The 16th Study of Design Fundamentals Seminar: "Post-Speculative Biologies"

Kyushu University Faculty of Design explores the fundamental methodology of design for integrating a wide range of designs. We were pleased to invite Georg Tremmel, bio-artist, to share with us his ideas and experiences about “Post-Speculative Biologies.” The lectures were given in English, but the Q&A session was conducted in Japanese as well.

[Topic]

The first decades of the 21st century saw biotechnological break-throughs like iPS cells, low-cost DNA sequencing, CRISPR and the fundamental shift of the biological sciences from an analytic science to a synthetic. The change from ‘Read-Only’ to ‘Read/Write’ also suggests the emergence of a new media. It is the role and responsibility of artists and designers to imagine and create desirable and not-so-desirable futures that can function as a cultural vaccination. Georg will talk about ongoing and upcoming projects, including the Common Flowers Trilogy, BLP-2000, the Copyright Series and The Point Mutators – Legally Green.

［Speaker］

Georg Tremmel, lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. He studied Visuelle Mediengestaltung (Visual Media Studies) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and Computer-Related Design (Interaction Design) at the Royal College of Art in London. He partnered with Shiho Fukuhara and founded BCL – an Artistic Research Framework for critically exploring Art & Biotech. BCL’s body of works includes Biopresence, the Common Flowers Series, and Ghost in the Cell. He is currently a Project Researcher in the Laboratory for DNA Information Analysis at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Medical Science, working on Information Visualization of Cancer Genomic Data, Visiting Researcher at the metaPhorest Art & Science group at Hideo Iwasaki’s Lab at Waseda University, and the co-founder of the BioClub in Shibuya, Tokyo’s first Open Biolab & Biohackerspace.

[Host]
Kyushu University Faculty of Design

[Co-host]
School of Design, Design Futures Course