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Cristina MuñozMA Interaction DesignDecember 5th, 2014

BOTANIC GENE

Independent Research Project

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Special thanks to Alex Wilkie, Jimmy Loizeau, Mathew Plummer-Fernandez, Sarah Pennington, Interaction Research studio and MA Interaction Design class 2014.

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Overview

Introduction

Literature Review

Process

Outcome

Conclusion

References

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Botanic Gene is a service that enables the insertion of the DNA of a person or animal into a plant. The service opens a space for new relationships with nature in our domestic lives, driven by the accessibility of the science market in our hands.

Bio hacking, new digital fabrication tools, open source accessibility and the maker movement: we are witnessing a revolution where science is becoming more accessible but where the ethics are less clear; and where home made scientific tools can be created at a fraction of the cost of their commercial counterparts. This project speculates on how services might develop around such scientific and technological developments, and asks what might the impact of this revolution be on our everyday, individual lives?

Tutors: Alex Wilkie, Jimmy Loizeau, Mathew Plummer-Fernandez, Sarah Pennington.Credits: Lye Hye Eun, Alicia Fernández, Leonardo Arrata, Martin Malthe Borch, Ashling Smith.

overview

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Botanic Gene is a service that aims to reflect on the role that science plays in our lives and how it influences on our relations with nature. Technology has demonstrated that biological organisms can be programmable manufacturing systems, but it is society who has to accept these technologies as part of the mundane, for which it is important to understand its capabilities and reflect on the things we bring to our everyday life, where technology appears to advance at a speed that suites our lives, leaving no space to perceive how it acts on us.

The attitude with which science has approach society –a closed group who takes important decisions based on their knowledge - has lead into open knowledge communities broadened by globalization. This brings a set of expectations from various actors — scientists, commercial markets, DIY, academics, policy makers, religion, ecologists — that points out the importance of dialogue for risk assessment and a proper understanding of the practice in the hands of amateur biologists. In one hand, it is important to manage open knowledge through DIY communities that educate about democratization of science and technology responsibly, - a proper assessment of the implications to health and environment and the social issues it might bring. In the other hand it is important to understand how far we want to push the boundaries of science just because we are capable of playing with it. We are not able to control garage practices, but it is essential to have a dialogue on how these objects might perform in our lives. This is a key factor on the way lay knowledge is brought into account on the policy making, where amateur practices and other ways of knowledge are responsible enough to create a strong community of open practices.

In Botanic Gene users are configured into new technologies, creating multiple users in different versions of the future. First is the representation of the present through the service Botanic

Gene; which is a critical reflection of a possible technology that offers a service -and a kit- as a consequence of the commercialization of the bio-hacking revolution. In contrast to a traditional laboratory, this lab service is borned out of something they found accesible and viable to commercialize. The service reflects the spirit of the lab, making this technology accesible to the people and letting them to be part of the process. In this way, their beliefs are stronger that its ethics, they use nature as an object and make profit out of this combinations.

The second version of the user is the emerging user using the service. These actors perform over the service by creating new relationships with the plant with tendencies to humanize it.

The third version is a future user - a fictional scenario - where these botanical plants are described in the hands of experts. This scenario is a future possibility in our domestic environment. These fictions also represent the uncertainty of playing with nature, introducing DNA into plants that result on humanized features and unknown species.

The scenarios about the emergent users and the future users were co-created with people’s narratives, creating a space for them to imagine their uses and to be part of the narrative.

The aim of this design is to reflect on the expectations of the future by a configured version of our relations with nature in 21st century science. By creating a space that questions the potentials of the science market pushing the boundaries of the experimental cultures becoming part of the mundane. It is not a dystopian version of the future but a reflection to the relations we have with our environment and how much we can push science to ‘enhance’ ourselves.

introduction

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Creating users that perform on future scenarios, bringing realities that open spaces of reflection and dialogue about a lay public using science practices into their domestic lives. As Dunne describes:

“…the idea of possible futures and using them as tools to better understand the present and to discuss the kind of future people want, and, of course, ones people do not want.” (Dunne, 2012).

