Suzanne Lee – Grow Your Own Clothes

Designer Suzanne Lee shares her experiments in growing a kombucha-based material that can be used like fabric or vegetable leather to make clothing. The process is fascinating, the results are beautiful (though there’s still one minor drawback …) and the potential is simply stunning.

Why you should listen

TED Fellow Suzanne Lee is a fashion designer turned biofabrication pioneer who is nurturing a global community of innovators growing materials.Suzanne Lee is the founder and CEO of Biofabricate, a platform nurturing collaboration for design and biology to grow the future of sustainable materials for consumer products. Biofabrication is highly disruptive new technologies enabling design to intersect with the building blocks of life itself. For the last five years, Lee has been the chief creative officer of Modern Meadow, a New York-based biotech startup growing collagen to manufacture animal-free bioleather materials.

Lee’s groundbreaking book Fashioning the Future: Tomorrow’s Wardrobe, was the first to articulate the future of fashion through science and technology. It remains a key text for designers, scientists and engineers wanting to glimpse the future of wearable technology.

Suzanne Simard – How trees talk to each other

The Three Ecologies, Felix Guattari

The Three Ecologies

Felix Guattari

Translated by
IAN PINDAR and PAUL SUTTON

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Secret Lives Of Colour, Kassia St Clair

Every colour has a story, and here are some of the most alluring, alarming, and thought-provoking. Very hard painting the hallway magnolia after this inspiring primer.’ Simon Garfield The Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of the 75 most fascinating shades, dyes and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso’s blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book Kassia St Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colours and where they come from (whether Van Gogh’s chrome yellow sunflowers or punk’s fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilisation. Across fashion and politics, art and war, The Secret Lives of Colour tell the vivid story of our culture.

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Field_Notes Publication

23 Oct 2013

Publication

Art as We Don’t Know It Erich Berger, Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka, Kira O’Reilly, Helena Sederholm

Art as We Don’t Know It

Erich Berger, Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka, Kira O’Reilly, Helena Sederholm (eds.)
Publisher: Aalto ARTS Books

What worlds are revealed when we listen to alpacas, make photographs with yeast or use biosignals to generate autonomous virtual organisms? Bioart invites us to explore artistic practices at the intersection of art, science and society. This rapidly evolving field utilises the tools of life sciences to examine the materiality of life; the collision of human and nonhuman. Microbiology, virtual reality and robotics cross disciplinary boundaries to engage with arts as artists and scientists work together to challenge the ways in which we understand and observe the world. This book offers a stimulating and provocative exploration into worlds emerging, seen through art as we don’t know it – yet.

Art as We Don’t Know It showcases art and research that has grown and flourished within the wider network of both the Bioart Society and Biofilia during the previous decade. The book features a foreword by curator Mónica Bello, and a selection of peer-reviewed articles, personal accounts and interviews, artistic contributions and collaborative projects which illustrate the breadth and diversity of bioart. The resulting book is a tantalising and invaluable indicator of trends, visions and impulses in the field.

The book marks the 10th anniversary of the Bioart Society but instead of looking back we joined forces with Biofilia – Base for Biological Arts to have a glimpse forward and to scan what kind of questions and topics in the realm of bioart, art&science and its politics could be relevant for our work in the coming years. The result is a 280 page volume in four sections with articles, reports, interviews, artist sections and more. The stunning cover image is from a yeastogram by Johanna Rotko and the amazing coppery design by Safa Hovinen.

We have an inspiring lineup of contributors which we are very grateful to for sharing their thoughts, ideas and insights: Markus Schmidt & Nediljko Budisa, Andy Gracie, Adriana Knouf, Marta De Menezes & Luis Graca, Marietta Radomska & Cecilia Åsberg, Crystal Bennes, Bartaku, Erich Berger, Antero Kare, Laura Beloff, Johanna Rotko, Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka, Teemu Lehmusruusu, Antti Tenetz, Ian Ingram & Theun Borssele, Paul Vanouse, Rian Ciela Visscher Hammond, Christina Stadlbauer, Paula Humberg, Denisa Kera, Leena Valkeapää, lifepatch, Jurij Krpan, Anu Osva, Kristiina Ljokkoi & Tomi Slotte Dufva, Ulla Taipale & Christina Stadlbauer, Margherita Pevere, Heather Davis, Elaine Gan & Terike Haapoja, Ida Bencke, Mari Keski-Korsu, Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr, Kira O’Reilly, Pia Lindman, Helena Sederholm and Lauri Linna and with a foreword by Mónica Bello.

Check out the table of contents

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The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, W. Brian Arthur

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, 2009

W. Brian Arthur

More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being,” says W. Brian Arthur. Yet despite technology’s irrefutable importance in our daily lives, until now its major questions have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Does technology, like biological life, evolve? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur answers these questions and more, setting forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology.

The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology’s origins and evolution. Achieving for the development of technology what Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress, Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. The Nature of Technology is a classic for our times.

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The Book of Trees – Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Manuel Lima

The Book of Trees – Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, 2014

Manuel Lima

Inhabiting the Anthroposcene, Stream 03

Inhabiting the Anthroposcene

Stream 03

This issue is focused on the rapid urbanization and globalization of the planet. Demographic growth led to the concentration of population in major global cities, making them strategic territories to address contemporary challenges (environmental awareness, ubiquity of digital technologies) while trying to achieve a sustainable economic, social and environmental development. The Anthropocene describes a new geological age, where human activity has become the predominant geophysical force. The implications of this concept exceed the context of scientific debates. Stream 03 explores conceptual tools to apprehend our new urban condition.

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Experimental Design for Biologists, David J. Glass

Experimental Design for Biologists

David J. Glass

The effective design and analysis of experiments in biology are critical to success, yet graduate students in biological and medical sciences typically receive very little formal training in these steps. With feedback from readers of the first edition, colleagues, and students taking the very popular experimental design courses taught by the author, this second edition of Experimental Design for Biologists retains the engaging writing style while organizing the book around the four elements of experimental design: the framework, the system, the experiment, and the model. The approach has been tested in the classroom, where the author has taught numerous graduate students, MD/PhD students, and postdoctoral fellows. The goal of every scientist is to discover something new and with the aid of Experimental Design for Biologists, this task is made a little easier.

This handbook explains how to establish the framework for an experimental project, how to set up all of the components of an experimental system, design experiments within that system, determine and use the correct set of controls, and formulate models to test the veracity and resiliency of the data. This thoroughly updated edition of Experimental Design for Biologists is an essential source of theory and practical guidance for designing a research plan.

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