F.U.N.Y. (Floating Underwater Nails Yard)

The concept of taking natural environment as a ‘ready-made laboratory’ with unlimited supply of ‘raw materials’ was the vigor behind F.U.N.Y. that cultivates diatom onto the artificial intelligent fingernails in an open water– where diatoms exist naturally. The idea then inspired the latest generation of diatom incubator that will be placed into a canal in London. A set of apparatuses sunk into the canal and turned the site into a diatom cultivating centre then activated the artificial nails manufacturing process right away.

The F.U.N.Y is a system that could easily setup by minimum a unit of floating incubator that contained a set of biodegradable S.L.A.N. scaffolds. A canal junction known as Little Venice by locals at Maide Vale where two major canals in London meet was spotted for this mission. Regent’s Canal that provides a link from the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal to the Limehouse Basin and the River Thames in east London conjunctions with Grand Junction Canal that forms the southern half of the Grand Union Main Line from London to Birmingham creates a very unique geographical landscape which also serves a roundabout for boats. A roundabout island in the middle of the junction that is currently inhabited by swans and ducks is almost like a reserved wild life island in the city of London.

The prototype was being designed as homage to David Greene’s Rockplug/Logplug project where connection for local networks were being installed into natural elements found in around the suburbs. To address general public over-reacted awareness towards any biological related projects, F.U.N.Y. tends to update Greene’s project in the notion of biotech, where the natural element was used as to camouflage rather than to blend into nature as Greene’s proposed in the Rokplug/Logplug project. Nevertheless, it seems like the Rokplug/Logplug project has inspired inventions more of a camouflaged high tech device for example the bluetooth enabled, data transmitting rock used by British spies in Moscow that enables communication with it via their PDAs or mobile phones. As a side note, the F.U.N.Y. prototype was illegally placed in the canal and successfully camouflaged itself with the floater made of tree branch.

S.L.A.N. (Semi-living Artificial Nails)

Inspired by the 40’s classic sci-fi novel written by A. E. van Vogt, where the Homo superior (evolved human) that could communicate through telepath and higher intelligence among themselves, and recent research by Michael Sussman in using diatoms as the material for microchips triggered the creation of artificial nails which dedicated to the ‘low-tech experiments’ with diatoms earlier on.

While we are so attached to the cyber technologies that is less than forty years in geological history, will future human evolution being shaped by human desire to stay connected? If there was an immediate mutation reacted to current cyber technologies, fingers are probably the closest anthropological contact with the cyber world. That is maybe why replacing a missing finger with an USB flash drive came into Jerry Jalava’s mind when he lost one of his fingers. S.L.A.N. project was meant to accommodate this immediate human need for microchips embedded fingernails in near future. Ultimately, genetic mortified or synthetic diatoms could be grown in underneath fingernails and structured themselves to perform certain intelligent functions. S.L.A.N. incubator was again being setup with domestic glassware in a low-tech way to demonstrate how domesticating diatoms could be. The scaffolds made of Nitrate, Phosphate, Silica, Vitamin B12, Biotin, Thiamine HCl and zinc create an environment that attracts diatoms to grow on them. However, the aqueous medium was purposely prepared with seawater sample from Brighton, UK hopefully the seawater diatoms would be cultivated. The distribution of nutrient on a scaffold shall be designed into certain pathway that eventually forms a circuit of a microchip or RFID which later on will be ‘implanted’ onto human fingers to allow one plugs into cyber world remotely which could be better illustrated in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

from Anthropocene to Parallel ecology...

Open publication - Free publishing - More post human

Pachube

Pachube is a web service available at http://www.pachube.com that enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world.

Brighton decay...

