Microbes, art and a bit of satire all in one place – Design Interactions at the RCA

Got pointed to an interesting site recently – “Design Interactions at the RCA”  This is a program (or as they call it – a programme) at the Royal College of Art in London.  One of the current students – Lana Porter – contacted me about a possible project she was working on involving microbes.  She also pointed me to some past projects connected to microbes from the program.  The two she pointed to are:

• Viruses, close enemies or distant cousins? | Design Interactions at the RCA. From Mikael Metthey.  It appears to be from a few years ago but I am not sure.  Regardless, it is pretty humorous.  It is basically a description of an attempt to create “more intimate ways to approach the process of vaccination” by having poxteddy bears and cowpox rides and vaccination playgrounds.
• The Race.  From Michael Burton.  Also from a few years ago. This one is about antibiotics and microbial evolution and the hygiene hypothesis.  

And then browsing around the site led to some other interesting concepts:

• MICROBIOMIC BAPTISM from Mathias Vef. 
• SPACE BACTERIA from Jae Yeop Kim. 
• SYNTHETIC KINGDOM from Daisy Ginsberg. 
• MIDAS MICROBES from Gerrit Kaiser. 

Author: Jonathan Eisen

I am an evolutionary biologist and a Professor at U. C. Davis. (see my lab site here). My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis View all posts by Jonathan Eisen