both design and science to construct a convincing narrative together.
Within the context of Biofabbing I want to discuss:
- Designing workshop programmes with people from various backgrounds
- How to pick topics based on various cultural and social contexts?
- What kind of platforms can we effectively share initiatives? (Social Media, journals …)
- How can we share methodologies?
Example of narratives:
As a member biohacker at the London Biohackspace for iGEM 2015, we developed the DIY Brew Kit is a 6 pack of test tubes consisting of genetically modified yeast strains, which include yeast strains which express lycopene that turns the beer red or natural compounds that providing it with a raspberry flavour. e design process allowed the project to do the contrary of concealing the fact that the product included GMOs, and instead used the genetic modification as a unique characteristic of the product.
Project example from Co-lab Synthetic Biology (November 2015): DNAish Food: In a food demand survey conducted by Oklahoma State University in January 2015, over 85% of the people supported mandatory labes on food containing DNA. e result is shocking as DNA content does not di er between organic and GMOs. DNAish Food is project which prmotes profound discussion on DNA and its relation to modern food. Participants from the workshop created sitckers and vandalized products at Monoprix, a French supermarket.
@marymaggic @vlorenzolana @dusjagr @bethan would you be interested?
I envision a hands on activity - as mentioned in the previous post - I was thinking of doing a narrative workshop, where we make participants create stories based on biohacking. I also posted a photo from one of workshop sessions.