Hasta La Ideas

A tactile watch designed for blind people by a group of students has gone into production after strong demand from sighted consumers (+ interview).

The Bradley watch, which displays the time via a ball bearing that moves around the face, has also emerged as a frontrunner for the Design of the Year 2014 award, organised by the Design Museum in London.

“It’s a tactile watch that was designed with users who are blind in mind,” said David Zacher, lead designer at Eone timepieces.

“We started out thinking about what kind of watch would work for blind users and we struck upon this idea of using ball bearings rotating around a track to indicate the minutes and the hours on the dial,” Zacher told Dezeen at last night’s Designs of the Year 2014 exhibition launch:

The product was designed by Zacher and a group of fellow graduate students while studing at RISD but it will go on sale in June after a successful Kickstarter funding drive showed that non-visually impaired consumers wanted to buy the watch.

“A majority of the responses don’t have anything to do with vision impairment,” said Amanda Sim, a former RISD student who is now head of graphic design and marketing for Eone, which is manufacturing the timepiece. “People just think it’s a beautiful and eye-catching watch.”

The idea for the watch came from research showing that partially sighted and blind people were buying designer timepieces they couldn’t use and then using their phone to tell the time or relying on obtrusive talking watches.

The product is now being marketed as a “gentleman’s watch” that is “built for discretion” – since wearers can check the time without anyone noticing.

Zacher described the process of designing the watch as “the Eames model” and said his team would embark on more “inclusive design” projects in future.

“We never would have hit on this idea of using ball bearings to tell time if we hadn’t been solving [the problem of designing a watch for the visually impaired],” he said. “So I can see a broader application in products that follows that same approach, of inclusively designing something.”

The Bradley is named after Bradley Snyder, an ex-naval officer who lost his eyesight in an explosion in Afghanistan in 2011 and who went on to win gold and silver medals at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

A magnet inside the titanium watch moves a ball bearing around the track. Because the bearing is raised, wearers can feel its position with their fingers.

The watch is now available to pre-order in the UK, US and Canada. But demand has been so high that it will soon be available across Europe and in Asia as well. It will soon be available at Dezeen Watch Store.

Dezeen is media partner for Designs of the Year. Readers can get 25% off the regular admission price when booking online.

Below is an edited transcript of the interview with David Zacher and Amanda Sim of Eone:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us what this product is and how the idea came about.

David Zacher: It’s a tactile watch that was designed with users who are blind in mind. We started out thinking about what kind of watch or time keeping device would work for blind users and we struck upon this idea of using ball bearings rotating around a track to indicate the minutes and the hours on the dial.

Marcus Fairs: I heard you saying before how blind people would buy fashionable watches and then listen to Siri reading out the time.

David Zacher: We did a tremendous amount of user research. We found users who had a talking watch which is quite loud and a little embarrassing to use in a public place like a classroom say. So that was one piece of intel that we gained and as we went further into it we found users who were wearing fashion watches, even though they couldn’t tell the time. They were using their iPhones to tell the time. So we thought about how we can make a fashionable watch that would also work for tactile users and hopefully appeal to a larger audience of everyday users.

Amanda Sim: The watch is built from solid titanium. It comes in a range of different watch bands in stainless steel as well as canvas and leather. It’s built for durability, it’s easier to clean, easier to fix, but we’re marketing it as the gentleman’s watch. So it’s built for discretion and it’s all about the modern man who needs to be couth and gentlemanly but somehow always knows where he needs to be and what time it is.

Marcus Fairs: So he can check whether he needs to leave without letting anyone know.

Amanda Sim: Exactly.

Marcus Fairs: So you developed this when you were at RISD. Is that right?

Amanda Sim: Yes in graduate school, at the Rhode Island School of Design. We were randomly approached by our founder on the MIT MBA program at the time and he’s very much interested in projects for social good. But Eone is a for-profit company because we believe the proceeds of what we make from this watch can be fed into improving innovation and products for impaired users.

David Zacher: And we worked really hard to try and keep the price-point of it as low as possible. To keep it as accessible as we possibly can. That’s where we see the social bit.

Marcus Fairs: Where is it at in terms of development? Is it a product that is available and ready for order?

David Zacher: We recently finished fulfilment on our Kickstarter orders so it’s in production and it’s currently available for preorder in the UK, US and Canada with delivery in June.

Amanda Sim: But in June it will be available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, the US, Canada and throughout Europe.