Interesting after life of one of the burnt down Brighton Piers that was built in 1866 in front of Hilton Hotel at Brighton beach. I am glad that it was left as it was after it caught on a frightening fire about 5 years ago which the origin of fire still unknown, however in my eyes, it is now more "lively" than the restored theme-park pier 5 minutes away. The burnt skeletons have eroded, collapsed and re-occupied by new lives. Seagulls rest and nest on them, algae and shells grow on them, millions of sea lives benefit from the decomposed iron, the eroding steels by the fire as well as natural courses have chosen some beautiful texture and colors from a rotting pallette, they blend in perfectly with the rocky beach of Brighton and live happily with the spirits that once enjoyed the pier... the bare skeletal structures that ghosted the memory of mystery flames look especially stunning when the sun sets, by drawing strong profile lines on the summer sky of golden hour with brushes and splashes of melancholy. The structures that once made a pier stands still on the sea are now supporting each other in an balancing act, but if your stand quietly in front of them, you might hear the whispers of the ruins and dead, and maybe the weak cranking sounds from the slow-moving joints of the skeletons that are still trying so hard to defeat the waves hitting on them and the tragedy happened years ago...

Smart underwater factory Amsterdam

Hard-rocking artsy diatoms

Haekel Swarm from Simon Jenkins

I first heard of Jenkins from his articles in Guardians, and I remember his cynical statement criticizing a few modernist architects as ‘the worst offenders because they became the most powerful’ in the article responded to the 2006 exhibition on modernist art at the V&A. Surprisingly he is fascinated by diatoms, too. That's probably why he hates modernists so much?

Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes a column twice weekly for the Guardian and weekly for the Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC. Previously he wrote columns for the Times and the London Evening Standard, both of which newspapers he edited.

His career began on Country Life magazine and continued on the Times Educational Supplement, the Economist (political editor) and the Sunday Times (books editor). He served on the board of British Rail and London Transport in the 80s and was deputy chairman of English Heritage and a Millennium commissioner. He was Journalist of the Year in 1988 and Columnist of the Year in 1993.

His books include works on London architecture, the press and politics and, more recently, England's Thousand Best Churches (1999) and Thousand Best Houses (2003).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2008/apr/22/simon.jenkins

Algae Farms at Sea

http://www.jmu.edu/news/madisonscholar/bachmann-1.shtml
In addition to using the bioreactor, Bachmann and his students are experimenting with growing algae in a saltwater fish tank.

"One of the things that we want to look at is whether or not these algae could be cultivated offshore, to save valuable land area needed for housing and current food production practices," Bachmann said. "But, in order to do this, you must ensure you can do it in a contained manner, so that the algae do not disrupt the environment.

"Offshore algae farms have the potential to absorb significant amounts of CO2 and produce substantial amounts of bio-oil. But algae plumes could alter entire ecosystems if they cannot be properly contained, and you do not want that happening."

The Chesapeake Bay is a testament to this, Bachmann said. The bay has struggled with algae problems in the past, and felt strains on the fishing industry there. In certain conditions, fertilizer runoff can lead to large-scale algae plumes so thick, they block sunlight from getting through to organisms below the surface that need it. In severe conditions, those organisms die off, thus disrupting the food chain.

"These algae plumes can be quite large, some more than 400 miles in length," Bachmann said. "Right now, no one wants to clean them up. But if companies could harvest these microalgae and process them into fuel, then they just might just be motivated enough to help cleanup this environmental problem."

The deep ocean, far offshore, could prove to be an ideal place for cultivating algae without disrupting the environment.

"A lot of the ocean — 95 percent of it or so — is really like a barren desert and it doesn't have anything growing in it," Bachmann said. "As you travel into the open ocean, the surface of the sea is too far away from the nutrients that are found in the soil. These nutrients are essential for plant growth. If you're at the shore, the nutrients are here, the sunlight's here, everything grows. If you go into the deeper ocean, the sunlight is still present, but the nutrients are far below the surface and nothing will grow."

The fish tank trials will provide answers to a couple of questions: Are there algae that will grow there and can it be contained? In an attempt to keep the algae from spreading, it will be grown in clear dialysis tubing. "So if we could load up a tube, bright green, filled with algae, put it in there, have it keep growing and not have our tank get overrun with it, then we're looking pretty good," Bachmann said.

As for the nutrient source, poultry litter might do quite nicely, he said.

