Human-Bacteria Interfaces: An exploration of the present and future of human-microbial ecosystems
Anne-Sofie Belling, Bea Delgado Corrales, Romy Kaiser and Paula Nerlich
What could future interactions with our microbial world look like? How can collaborations with microbes become part of our technological future?
The Human-Bacteria Interfaces concept explores new relationships with microbes through science-based speculative prototypes. Similar to other species and matter on Earth, microbes can respond to signals and stimuli from their surroundings.
A core element of this concept is examining the potential of designing microbes to become living sensors that can respond through light to stimuli based on their genetic design. By designing new interactions with microbes, care and concern for other non-human living beings becomes a conscious part of our everyday experience. At the heart of this concept is a narrative that explores a biophilic turn within the generative genre of design: what if we could design in partnership with the non-human living world (with organisms such as microbes) rather than relying solely on the industrial extraction of matter to create the increasingly complex world that surrounds us? How could new relations with microbes build our future homes?
The Human-Bacteria Interfaces installation leads the visitor through a spatial timeline of the real and speculative worlds in which the project lives: from the genetically-designed microbes in the laboratories of today to elaborate visions of future human-bacteria relations. The main part of the physical installation is the Ambient Living Intelligence, a speculative prototype of how a human-microbial interface could be integrated into a future built environment. It uses textile and microbial communities that dwell encased in glass vessels to create a living sensor that glows upon detecting touch.
The second part of the exhibition “Driving the Human – Seven Prototypes for Eco-Social Renewal” with the topic “Sharing Knowledge on Common Ground”, was presented at ZKM | Karlsruhe from August 12 to September 24, 2023.
The first part of the exhibition “Driving the Human – Seven Prototypes for Eco-Social Renewal” at ZKM | Karlsruhe, with the topic “Non-Human Perspectives: Sharing, Shaping, Sensing Habitats”, was on show from June 17 to July 30, 2023.
Listen to the form Design Podcast’s latest series, Driving the Human x form Design Podcast. In six episodes, participants from the Driving the Human initiative discuss the intersection of design and science.
We are excited to share four videos looking back at the Driving the Human festival, one for each day and an overall recap.
In 2022, the Driving the Human initiative met its ultimate goal of materializing the Seven Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal.
From November 25–27, 2022, Driving the Human: 7 Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal brought to Berlin a variety of formats exploring new ways of envisioning and inhabiting the world.
At the Bio Design Lab of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, Human-Bacteria Interfaces’ Romy Kaiser and Paula Nerlich hosted the workshop “Non-Human Design Lab” as part of the 2022 Future of Life Summer School.
From November 25-27, 2022, Driving the Human hosts a three-day festival in Berlin marking the culmination of three years of collaboration, research and experimentation connecting disciplines between sciences and the arts.
“ALI” is an Ambient Living Intelligence, a sensor prototype currently developed by Anne-Sofie Belling, Bea Delgado Corrales, Romy Kaiser, and Paula Nerlich, who imagine the future of human bacteria communication as integrated within our homes.
Following our Berlin festival presenting 21 visions for eco-social renewal, the Driving the Human jury had the difficult task to select seven projects to be developed as prototypes throughout 2022.
The third day of the Driving the Human Festival took us from Bacteria to Ecosystems, and focused on Planetary Movements. Revisit the broadcast of the last day of the festival in our journal and on our Vimeo channel.
Developed by Anne-Sofie Belling, Bea Delgado Corrales, Romy Kaiser and Paula Nerlich, Human-Bacteria Interfaces introduces the novel concept of human-bacteria interfaces within the context of the built environment.
From October 15 – 17, 2021, Driving the Human presents 21 concepts proposing new visions for sustainable cohabitation on our planet.
We are thrilled to announce the 21 concepts chosen as a result of a successful Open Call.
The team behind Human-Bacteria Interfaces is a multidisciplinary group of explorers from the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE), Newcastle UK.
Anne-Sofie Belling is a designer/technologist who interrogates design futures through practice-based and speculative design research. Her research often focuses on extending human somatic relations and experiences with other-than-humans through emerging technology interventions. She is currently studying a PhD at the HBBE, where she is examining the more-than-human relations of transplanetary imaginaries and off-Earth habitats through practice-based design research.
Bea Delgado Corrales is an environmental microbiologist interested in finding new microbial species through bioinformatics and new DNA sequencing technologies and she is now focused on characterizing the built environment microbiome. During her PhD at the HBBE, she wants to explore the possibility of using the microbial distribution in our homes to promote a healthier environment through building design and other strategies.
Romy Kaiser is a designer with focus on biomaterials, smart textiles and future textile thinking. As a “designer with hands, scientist in mind, activist by heart” she aims to change our mindset as well as current systems towards a more sustainable living using textiles and materiality as a tool. Currently Romy holds a PhD position at the HBBE. Her project Textile Hosting investigates the scaffolding potential of textiles for living media, like mycelium or bacteria, for bio assembly and construction purposes.
(photo: Daniela Ferro)
Paula Nerlich is a designer and explorer. With her material research she aims to support the elimination of so-called food waste through the creation of circular biomaterials from industrial food production surplus. In her practise as material designer and as co-founder of Circular Home Lab, she initiates discourse around rethinking systems of waste, the food industry and community. Her PhD project The Materiality of Well-being is a practise-led research project, searching how multisensory experiences and interactions of smell and touch, with a focus on the interrelationship of bacteria, smell and textiles for enhanced wellbeing.
(photo: Marielle Samstad)
Credits
Video production / 3D artists
Artem Furenkov, Alexey Belov
Acknowledgments
Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE), Research England (UKRI), Dr. Martyn Dade Robertson, Dr. Jane Scott and the Living Textiles Research Group, Dr. Angela Sherry, Dr. Joshua Loh, Dr. Jasmine Bird, Aileen Hoenerloh, Matt Crown, Chris G. Pip Miller, Oliver Perry and the Architecture Workshop, Newcastle University
