Growth Assembly
After the cost of energy had made global shipping of raw materials and packaged goods unimaginable, only the rich could afford traditional, mass-produced commodities. Synthetic biology enabled us to harness our natural environment for the production of things. Coded into the DNA of a plant, product parts grow within the supporting system of the plant's structure. When fully developed, they are stripped like a walnut from its shell or corn from its husk, ready for assembly.
Shops have evolved into factory farms as licensed products are grown where sold. Large items take time to grow and are more expensive while small ones are more affordable. The postal service delivers lightweight seed-packets for domestic manufacturers. Using biology for the production of consumer goods has reversed the idea of industrial standards, introducing diversity and softness into a realm that once was dominated by heavy manufacturing.
The product shown here is a herbicide sprayer, an essential commodity used to protect delicate engineered horticultural machines from older nature.
Appearances
Nominated: FutureEverything 2010 (Manchester, UK)
Upcoming: Wellcome Trust (London, UK)
Design Indaba magazine (ZA)
Next Nature
Boing Boing
What If? (Dublin, IE)
Sustain
RCA Show Two 2009 (London, UK)
Comments
Seed technology
I really like the classical botanical illustration style of this and the fact it's very much along the lines of the distributed "Seed" technology vs. the centralized "Feed" fabrication model as described in The Diamond Age (N.Stephenson). Although, the reasons for its emergence there were political/philosophical, rather than due to exorbitant energy/transportation costs. It also still stands to argue how such a tech would work in a potentially more arid climate worldwide or in already nutrient stripped soils, where the plant might struggle for basic life functions and so might only produce smaller (if at all) fruits/components than desired. This leads then to another related problem: If plants only provide product parts/components, but these can't be necessarily produced at guaranteed sizes, it means the whole concept and aesthetic of components and connector parts needs to be re-thought and will have to end up having to work within a range of sizes, possibly using similarly grown soft tissue parts with shrinkwrap qualities.