Gas, Diesel, Biofuel production from algae

Award-winning microscope photography 2008

1st Place 2008 : Marine diatoms, Pleurosigma (200x) taken by Michael Stringer, Westcliff-on-Sea, UK. Stringer is not a microscopist by profession, but has been interested in diatoms for over 60 years, collecting them on Two Tree Island in the Thames Estuary, UK.

source: http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn14971-small-world-gallery

self-assembly casa diatom

The scenario: The casa diatom is evolving from a grow-your-own-diatoms aquarium to an adaptable system that made of bio-degradable material. The part-machine part-living-creature is self-assembly and once it is matured, it will be hosting the existing or new born diatoms and acts as a underwater cultivating medium, be it in a lake, ocean, reservoir, pond, pool or any aqueous environment. It is a self-sustaining 'housing project' for diatoms, where they experience life and death. Like any other living creatures on earth, in an eco-chain, the dead always contributes to the spring of new life. In this case, frustule (diatom's skeleton) will be 'fertilizing' the new microchips or solar panels. The medium that nurtures diatoms becomes a factory for intelligent technologies, by transfering dead diatoms from the 'morgue' and 'reincarnating' them into part of the new forms, gives birth to a new 'life form', by accepting the fact that future microchips or solar panels could be manufactured naturally with certain controlled systems in place.

Archigram movement in the 60's was truly inspiring but apparently human race did not move on from industrial age since then. It is a shame that we are too arogant to blend into nature law and ignored the wisdoms that being showcased by nature. David Greene's utopian concept of a cybernetic forest sounds more convincing than any other futuristic robotic cities ever proposed.

"I like to think (right now please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electonica where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms."
-David Greene, Gardener's Notebook (Archigram)

Through their projects and proposals, they predicted a blurring of boundaries and a convergence of technologies. They realized that these technologies would begin shaping and altering the world in ways that they could only begin to imagine. Undoubtedly, the invention of internet has blurred the virtual-actual phenomenon, with the breakthroughs in genetic and biotech, perplexing situation between nature and technologies is expanding its territory from GM foods to superhuman. It is time to back to basic and rethink the harmonious relationships between man-made technologies and nature, where everything seems a little more sensible...

Decayed life v.s. New life.

30 days after collected sample being migrated to a observation tank.


Top layer from the decayed life forms was removed to a different salt water tank with natural sunlight and limited oxigen. No sign of new life form after 20 days.


Seawater, seaweed, life rocks, sand, living shell and snail collected from Portmouth beach. The shell and snail died after 7 days due to lack of foods and dehydration, but dead bodies were left in the tank for decaying. The decayed dead shell and snail supplied nutrients for new air born bacteria and diatom.


Existence of diatom colonial after 14 days. Declining water level due to evaporation left some dead diatom colonials on the wall.


Unknown sesame-like-creatures found on the life stone.


Most of the seaweed did not survive but some do. The tank condition is now very bad for new life form but perfect for some micro-organism such as algae or diatom.


decay continues...
new life in production...

Suicidal Textiles

The design concept is inspired by the process of programmed cell death; deliberate cell suicide, which enables organs and limbs to develop. This process is crucial to the shape and function of every organism. Carole chose to echo this principle in her collection of garden furniture and textiles that will evolve with time; the final forms only to be revealed at the end of the ‘apoptosis’ process. Using biodegradable (natural) and durable (synthetic) materials. Portions of the furniture and textiles will slowly biodegrade to reveal different final forms. The process of biodegradation will also support C. elegans, which feeds on the bacteria that live in soil and compost.

Suicidal Textiles is a collection of sustainable garden textiles and outdoor textile furniture inspired by the process of apoptosis in C.elegans and the research of Sir John Sulston,

Nobel Prize winner in 2002.

Key inspirations:

“Programmed Cell Death or Apoptosis” inspired the collection of suicidal poufs, parts of which slowly biodegrade over time to reveal a final form.

“Ubiquitous and Overlooked” inspired a collection of garden textiles which pays tribute to C.elegans.

“Common Threads” inspired the range of materials used in the production of the collection.

“Aperiodic repeat” inspired the design of a Toile de C.elegans with an aperiodic repeat, which plays with the historical icon of the Toile de Jouy but references DNA maps, and the C.elegans genome.

Source

Brandon Ballengée

Brandon Ballengée's work bridges the gap between biology and art. He combines a fascination with amphibians, fish and insects with techniques of fine art imaging. For the past ten years, Ballengée's primary field of study has been amphibian declines and deformities.