What are the expectations about peoples capacity towards science practices in every day life?DIY communities and bio hacking has existed for a long time and the last 10 years has had a strong impact in society with information age. This revolution is also a result of scientific uncertainties that has brought ethical questions to the public that can’t trust science to be left in the hands of policy makers and scientists. The lack of participation of the lay public and the lack of understanding of science, has created strong DIY communities, broadened by different forms of local knowledge, by non-professional scientists

and the lay epistemology where the known as ‘citizen science’ becomes expert in areas of everyday life experience. But do we understand what we can create? As Schmidt describes, the knowledge to fully grasp all possible interactions and complete set of behavioral characteristics is what makes the difference for a sustainable and self-development. There are human and non-human actors implicated in this process and we cannot give account of the implications, it needs to be monitored and the public needs to be engaged with this issues.

On the speed the market injects tools and knowledge, are we able to reflect on our needs? Consumer culture reshapes the citizenships, bringing as a result groups of interests where the regulatory authorities and the commercial institutions must be in coalition with science and the public.

literature review

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The process for this project has been fast and decisions had been taken intuitively in order to push it forward. A big challenge has been the time frame that left no room to make mistakes or over experiment. Hence, this encouraged us to take big steps from thinking to doing.

This diagram represents the development of my independent research process.

The starting point of this project was my interest on how DIY practices challenge the commercial market through crowd founding platforms, such as the Glowing Plant Project, 2013. The project consists of a glowing plant using synthetic biology and genome compiler’s software to use natural lighting with no electricity. It was crowd founded on Kickstarter during 2013, pledged $484,013 from its $65,000 goal. Because of this project, Kickstarter no longer funds genetically modified organisms. They thought it was too controversial. During the summer 2014 I was part of a group discussion at a Citizen Science Festival, where we discussed about the ethics on genetic engineering and the impact of projects like the Glowing Plant. The main actors of this discussion was the DIY community expressing how this ‘pop science’ projects damage the DIY communities

process

jimmy:develop a service thatpeople canuse it

jimmy: people arenot prepared for this

mathew: doing this myself doesnot sounds real

alex: you are openingblack boxes. try to keep it simple.

jimmy: leave it to the people to tell thestories.

mathew: think how the users wouldpersonalize the plant

mathew: remember tohave two languages, the service and yourssarah:

let the usershave a voicein this narratives

jimmy: the usersshould havethe gene gunin their kit.

on their effort to be taken into account by the policy makers, but at the same time, how this projects had to happen because DIY practices have no control over people’s actions. Even these communities try to make science understandable and open, they are part of the unintended consequences of the maker movement. This is what raised my design questions: What happens when DNA meets the freedom of re-creating nature as a commercial product? What are the implications of these interventions for society in general? What will be the new normal? How might we create a space that provokes to reflect & discuss about our relationships with nature in 21st century science?

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My first approach was to work on a narrative supported with evidence from research and opinions based on the issues & controversies about ‘Natural Genetic Modifications’ commercial use and its implications in a consumption society.

process

joan foncuberta: slice of ibérico ham whose fatty whorls depict the face of che guevara.

nordic food lab: cricket broth

Kit to DIY Lab-grown meat: In a statement, animal welfare campaigners People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said: “it will spell the end of lorries full of cows and chickens, abattoirs and factory farming. It will reduce carbon emissions, conserve water and make the food supply safer.”

now 200£ p/hamburger Sciene comments*: Producing it will be too expensive

Insects: produce cheap proteins

*Science comments: Cultivate Insects or high protein single cell bacteria, yeast or algae. The best protein addition is currently left over yeast from beer or bioethanol production. really good and healthy stuff and extremely cheep. The challenge is to inspire people to eat in fantastic new ways, avoid meat.

*Comments from scientist Martin Malthe Borch.

DIY Food

I started by looking at possibilities -from conventional to absurd - to eplore on possibilities. This is a selection of some of the ideas that where feasible to achieve.

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STEPS:1. Combine the DNA of you lose into an orchid.2. The flower will be unique: It will grow according to the characteristics of the flower but also to the DNA of you beloved. 3. Capture your blooms beauty to enjoy for years: through preservation process, the orchid will last for years. It also works on people that still alive (distant relations, breakups). You can spread the seeds of your beloved in their favourite places

*Comments from scientist Martin Malthe Borch

Preserve your beloved ones

* Science comments: it’s possible, it’s easy, it can be done by any-one really really simply in two steps. # purifying DNA from your grandmother# attach the DNA to small gold particles, and shoot them with high pressure onto a plant.