Marcus Fairs: And what has been the response so far from blind people and non-blind people?

David Zacher: Oh it’s been wonderful. We’ve gotten great response from all over the world from our Kickstarter funders and the community that has come to support us has been amazing.

Amanda Sim: And a majority of the responses don’t have anything to do with vision impairment. People just think it’s a beautiful and eye-catching watch.

Marcus Fairs: Do you think this is a kind of philosophy that could be expanded, designing things for people with some kind of impairment but aimed at a wider market?

David Zacher: Definitely, we never would have hit on this idea of using ball bearings to tell time if we hadn’t been solving for that problem, so I can see a broader application in products that follows that same approach, of inclusively designing something.

If you respect the user group you are designing for and you are keeping in mind that you are trying to design something that is superb not just for that user group but for mainstream use, I think that the result is exemplary design and the key word that always comes around in our design critiques is ‘inclusive design’. It’s all about the best, for the most, for the least. It’s the Eames model.

The post Bradley timepiece for the blind proves
inclusive design has wide appeal appeared first on Dezeen.

News: don’t let fear mongers prevent the development of technologies that make the human body perform better and last longer, says a leading bio-ethicist.

A “conservative, dystopian version of the future” is holding back the development of cyborg technology and the genetic modification of humans, said Andy Miah, chair of ethics and emerging technologies and director of the Creative Futures Institute at the University of the West of Scotland.

Speaking at the Bye Bye Homo Sapiens symposium, hosted by Central Saint Martins department of Materials Futures, Miah compared the evolution of bio-tech to modern medicine where interventions like pacemakers have become an accepted norm.

“We need to think of our bodies as works in progress: as things which can benefit from bio-technological modification,” he said.

“I would argue that our commitment to longevity in life commits us inevitably to human enhancement.”

Miah cited laser eye surgery as an example of a technology that was initially mistrusted but is now widely used to improve patient’s eyesight.

Similarly, resistance to growing body parts from stem cells or using nanotechnology to introduce disease-fighting cells into the body needs to be overcome, said Miah.

Acceptance of bio-technology techniques will accelerate, he said, once people become accustomed to seeing how they can be used to improve patient’s lives by design.

Discussions around human enhancement quickly become fraught and contentious, because “at the heart is the debate about what kind of life is worth living”, he said.

“The concern is that there is a loss of self that we encounter by embracing the technology… Either through behaviours or through biological transgressions, people perceive a compromise of identity. The concern is that if we do this, we somehow lose some part of our humanity.”

He pointed to the world of sports where doping scandals are rife, but athletes are already using technology to enhance their performance through their equipment and clothing. Improving the human body – or even opening the door to possibilities like cryogenic suspension  – is the next step.

Miah has previously been involved in a UK government select committee on human enhancement technologies in sport.

His current undertakings include a major collaborative project on the ethics and politics of biomedical developments for human enhancement led by the Universities of Madrid and Granada.

“There’s a tendency to characterise people interested in these forms of human enhancement as being somehow radical others: that they are transgressing the norms of humanity, that they are challenging the human species by advocating that we ought to move beyond it,” said Miah.

“It’s a red herring to believe that these desires to reinforce ourselves or to extend the upper limits of our capacities [are somehow transgressive]: whether that’s the length of our life or the length of our limbs”.

“Our concerns about biological transgressions are something that we will relegate to history in due course.”

The post “We need to think of our bodies
as works in progress” appeared first on Dezeen.

News: musician Imogen Heap is to put an experimental electronic glove into production, creating a tool that will allow anyone to interact with their computer remotely via hand gestures (+ interview + movie).

Heap has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise £200,000 to develop and produce a limited production run of open-source Mi.Mu gloves, with a wider production planned for the future.

“Funding this campaign will enable us to make a really important developmental leap to finalise the gloves’ design so they’re ready to go into production,” Heap said in a video accompanying her Kickstarter campaign.

Each gesture-control glove contains a range of sensors that track the position, direction and velocity of the wearer’s hand, the degree of bend in their fingers and the distance between their fingers. It can also understand “postures” such as an open palm, a finger-point or a closed fist.

The resulting data is sent wirelessly to a computer, keyboard and other electronic music equipment, allowing musicians to create music by moving their hands rather than by playing a keyboard or pressing buttons.

