A biodesigner and engineer fascinated by how we can live more symbiotically through interspecies and intercultural collaboration.
o I originally travelled to the Island of Mo’orea as I was fascinated by the concept of islands as a model for sustainability, and the potential of the microbial diversity found on these remote islands. The island of Mo’orea is home to the University of Calofornia Berkeley’s field research station. The "Gump Station” was the perfect place to start my research, as they have sequenced the genome of every species on the island, and also host an annual Island Sustainability Programme. I was able to meet many of the researchers and marine biologists who conduct their projects on the island, and become familiar with some of the challenging subjects of genetic sovereignty and indigenous intellectual property. o During my time there researching island sustainability, I built many relationships with the local community, in particular, Tokainiua Jean-Daniel Devatine who I met at. Maori Lunar Conference. He is a visual artist, humanities researcher and deputy director of the at the local arts school in Tahiti. We agreed that I would return to Tahiti next year to teach a workshop on biodesign to the students studying here. o The gap between the scientific research taking place on the island, and the indigenous community, was very apparant to me, despite the amazing work of groups like the The Atitia Center who work to build bridges between the two communities. o I left wondering if biodesign could form a bridge between these two comunities, sharing their knowledge and experience to solve local problems. • How does the Polynesian community perceive the introduction of science into their practices? o I found the indigenous polynesian community to be incredibly curious, and open to working with science. The polynesian community explained to me that contrary to what we might think, innovation is at the heart of their traditional knowledge. o In polynesia, traditional knowledge is transmitted orally, which means it is constantly evolving and adapting. Their knowledge is alive, and as such it is constantly evolving. The term “traditional knowledge” is really quite misleading! o In polynesian culture there is a concept of the “pō" and the “ao”. These represent the light and the dark, but also the known and the unknown, the tradition and the innovation. Polynesians, as shown by their tradition of navigating huge distances across the pacific through night and day, believe that the nightime, when the stars are visible, is infact where you find your direction. They believe that we must constantly move between the known and the unknown, like the cycle of light and dark during the day. o They also have a very strong sense - that we all have your back towards the future. This is not to ignore the future however, it is to say that we should look back on the past, to inform our steps into the future unknown. o I believe that these concepts, which are fundamentals of polynesian culture, make them incredibly innovative and open to collaborate with other communities and disciplines. o The World Intellectual property Organisation recently ruled that all genetic rescources and traditional knowledge that has informed an invention must be disclosed. Togther with indigenous intellectual property and genetic resources experts, we are now exploring how this project can be a showcase of best practice in these areas. • What is the craft expertise of the community I worked with? o I worked closely with 4 different artisans with very different practices, however what stood out was how polyvalent they all were. While each artisan had a specialism, they could turn their hand to anything thanks to the fundamental understanding of materials and craft that they are taught growing up. o Tekoui ‘Jérémie’ Tamari Jeremie is a cultural educator, who makes everything from nose flutes to costumes. However his specialism is in making large drums, a tradition which he has brought withb him from the Marquesas islands where he was born. o Tokainiua Jean-Daniel Devatine Tokai is a visual artist, humanities researcher, who has an amazing understanding of many traditional practices, from wood carving to weaving. However for this project, we worked with “nacre” - mother of pearl from the shells of oysters. o Hinatea & Moé Colombani Hinatea and Moe are cultural ambassadors with a dance and costume making center in the south of Tahiti. Their specialism is in the art of creating Tapa - known as cloth of the gods - this sacred fabric is made by repeatedly hitting the flesh of a mulberry tree, and Hinatea and Moe work tirelessly to educate people in this traditional practice. o Naumi ‘Mamie’ Tapi Mamie is an educator at the local cultural center, who once again seems to be able to create anything from the materials around her. Together we worked on creating ropes from yellow hibiscus bark - known locally as purau. • Why am I introducing a living organism into their making practices? I am fascinated by the state of “livingness”. It is a fragile state, that can sometimes feel on a knife edge, however, somewhat