During 2007 and 2008, artist Brandon Ballengée has been leading a UK study into declining amphibian species, through participatory lab and field-based research investigations, working with the public as well as collaborating scientists. Ballengée's investigations are being enabled by residencies at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Gunpowder Park, Essex, and SPACE, London.

Neri Oxman

Neri Oxman is an architect and researcher currently based at MIT where she is a Presidential Fellow working towards her PhD in Design and Computation. She is a graduate of the AA School of Architecture and previously a medical scholar at the Hebrew University and the Technion Institute of Technology. Her work has recently been displayed at MoMA, now part of its collection.

Oxman's first-generation rapid manufacturing technology for depositing material with gradually varying physical properties has won her The Earth Awards, watch the interview on at a gala held at The Four Seasons Restaurant in New York on January 12, 2009.

Source:
http://materialecology.blogspot.com/
http://materialecology.com/

How to grow a crystal chair

I have been waiting for this show since Tokujin Yoshioka's Venus Chair was revealed last year. It somehow reminds me of the installation by Roger Hiorns end of last year in London - Seizure, that "cystallized" the spaces in an abandoned social housing with "blue crystal" (copper sulfate).

















Tokujin shows us how his Venus Chair was being grown from a water tank for his Second Nature Exhibition in Tokyo.

According to Tokujin,

"...a design is not something that is completed through being given a form, but rather something that is completed by the human heart. I also feel that incorporating the principles and movements of nature into ideas will become something important in future design..."

Tokujin used some spongy like fiber structure to control the crystallization process into the chair.


"...In the face of serious global issues, including disruption of nature, I think that each individual today has higher consciousness on the waste and environmental problems... As a designer, I have pondered what design can do in this time of change. I believe that to realize a beauty of the earth is one of the ways to look at such environmental issues. I would be pleased if this exhibition will somewhat become an opportunity to increase awareness of the earth."

all images © tokujin yoshioka

This somehow makes me relate to how can I create my bio-architecture that symbiosis with diatoms as Silica ("crystal") and Sulfate (that being used by Hiorns) are two main nutrients consumed by diatoms. Manipulating crystallization in form-making process with diatom's foods (nitrate, sulfate and silica) enables me to control the diatom cultivation in an architectured condition. In another words, crystallization could be used as a methodology in making the form-work for future diatoms growth that will eventually form a layer of silicon-based skin on the outer layer or fill up spaces within the crystal, which dedicates colours, architectural services (as electronic circuits, oxygen provider/CO2 digestor and etc) and cybernetic functions to the design. A matured system will eventually become a self-sustaining micro-ecology system where 'crystal' plays a role that similar to earth that provides foods and space for diatoms, then frustule (skeleton) of dead diatoms that made of silica will deposit and 'fertilize' the ecological system.

casa diatom

Technical considerations referred to:

Diatom cultivation and biotechnologically relevant products. Part I: Cultivation at various scales
http://www.springerlink.com/content/aujxnrf8u7kfjvl9/
Publisher: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
Issue: Volume 60, Number 6 / February, 2003
ISSN: 0175-7598 (Print) 1432-0614 (Online)

casa diatom visualization

Trigger of bio-architecture in Post-Darwinian Age

Recognizing the mistakes we, as one of the dominant species on earth have made since industrial revolution by encouraging carbon-based technologies is a painful contrition. We are now officially living in Anthropocene epoch that leaves a relevantly significant footprint on geological scale. Homo sapiens are drastically changing the planet they are living on by progressively magnifying the technologies invented 20 decades ago. Human’s desire exaggerated the damaging progress and it is showing on spreading carbon footprints and rising sea level. It is obvious that the science and technology we are living on since then might be leading us to a major catastrophe in near future.

Human has created such a huge archive of technologies which are arguably a trigger for Anthopocene epoch. However, without breakthroughs in nanotechnology and biotech which again initiated by military and astronomical purposes, we are not able realize the dogmatic solution that nature has been providing us. Architects and inventors are constantly looking for morphological solution from the nature. We could now manipulate biotech at nano level and trigger a series of events that might create vast changes in every aspect of life. Understanding how nature works at complexity science level as described by Rachel Armstrong is promising enough to ensure our creations blend into the whole ecosystem without creating rejection by nature. By taking the environment as a body system, putting up any man-made creation should be taking as transplanting a new organ to a body. We desperately need a paradigm shift from the current technological ambience.