“Fifty percent of a performance is racing around between various instruments and bits of technology on stage,” Heap told Dezeen in an exclusive interview ahead of the Kickstarter launch. “I wanted to create something where I could manipulate my computer on the move wirelessly so that music becomes more like a dance rather than a robotic act like pressing a button or moving a fader.”

The latest version of the gloves was developed as part of Heap’s ongoing The Gloves Project, which began four years ago. In 2012 she performed with an early version of the gloves at the Wired 2012 conference.

While developed for musicians, Heap said the gloves could be “hacked” for other uses.

“I’m not claiming they’re going to be the answer to every interaction with the computer but there’s a lot of applications where it just feels wrong to use a mouse and a keyboard,” she said. “You might want to be able to make something in some architecture software where you could stretch a building or draw little windows and quickly move them around like play-dough and maybe we’ll get to the point where people will start to develop software like that.”

She added: “It’s essentially a remote control and anything that you could potentially do with your hands, you could do with your gloves.”

The key piece of technology in each glove is an x-IMU board developed by x-IO Technologies, which is mounted on the back of the hand and contains an accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope and wifi transmitter. The latest version of the gloves features e-textile technology, where movement sensors are integrated into the fabric.

Below is an edited transcript of the interview with Heap:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the gesture-controlled gloves you’ve been working on.

Imogen Heap: I’m a musician but more recently I’ve been developing some gloves with an amazing team of people to help me make music on the move gesturally, enabling me to interact more naturally with my music software, to more freely create music on the move, in the flow of things.

Marcus Fairs: So they’re to allow you to make music without having to be tied to keyboards or other physical instruments?

Imogen Heap: Fifty percent of a performance is racing around between various instruments and bits of technology on stage. For instance, pressing a record button doesn’t look or feel very expressive but actually that moment of recording something is a real creative act; it’s a musical act.

But these actions have always been hidden from the audience and they disengage me in my performance, so I wanted to find a way to do that and integrate it into the performance. It’s the unseen that I’m interested in bringing out of hiding.

There are so many types of sounds or effects that don’t have a physical existence. They are software, they are hidden inside the computer. A bass-line might sound sculpted; it might have this blobby, stretchy sound. For me doesn’t feel natural to play a sound like that on a keyboard because a keyboard is very restrictive and very linear and you only have two hands. I can play a melody but if I wanted to manipulate any kind of parameter of that sound, my other hand is completely used up. It’s quite restrictive.

I wanted to find a way to be really expressive in using these software instruments and effects that feel like how I feel they should be played and how I feel that represents the sound that’s coming out of the speakers.

So in order to free myself up on the stage from my various bits of technology and to bridge the gap between what’s going on on stage and the audience, I wanted to create something where I could manipulate my computer on the move wirelessly so that music becomes more like a dance rather than a robotic act like pressing a button or moving a fader.

Marcus Fairs: How do the gloves work?

Imogen Heap:  They have bend sensors in the fingers, they have lights for feedback, they have buzzers integrated in the side so I can sense where I am if I want to get a haptic feedback. They also contain a microprocessor unit that has an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a gyroscope in it.

We’ve been developing them for about four years and they’ve come a long way. We started with fibre-optic bend sensors in the fingers but we quickly realised that we needed positional data, accelerometer data, gyroscope data so that we could really be inside the music. Because actually just having the bend sensors in the beginning was almost like just pressing buttons. It felt very unnatural.

It began with little lapel microphones, which are made by Sennheiser. Seven years ago I began to stick them onto my wrists so that I could make sound with wine glasses or I could play my mbira on stage. I would be able to avoid putting microphones on stage for festivals or touring so it would cut down on the weight and the transport costs, which is also a reason for the gloves.

In the early versions of the gloves it all connects to a hub that I wear on my upper body. It’s quite complicated but it basically communicates with the computer wirelessly so I can use it to manipulate music software, enabling me to unchain myself from the computer, to humanise the missing bits of how I interact with technology in music.

I use these gloves with a Kinect so that I can have an extra dimension on top of local gestural movements; I can use the stage as a playground like different zones for whole different presets. I could map the centre of the stage for a certain key, and if I go over to the right and I combine it with a gesture so that I don’t accidentally go in there, then I can have a whole different key or a whole different set of sounds to play with. I could unmute and mute different instruments that are inside the music software.

