Exhibtion: Blueprints for the Unknown - V2_

This exhibition investigates the gap between the promises of engineering biology and the complex and conflicted world we live in. Each scenario is set in a very specific context, ranging from healthcare to green politics and bonsai grooming, and probes the potential impact of biotechnology on society and culture.

Recent advances in synthetic biology are making the design of new life forms an increasingly real possibility. Driven by an engineering approach to biology, the future scientist/designer is envisioned as an architect of life, creating living organisms from a library of standardized and replicable parts.

However, life may or may not agree with the industrial paradigm we feel comfortable with. Living organisms are unstable, random and context specific. They are subject to evolution, mutations and symbiosis. Additionally, once science gets out of the lab and into the world it becomes part of much bigger systems such as economics, politics and human beliefs–with surprising outcomes for better or worse.

By Superflux, Tobias Revell, Raphael Kim, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Studio Nand, David Benque. Blueprints for the Unknown is a project by Design Interactions Research at the Royal College of Art in London, as part of the European art-science programme Studiolab.

V2_INSTITUUT, EXPO 
BLUEPRINTS FOR THE UNKNOWN

Thursday 22 - Saturday 24 May
V2_Instituut
Entrance Free