The arrival of Anthropocene epoch also means the end of Darwinian Age as described by Freeman Dyson. Genomic breakthrough of Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomic Institution by creating an organism out of four basic chemicals in his laboratory marked a significant footstep on Post-Darwinian Age where life is no longer being created by nature or evolution but could be created artificially by human being. Biomimicry movements in robotic, computer science as well as architecture show that human is finally accepting rules and picking up wisdoms by nature that has been ignored. Therefore, applying biological understanding or mimicking behaviors from nature is not a trend but a necessity to create a more sustainable environment with the principles that have been forgotten. It is an act of atonement.

The project is being developed in the Post-Darwinian atmosphere where artificial evolution is possible and cybernetic principles as its ground. Choosing a potential biological material out of the ‘toolbox’ provided by nature that could be manipulated it in architectural context is the first stage of the methodology. Understanding its behaviors and giving it a right task to achieve desired result is the next. The research on a particular type of phytoplankton called diatom as an architectural material was inspired by its natural behaviors and biological characteristics. It is the only creature on earth that uses silicon to build its silica skeleton (frustules), the primary constituent of glass. Silicon is also found in human connective tissues, bones, teeth, skin, eyes, glands and organs. Therefore it is not surprising that the initial studies on creating artificial human bones as structural material leads to the studies on diatom. Apart from the fact that diatoms around the world carry out photosynthesis and produce 23% of oxygen in the atmosphere, it has approximately 40% of genetic structure that is shared by bacteria, which makes diatoms highly compatible and exists in almost all the aqueous mediums on earth. Not to mentioned their beautiful and complicated structural morphology at nano-scale that has been adored by artists and architects. German biologist, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) had produced large amount of illustrations on different kind of diatoms through his microscope. However, the existence of diatoms as suggested by fossil diatoms dates from the early Jurassic period.


Casa diatom which acts as a ‘diatomarium’ demonstrates and simplifies the methodology to grow diatoms thus manipulates its biological behaviors to find out the potential and limitation for architectural application. It is as straight forward as experimenting the hybridization of raw materials like limestone, calcium, silicon, iron and aluminum in creating a man-made binder called cement, then with right mixture of sand, gravel and water it becomes concrete that provides certain characteristics that could be manipulated in construction. Similarly, it is just the matter of time to domesticate this organism as a material that might be acting like living circuits which could be “grew” into different forms of appearance in architecture.

However, the project was not intended to create a perfect model or system but rather in searching of right ingredients from the nature palette and putting them into relevant positions to generate sustainable role in architectural environment. It is a very small step towards how architecture should be responding in the context of Post-Darwinian Age. The project is being positioned within presumably ethical parameters where the material is born out of nature with cybernetic hybridization or artificial evolution, then symbiosis into a controlled architectural environment, even though the realization might be limited by the scale and growing time of the organism, breakthroughs in genetic technology is constantly providing optimistic motivation in design with the use of living materials as an initial design consideration.

Biojewellery

A model of the ring using a combination of cow marrow-bone and etched silver.
The inscription reads Ab Intra, "from within".

Biojewellery (http://www.biojewellery.com/) is a collaborative project involving Tobie Kerridge and Nikki Stott, design researchers at the Royal College of Art, and Ian Thompson, a bioengineer at Kings College London, its aim is to bring the medical and technical processes of bioengineering out of the lab and into the public arena. Funding totaling approximately £60,000 has been awarded by the Engineering and Physical Science Council as a part of their Partnership for Public Awareness initiative.

"Hospitals need to follow strict guidelines when working with human cells and patient consent is a key part of this. It is important to us and our couples that when we design the rings we are using their cells." http://www.biojewellery.com/

There are 2 sources for the cell, 1. Harvesting cells from a biopsy, 2. Collecting chip bone cells from wisdom teeth extraction. Of course, the consent by the volunteered participants is fairly important in this project. To find out more on the process of growing cells into bone, click here.

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