( note you need a screening mechanism to see if you actually succeeded but, that can maybe be left out, or we can add a self deletion casette. that removes it self after you have identified the right transformants. )

Bacteria that responds to urban conditions

Glows when there is more than xx level of pollution/noise

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When looking for feasible ideas to launch a Kickstarter I spoke to scientists. One of the scientists I spoke to –Malthe Borch-, told me about the viability of inserting the DNA into plants and also how feasible it was to do it with a hacked gene gun that him and Rüdiger Trojok made themselves for the cost of 50£ in relation to the 50,000£ traditional market.

The gene gun became the artifact of my interest to develop my concept: it is accessible, it can be crowd funded, is feasible and it opens up controversies in hands of the people.

My first proposal was a Kickstarter campaign to bring a kit to the public so they can inject the DNA into plants themselves. This didn’t sound real, I was told that people are not prepared for that and I should create a service that does it inside the lab.

diybio genegun: https://labitat.dk/wiki/genegunby rüdiger trojok & martin malthe borch

exploring on a kickstarter campaign

Kickstarter campaign

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I thought about creating a docufiction where my 3 months research where suposse to be based inside a garage lab built by 2 scientists’ entrepreneurs. I wanted to make a documentation of the environment and the implicated actors around the service.

this is the website that belong to this place. i was looking for aesthetics of an unexperienced company about the service they where providing:

Creating a service

process

As part of the Kopenlab Festival, Elizabeth moderated a group discussion between DIY communities and the public to discuss about the ethics on genetic engineering and the impact of these projects to the DIY communities and policy makers. Since then, I became interested to follow the project and held a few conversations with Elizabeth via email. On August 2014, Elizabeth told me there was a GM project going on in the UK that was facing some issues with the public. They contacted the Glowing Plant team to know more about the policies to facilitate the process to commercialise their project. The company, Botanic Gene, is a service that offers to introduce the DNA of a person or animal into a plant. The idea of having this situation in the UK got me interested and decided to contact them. The company was founded on july 2014 by two entrepreneurs in a lab garage in Birmingham. I decided to visit them to find more about it. After my first visit on September 2014 I spoke to them to ask if it was possible to make the research about their daily practice and issues on the development of their project. They openly told me I was welcome. This is a compilation of my 2 months research at the laboratory.

I was told that is the people who have to build the narratives and not me, that I should focus on the service and let others tell stories.

B TANIC GENE love that grows

GIVE IT AS A PRESENT

SUPPORT THE PROJECT

TESTIMONIALS

NEWS

CONTACT US

SELECT THE PLANT

flower

culinary

tree

fungus

cactus

houseplant

bonzai

carnivorous

BUY NOW

culinary tree bonzaiflower

HOW IT WORKS

SELECT A PLANT

fungus house plant carnivrouscactus

SELECT YOUR PLANTON THE ONLINE STORE

PLACE THE ORDER. A KIT WILL ARRIVE TO THE ADDRESS YOU PROVIDE.

SPIT INTO THE TUBE OR USE THE SPOON (WHEN USING ANIMALS DNA).

SEND IT BACK TO THE LAB WHERE WE MAKE THE GENETICPLANT TRANSFORMATION.

AFTER 6 WEEKS THE PLANT YOU CHOSE WILL BE DELIVERED WITH A DNA CERTIFICATE.

Ho�e How it Wor�s Buy FA� About

I thought about creating part of a fiction and part of reality, mixed with conversations I was having with Elizabeth Pitts, the person working on the developing of the Glowing Plant Project. This text belongs to the narrative I proposed:

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I created a notebook with questions for the public, where I first explained I was doing an ongoing research about developing the service – Botanic Gene. Through the notebook I asked some questions to grasp people’s thoughts about the service and how did they imagine the future of this plants.

Curiously, most of the stories used their own DNA in the plant.

Notebook

process

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After the notebook, lots of stories and points of view came into the project, with which I created a workbook. Ideas about humanizing plants and manipulating nature to adapt to our beliefs where represented throughout possible situations.

Workbook

process

protect my dna

sharing my body outside my body

ICD10Pedophilia

locking my plant to keep my dna safe dna prison from a pedophile profile

I want to transmit her my world

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Workbook

process

dna collectors

do not let it die

dna hunter bussiness dna expert. obsessive collectionist

dna black market: david bowie’s dna in a frozen cat

generation 1 generation 2 generation 3 generation 4

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With the workbook, the relationships created between the plant and the person created stories that could be pushed further into the future features of these plants. Instead of having a fixed relation with the plant, I created a plant that had

Back to the Notebook

process

embedded these features from the narratives. I put them into the notebook and went back to the people for further conversations about this plants.This where the 3 plants showed in the notebook:

The notebook brought the fictional scenarios about the future of these plants, represented by Botanical illustrations based on speculativce narratives from people performing over the objects as possible users; creating their own scenarios.