paradoxically, it is this fragility which makes it so beautiful and so robust. It allows living things to adapt, react, respond, and evolve. Just like polynesian traditional knowledge being transmitted orally, there is a chance it can be lost, but instead it can constantly adapt to meet the needs of the community. In remote and unique eco-systems like the atols of French Polynesia there is enormous potential in the bioprospecting activities which take place. For every microorganism we know, there are 100,000 that we do not yet know. Within this biological dark matter, there may be new anti-biotics, cancer treatments, or microbial capabilites that not even yet aware of. However capabilities of these microbes are typically made advantage of by large international organisations who have the capabilities to analyse them, and scale the use of their metabolites. However, I believe that biotechnologies are not suited to scaling up, and many busniesses are currently failing to do so. Biology is inherently distributed, and suited to local production at small scales, just like baking bread, brewing beer, or fermenting food. I believe biotechnologies and craft are a perfect match. I wanted to see how the polyneisan community could use the biome from their own island eco-systems within their own practices. Polynesians have an intuitive understanding of symbiosis, and the cycles of nature, and how it all works together. As such, they were far more receptive to the idea of living materials than my collabortors in Europe. Imagery of laboratories with expensive equipment and lab coats makes biotechnologies seem incredibly inaccessible. However the challenge of creating living materials in a remote island environment showed me that this isn't the case. Particularly with recent advancements in the minaturisation and cost reduction of equipment such as DNA sequencers, biotechnology is more accesible than ever. Working with the bioluminescent algae was a very visual way to show that this material was alive. I chose to work with this microorganism for that reason, as it allowed us to rapidly develop the encapsulation technology, but it also was an excellent design tool to communicate the principles of the project. On a personal note, I have found the experience of swimming bwith bioluminesence to be an awe-inspiring and transcendant experience, which I would love for as many people to experience, to deepen their connection and understanding of nature. One of the greatest challenegs was working wiuth a nascent technology. The living material I have develop is in its very early stages, and as such has limitations its biodegradability, the brightness of light emitted, and its durability. I have been exploring solutions to all of these, but creating a shared understanding of these complex limitations with my collaborators took a lot of time, but was very nessecary. • What were the reasons behind developing the drum, the swimsuit, and the necklace? The choice to make the collier, drum, and swimsuit was a really collaborative process which required both side of the collaboration to comminicate well about the ideas, share cultural boundaries, and the technical limitations of what was possible. As a white male European designer, I felt very uncomfortable for fear of recreating colonial mistakes of the past. I was incredibly lucky to have collaborators who were so open and supportive of this process. They created a space where I felt comfortable to be collaborating as equals - in a way that showcased a more appropriate cultural collaboration, where our creative minds came together. o The Drum: Originally Hinatea wished to create a full dance costume which illuminated during dancing, however after shipping the costume back the UK from Tahiti, I just couldnt make it work in the lab. After many failures, we discussed creating the drum, inspired by a design from one of Hinatea’s friends. The drum seemed like a beautiful application of the material, and something that could be an application with lots of potential. However, Hinatea’s friend was not comfortable for their design to leave Tahiti or to be used as part of the project. After much discussion, they were happy for us to create a new design, inspired by their work, as part of this project. o The Collier: The design for the collier was inspired by lots of the previous work done by Tokai with this beautiful material. Tokai took me to spend a few days at a culturally significant campsite within the volcanic ring in the center of Tahiti. During our time there, we came up with the design for the collier, with Tokai pushing to break some of the traditions and conventions when mixing these two marine materials. The form was inspired by the voronoi patterns found in nature and the lunar shape talking to the light emitted by the micro-algae. The hope of the collier was that it would respond an illuminate to the wearers movement, even their own breath. o The Swimsuit: The swimsuit was inspired by Jérémie’s stories of nightime spear fishing, and the family and friends he had lost to this dangerous profession, which many polynesians rely on to feed their