There’s really nothing out there on the market like this, that enables me to be this expressive with music on the move in the studio and on the stage. It’s very exciting. When you see me play, not maybe every time because maybe it goes wrong or I go wrong, but when it works, when it’s effortless and when your movement is part of the music, it’s almost like a dance. It’s so natural that the tech disappears.

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the latest version of the gloves.

Imogen Heap: It’s very exciting because it’s so much simpler and it needs less gear, less setting up. As you can see it’s compact and doesn’t need so many extra wires and the main reason for that is this: it has an x-IMU board by Seb Magdwick of x-IO Technologies containing an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer but the main difference is it now has wifi built into the glove. So it doesn’t need an extra unit to send information to the computer.

That is incredible because it’s sending Open Sound Control data instead of MIDI serial data. There are two bend sensors in the wrists and we’ve still got the bend sensors in the fingers and “forchettes” between them telling us how closed or open my hands are and equally how much my hands are bending. We’re finding that the bend sensors so far are the simplest solution but really we want to get to the point where it’s all e-tech style. So that we can separate the hard tech from the soft tech.

Marcus Fairs:What’s e-tech?

Imogen Heap:  E-tech is electronic textiles. So information is passing through fabric by using conductive threads or materials. This is where we are and it’s beautiful.

But at the moment it’s really simple, it just sees this exoskeleton as a device and then it comes up on your computer as a wifi device and you’re ready to go. It’s super simple and it’s great.

Marcus Fairs: Could the gloves be used for other creative uses besides music?

Imogen Heap: A lot of people have been in touch. For instance a guy suggested that he could take all the international sign language which you only need one hand for and translate that sonically, so that each posture for a word or gesture for a word could be mapped and generate a word. You could hack a little speaker onto the system so it could actually speak for you as well. So that’s one idea.

And in the video for Me, The Machine, which is a song that I wrote with the gloves and for the gloves, you see me manipulating visuals with them. Just drawing lines onto a screen that’s in front of me so you can see me drawing in real time.

It’s great fun to do. I can draw little arrows and houses and people. It’s not like using a pencil; it’s incredible to be able to create these grand shapes, to be able to shift everything, painting out of nothing and spinning it around and stopping it and moving it over here. So I imagine a few people might start to use them with visuals.

Marcus Fairs: What about non-creative uses? Could these gloves be used by surgeons for example, or pilots or bus drivers?

Imogen Heap: I think there’s a lot of applications; it doesn’t have to be like you’re painting or making music with them. For our Kickstarter campaign, we’ve been starting to think about funny things we could pretend to do with them. So I suppose as long as you can access your computer inside your car, there’s no reason why you couldn’t just sit in the back of your car and indicate right or left. It’s a remote control. It feels like an expressive musical instrument sometimes but it’s essentially a remote control and anything that you could potentially do with your hands, you could do with your gloves.

Marcus Fairs: Do you plan to manufacture and sell them as a product?

Imogen Heap: We would love the gloves to be as affordable as something like a MIDI keyboard in time. Imagine if this was something that people would just go to use as one of those expressive things that they feel can’t be done with certain types of more rigid technology, because what is exciting about them is that they’re totally customisable.

You can even hack them, so you might want a screen or maybe you’ll want a push button thing, but something that gives off a smell when you move your hand. It’s really exciting to see what people might do with hacking them. The software is going to be open source and so is the hardware. We can’t wait to see what people do with them. It’s early stages.

Marcus Fairs: There’s a lot of talk about how wearable technology could remove the need to interact with computers. How do your gloves fit into that trend?

Imogen Heap: I’m not claiming they’re going to be the answer to every interaction with the computer but there’s a lot of applications where it just feels wrong to use a mouse and a keyboard. You might want to make something in some architecture software where you could stretch a building or draw little windows and quickly move them around like play-dough and maybe we’ll get to the point where people will start to develop software like that. That would be amazing.

The post Imogen Heap launches funding drive
for gloves that turn gestures into music appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Apple‘s reclusive head designer Jonathan Ive says the technological age in still in its infancy in his first in-depth interview in almost 20 years.

“We are at the beginning of a remarkable time, when a remarkable number of products will be developed,” said Ive in an interview with John Arlidge of The Sunday Times.

“When you think about technology and what it has enabled us to do so far, and what it will enable us to do in future, we’re not even close to any kind of limit,” he said. “It’s still so, so new.”

During the interview, Ive revealed more details about the design process at the core of the Apple operation.