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The Gene Gun

For me it was important to keep the aim of my project and reflect on the ethics behind the commercialization of the science market and how this open practices perform on the public. What might be the new normal?

For me, developing a service as something happening in any lab created distractions from my concept.

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Botanic Gene is a service that offers to introduce the DNA of a person or animal into a plant. The service supplies a ready-made kit so the public can insert their DNA of interest into the plant they have chosen.

WEBIt is the first touch point to the service. Here the user can select the plant of its interest and know more about the process.

outcome

faQ link

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Kit 1Is a sample test so the person can spit in it. It comes with a set of instructions and information about what will happen next.

The LabThe lab takes care of recombining the DNA and preparing the cell culture from the selected plant.

outcome

kit 1

photos flickr (cc)

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Kit 2Consists of a plant tissue with DNA t-plasmid inserted ready to transplant into a pot. (the kit is still in progress)

outcome

containter

plant instructions

dna certificate

the 3d printed gene gun is built at the cost of £50 in contrast to the £50,000 traditional gene gun.

pssssst

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The emerging users of the service are represented in their everyday life relationship with their plant.

Users

gertrude looks after her four year-old grandsons dna plant

“I cherish this plant with love, that is all I do”

“AJ is a special boy, I could grow money out of this plant”

laura cares for a plant that contains her own dna

“It worries me if the plant is not eating, so I give her some mosquitos from time to time”

“Sometimes I feel depressed and taking a walk makes me feel better. I do the same for my plant in case she needs it too.”

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In the tradition of botanical drawings, images of engineered plants are based on descriptions gathered through user insights. Plants that breath creating a feeling of companion, cactus that shrinks to make it easy to travel with, plants that suffer from paranoia and unknown species due to random DNA mixes.

Botanic Drawings

hidden cactus

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Botanic Drawings

japanese breathe

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unidentified/unknown

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hidden cactus

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‘Botanic Gene’ is a critical reflection addressing the power of technologies to bring new truths into the mundane driven by science possibilities. The project designs capacities of objects performing in people’s everyday life by orchestrating futures with users and configuring them. It tries to provoke the public to think about these open practices happening today, reflecting on the present and the expectations we’ve got upon them. The different versions of the future represented through the users try to follow a series of implications of science and technology in our lives – actors who pull the trigger of technology, a lay public that performs over this circumstances –speculating about what the new normal nature might become.

If I would have more time to develop this project further, I would like to research on the uses of the gene gun into the lay public and push further ont the implications of the public as part of the science process. If push the project further, I would try to put it on a crowd-funding platform. In my opinion, this would be a way of engaging people on public conversations. What difference would it make to be part of the science process and how might this engage to dialogue about accessibility of science market in our hands?

conclusion

botanic gene 26 references

Arieff, Allison. Yes We Can. But Should We? Sept 7th, 2014. Web. https://medium.com/re-form/just-because-you-can-doesnt-mean-you-should-252fdbcf76c8.

Carmen, Ira H. Politics in the Laboratory: The Constitution of Human Genomics. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin, 2004. Print.

Church, George M., and Edward Regis. Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. New York: Basic, 2012. Print.

Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge: MIT, 2013. Print.

Evans, Antony. Glowing Plants: Natural Lighting with no Electricity. Kickstarter. Web. 04 Dec. 2014. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit

Fontcuberta, Joan. Stranger than Fiction. Science Museum. Exhibition Rd, London SW7 2DD. 5th of October, 2014.

Lang, David. The Biohackers Will See You Now. November 7th, 2014. Web. https://medium.com/backchannel/diybio-comes-of-age-4a5b15d1131f

Scala, Mark, and Suzanne Anker. Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination. Nashville, TN: Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Vanderbilt UP, 2012. Print.

Schmidt, Markus. Synthetic Biology: The Technoscience and Its Societal Consequences. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009. Print.

Wohlsen, Marcus. Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life. New York: Current, 2011. Print.

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MA Interaction Design 2014Goldsmiths university of London