Our biodesign research team at IFT Paris has developed a method for growing hybrid artifacts using biofilm growth. The aim is to eventually replace plastic and move design into a new production paradigm by cultivating artifacts using morphogenesis as a manufacturing process.
BioHybrid Device – Grown Technology
For decades, technological innovation has been agnostic to sustainability constraints. Unfortunately, this is not viable anymore. We need to radically rethink our relationship to materiality and approach of conceiving technology.
What if, in the future, we could biologically grow functional interactive devices? What would they look like ?
The Biohybrid Device is a video game controller created by the fusion of biological and digital manufacturing processes. It blurs the boundaries between living and non-living systems by using the manufacturing process of morphogenesis to encapsulate electrically interactive elements. Thus, the controller slowly takes shape as the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast grows and reproduces absorbing the conductive elements, sensors and output components into the material.
The Biohybrid Device addresses the sustainability, limits and implications of a biotechnological future, and invites to question the status of objects as well as our current means of production.