A team of 15 to 20 designers work on new projects in an all-white open-plan studio behind opaque glass. A large wooden bench hosts new products and one end is taken up with CNC machines used to create prototypes.

“Objects and their manufacture are inseparable,” he said. “You understand a product if you understand how it’s made.”

“I want to know what things are for, how they work, what they can or should be made of, before I even begin to think what they should look like. More and more people do. There is a resurgence of the idea of craft.”

Apple devices provoke such a strong response because they represent something rare, according to Ive who describes them as not just products but “a demonstration against thoughtlessness and carelessness”.

And he described the widespread referencing and copying of Apple designs as straight “theft”.

“What’s copied isn’t just a design, it’s thousands and thousands of hours of struggle,” he told the paper. “It’s only when you’ve achieved what you set out to do that you can say, ‘This was worth pursuing.’ It takes years of investment, years of pain.”

Ive also spoke publicly about his relationship with Apple’s visionary leader Steve Jobs for the first time since his death.

“So much has been written about Steve, and I don’t recognise my friend in much of it,” said Ive.

“Yes, he had a surgically precise opinion. Yes, it could sting. Yes, he constantly questioned. ‘Is this good enough? Is this right?’ but he was so clever. His ideas were bold and magnificent. They could suck the air from the room. And when the ideas didn’t come, he decided to believe we would eventually make something great. And, oh, the joy of getting there!”

Read a version of the full interview on Time Magazine’s website

The post “We are at the beginning of a remarkable
time” says Apple’s Jonathan Ive appeared first on Dezeen.

Artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo has created a vending machine that dispenses human genetic material to highlight privacy issues emerging as biotechnology makes it easier and cheaper to access information locked in our DNA (+ interview).

“In a dystopian future where we all have samples of our friends’ DNA, we will be able to do things like genetic engineering in the same way as we do 3D printing,” Gabriel Barcia-Colombo told Dezeen. “When everyone has access to cheaper biotechnology, DNA may be much more valuable than a candy bar, soda or some other treat sold in a vending machine.”

The New York artist created the DNA Vending Machine with the hope of challenging people to ask more questions about privacy and who owns the material that makes us unique.

“There are a whole range of court cases that say our DNA can be used against us for anything,” explained the artist, who is also a lecturer at New York University specialising in interactive telecommunications. “We have huge pharmaceutical companies making loads of money out of DNA from people who haven’t necessarily given them permission to use it.”

Presented in a recent TED Talk, the DNA Vending Machine replaces snacks and drinks usually found in an automated food dispenser with samples of people’s genetic code. These samples can then be bought.

“I began collecting the DNA of my friends at my house during Friday night gatherings, and then furthered mycollection through several scheduled open houses where anyone could come to my studio and sign up to submit an open-source sample of their own DNA,” the artist explained.

Participants in the project spat into a vial containing solution that breaks down the cells found in the saliva, releasing the DNA. Alcohol was then added, causing the strands of genetic code to clump together and making them visible to the human eye.

The vials were then sealed inside identical white containers and placed inside a standard vending machine. “Each sample comes packaged with a collectable portrait of the human specimen as well as a unique link to a custom DNA extraction video,” said Barcia-Colombo.

The machine was installed in an art gallery in New York last year, and the artist recalls some of the reactions to the art piece. “They’re disgusted that this is using human genetic material, and they often are scared by it,” he said. “They’re scared because the samples can be bought and used to plant evidence on a crime scene.”

“In a dystopian future where we all have samples of our friends’ DNA, we will be able to do things like genetic engineering in the same way as we do 3D printing,” he predicted. “When everyone has access to cheaper biotechnology, DNA may be much more valuable than a candy bar, soda or some other treat sold in a vending machine.”

Barcia-Colombo sees comparisons between DNA ownership and concerns over the collecting and harvesting of our own digital data. “Our phones are harvesting our data and then being sold is a very similar idea to companies harvesting our DNA and selling it to pharmaceutical companies without us knowing.”

The DNA Vending Machine was designed to start a conversation that the artist feels is long overdue.

One of the most high-profile cases surrounding the legality and ethics of DNA ownership was the example of Henrietta Lacks. While receiving treatment for cancer of the cervix in 1951, she had a healthy part of the tissue removed without permission.

The cells were later grown in vitro and have since been used by pharmaceutical companies to develop polio vaccines and in the research of AIDS, cancer and radiation poisoning. The material is still used today and is referred to as hela cells in reference to the first two letters of her first and last name.