families. In this collaboration, Jérémie’s words and philosophy provided the inspiration for a design which i then created with the support of fashion designer Isabella Smith, who is incredibly talented at working with unusal and novel materials. Within the design, we tried to capture Jérémie’s philosphy of symbiosis and interconnection with nature, while also honoring his desires to protect his friends and family when freediving to spear fish at night. o The Turing Patterns: The "turing patterns" which you can see on the swimsuit and drum were inspired by the reaction-diffusion patterns found in nature. For technical reasons which we discovered thatnks to my collaborators at the Francis Crick Institute for Biomedical Discovery, we needed to have a detailed texture to the material, however, I did not want create a design or pattern myself, particularly when collaborating with a culture where symbols can have such significant meanings. To solve this, I coded software which would take a visual input, and transform it using nature’s reaction diffusion principles into a feasible design. This way, Hinatea's symbols, could then be translated into feasible forms by nature’s principles, which felt like a more responsible way to translate polynesian symbology. o Design decison making: Overall, there were a few guiding principles which were followed in creating these artefacts. Photosynthetic: When I discovered that the bacterial population on our planet produce 27 times more CO2 than the human population, I felt certain that I didn't want to work with microorganisms that weren;t powered by photosynthesis. Fortunately the bioluminescent micro-algae require only sunlight, and very little else. Symbiosis: While creating the bioluminescent living material, I developed very close relationship with the bioluminescent algae. I discovered that they had their own circadian rhythm just like humans. Overtime I began to anthropomorphise the alage, and even developed wearables so that I could live with them to understand them better. Sublime: We wanted to create objects that had an intimate experience and response to human inputs. The goal of this was to create a feeling of the sublime. Awe inspiring and transcendant experiences that could lead to the users developing a deeper connection with nature. I hope that the people wo experience this project are inspired to think more carefully about how they can make their worlds more alive, and live more harmoniusly with living organisms. • How can our worlds be more alive and connected to nature? With my research project Lucid Life | Marama Ora, I hope to provoke the fashion industry to think beyond circularity, to livingness as a materiality. Living materials can adapt, evolve, and react. They are not in a constant state of decay like the inert materials which fill our everyday lives. While this vision may seem utopian, the rate of advancement of biotechnology is remarkable, and the fashion industry needs to be ready to embrace these opportunities. • How can we work with what is around us? One of the other opportunities of working with living systems, are their remarkable abilities which we are only just discovering. For every micro-organism that we know, there are 100,000 that we don’t. Within this “biological dark matter” there will be micro-organisms which could provide solutions to many of our challenges. This is an exciting prospect, however we should not recreate the mistakes of the past, and ensure we are respectful and responsible in our interspecies, and intercultural collaborations when we are discovering and working with these living organisms. • Finally, I would like to provoke the fashion industry to think differently about scalability. Working with living organisms can be as simple as baking bread. It can be done anywhere, at very small scales. Instead of falling into our habits of industrialisation, living organisms are perfectly suited to creating distributed and local material systems. As I have shown in my project, this creates great opportunities for design, story-telling, regeneration, and connecting with consumers. • In our inert man-made world, it is easy to feel disconnected from nature. As though it’s us and them. When we are more interconnected with nature, we are able to understand the impacts we are having on it more directly. Livingness is a very fragile, but beautiful state. However it is in fact this fragility, and adaptability which makes it so resiliant. • With the bioluminescent material which I have developed I hoped to recreate the feeling of swimming with bioluminescence. For me, and many others, the experience of swimming among this “fire water” was a profound, transcendant, and sublime experience. It is more captivating than any video game or VR experience. I hope that the material I have developed makes this experience more accessible to everyone, and as a result changes their perception and relationship with nature. • Fusing disciplines has always been at the heart of my work as a designer and engineer. In nature, there are many examples of interdisciplinary collaborations. I fact, the two greatest