POSTextiles

DESIGN FICTIONS: Posthumanity in the age of Synthetics

How can the textile discipline critically engage the public with emerging biotechnologies and the life sciences?

Design Fictions is a critical design project made up of a collection of carefully considered and crafted design fictions. These provide a strong narrative to provoke debate and dialogue into the life science industry and the appropriation of life, whilst also making us reconsider the role of the designer whose manufacturing process is likely to take place in a laboratory in 2075. Based on research driven future scenarios that depict converging threads around a vision of potential biofutures, the purpose of the work is to raise critical questions over our current understanding of the potential cultural and environmental implications of synthetic biology and stem cell technology.

Voluntary Mutations explores the aesthetic possibilities of a subculture derived from an environment where D.I.Y stem cell biology becomes as ubiquitous as computing, while Parasitic Prosthesis suggests that the posthuman body is genetically synthesized with home-cultured parasitic organisms, so that it may quickly adapt to the challenges of a new environmental paradigm. Biocollectibles provokes debate into the quietly ominous market for genetic products that has the potential to render our bodies as future farms, and is illustrated by a very precious, very valuable Genetic First Aid Cabinet.