More recently, a court case in 1990 between John Moore, a US citizen undergoing treatment for hairy cell leukaemia and the UCLA Medical Center brought the issue back into the headlines. “The supreme court decision in the case ruled that a person’s discarded tissue and cells are not their property and can be commercialised,” said Barcia-Colombo. “It’s ridiculous. When it becomes easy to reproduce these things, it brings up a lot of personal questions about rights and you as a personal franchise.”

A second version of the art project is due to go on display in New York this summer.

Below is an edited transcript of the interview with Barcia-Colombo:

Matt Hussey: How did you develop the idea of the vending machine?

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: I’m very interested in the idea of law generally when it comes to ownership of DNA, and I like to express that in a playful way. But it’s really about questions of privacy. We have huge pharmaceutical companies making loads of money out of DNA from people who haven’t necessarily given them permission to use their DNA. That kind of thing really fascinates me.

Matt Hussey: What is the piece about?

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: The piece is about privacy and DNA ownership. With the DNA Vending Machine I hope to draw attention to historical cases of DNA ownership or commercialised human cells as in the cases of Henrietta Lacks and the supreme court decision in Moore v. Regents of the University of California, where in the early 1990’s the court ruled that a person’s discarded tissue and cells are not their property and can be commercialised.

This is not a celebration of any of these verdicts or laws but rather a reminder of our complicated past when it comes to ownership over genetic material. In the future, when everyone has access to cheaper biotechnology, DNA may be much more valuable than a candy bar, soda or some other treat sold in a vending machine.

Matt Hussey: What have been the responses to the vending machine?

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: On approaching it, they don’t know what it is. Then they read about it on a little placard and are pretty grossed out by it. They’re disgusted that this is using human genetic material, and they often are scared by it.

They’re scared because the samples can be bought and used to plant evidence on a crime scene. It’s DNA from inside our cheek cells which is very readily available, but in this context it’s elevated to a more artistic context, but also, in another way, it makes it more human.

Matt Hussey: Who are the samples of?

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: Mostly friends. I started doing it at parties. I’d have people over at my house and say hey, “let’s do some DNA extraction” and show them how it worked. I work at NYU and asked if there were any students who would be interested in it outside NYU, and then I worked with a bio-tech lab in Brooklyn called Genspace, and we did some DNA extractions there. So I started with friends and then expanded.”

Matt Hussey: Were you worried at all that people wouldn’t want to give samples?

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: I was worried at first about how many people would want to be part of it. I explained to them very clearly that this could have implications where someone could buy this sample and if they wanted to sequence it, and in the process discovered some kind of new drug, they could make a lot of money out of this.

But I also framed it as a very exciting art project that they could be part of. I think it’s one of the first times this has been done in the artistic community.

Matt Hussey: What was it that appealed to you about using a vending machine?

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: They’re usually utilised to sell snacks at the movie theatre or on the street, but suddenly here it’s used to sell genetic material. It’s funny in a way. Because it’s humorous I think it makes it easier for people to understand. Ideally I’d want to bring it in to public places like Grand Central Station or Times Square. Places with a more public context.

Matt Hussey: There has been an increase in cheap gene sequencing thanks to companies like 23andMe that’s raising legal questions that many people don’t feel comfortable with. Is this a response to that?

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: For me, it’s indicative of other privacy right issues that are going on right now in the United States with phone calls and online data. When this moves completely into the genetic market, and when it becomes easy to reproduce these things, it brings up a lot of personal questions about rights and you as a personal franchise.

It also touches upon those people who are disenfranchised with the process and don’t understand the legal issues surrounding it and don’t have a way of really fighting back.

Matt Hussey: How would you summarise the mood of people towards these ideas?

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: I think there is an immediate fear growing within people. I think we’ve only really started hearing about in the past two years. Our phones are harvesting our data and then being sold. It’s a very similar idea to companies harvesting our DNA and being sold to pharmaceutical companies without us knowing. I think it’s reflecting itself.

I myself am not a paranoid person, I’m very open about things, but I do think there is a place for art to question what is going on. I use art to provoke conversation, and this is a conversation piece. The DNA vending machine is not a protest piece, it’s about having ideas and questioning what the future holds, security in terms of genetic material, and to educate people about what can be done with DNA, and how accessible this human data is.

The post Genetic engineering will be “as accessible as
3D-printing” says DNA Vending Machine designer appeared first on Dezeen.