transformations in the history of our planet were the symbiogenesis of mitochondria and chloroplasts. Mitochondria, the organelle which powers our living cells, and chloroplasts, responsible for the great oxygenation of our planet, were created when a cell and a bacteria joined forces. • Disciplines exist because of the large base of knowledge and work consistently achieved in a certain domain. Between these pillars, are exciting open spaces where inter-disciplinary designers get to play, connecting dots which haven’t been joined before. The great polymaths of the renaissance period did exactly that. • In my research project, traditional knowledge and science, were two disciplines which both fascinated me, but seemed so far apart. Design became a bridge between these two worlds, a common language which allowed these two disciplines to collaborate and create something new. • After more than 10 years designing “sustainable” products, from electric cars to recyclable shoes, I came to the conclusion that incremental improvements in the materials and products I was creating wasn’t enough. I was always inspired by trees, and how as an engineer, I would never be able to create something as elegant, beautiful, or efficient as a tree. So collaborating with nature seemed like the answer, and I signed up with study MA BioDesign at Central Saint Martins. Having always been fascinated by the question of “what is life?”, this seemed to be the perfect time to explore this more deeply. • One colleague described my research as “swashbuckling”, a daring and romantic high seas adventure. Whether it was living on sinking sailboats, meeting one-eyed rope makers, or swimming with sharks, I can see why they came to that conclusion. I was very lucky to have the freedom to explore without an agenda for this project, and so I was able to travel to the remote islands of French Polynesia without a plan. I let serendipity and curiosity guide my research. The kindness and openness of the Polynesian, and scientific, communities who I met on this adventure made this project what it was. Everyone was so eager to share their knowledge and collaborate. Each of my collaborators welcomed me into their homes, and shared their lives, perspectives, crafts, and knowledge with me so openly. For me the greatest pressure is making sure I create something worthy of everything that have offered to me, and make sure everyone involved believes the project is a fair and equal collaboration. • Before feeling comfortable working with others indigenous knowledge, I felt that it was important to understand my own. Whether it was starting to learn British folk music, or traditional living willow sculpture, learning British indigenous knowledge made me more comfortable to engage with others indigenous knowledge. I believe this was because it allowed me to have something to share in return, and also the depth of understanding it gave me of my own roots. • From a technical perspective, discovering that bioluminescent algae were a way for me to communicate with living organisms was a hugely serendipitous moment. The hardest thing with living materials is knowing that they are alive, however, with the bioluminescent algae, I could simply touch them, and if they illuminated - I knew they were doing alright. I developed a really close relationship with this algae over the last 6 months, as I learned to understand their circadian rhythm and their needs. • The project can now go in many directions, but firstly, we would like to take the artefacts we have created back to be exhibited in Tahiti, so that the project remains an equal collaboration. • From a materials perspective, I would like to develop the material further, solving challenges around biodegradability, and better understanding the life cycle of the material. I would also like to explore potential applications for the technology beyond bioluminescence, which while being beautiful, does not have a huge scope for real world impact. • With the scientific and indigenous communities in French Polynesia, I hope to continue using design as a bridge between these two worlds. With the support of the Gump Station, the University of California’s marine biology field research station in French Polynesia, we hope to be able to create a biodesign space, where scientists and the local community can come together to create and solve problems by sharing their skills and knowledge of the natural world. In March we spent a week teaching students at the Centre des métiers d’arts in Tahiti how to make biomaterials. We extracted alginate from local invasive seaweeds, and grew sculptures from Mycellium. I hope that we can continue to inspire young creatives in this way. • During this research and adventure, I have been lucky to gather many interviews with some remarkable people in French Polynesia. Their words and explanations of symbiosis, nature, sustainability, spirituality, collaboration, and creation are something that I feel very lucky to have heard, and I would like to share them more widely. I hope that it may be possible to share these messages through publications and even a documentary.