Microbial masks, DNA engineered human skin, a living phone: Modern biotechnology promises and enables us to rethink the body, augmented and cohabitated with new abilities but also empowered through a deeper understanding of ourselves. Microbial masks functioning as monitoring wearable, an embedded extra organism substituting smartphones and a direct alteration of the human DNA enabling adaptive skins - three recent graduates of the Design Academy Eindhoven present and discuss their graduation projects situated within the fields of body-hacking and biotechnology.

How will we develop as a human species? What are the responsibilities for a designer when imagining futures?

Join the debating round and contribute your opinion and knowledge or enjoy learning about the field's challenges.

Beyond the Human Surface by Bich Tran

Beyond the Human Surface explores the possibility of human enhancement through Genetic Engineering, with the focus on how skin cells could be programmed to temporarily transform when triggered by light. Will we be able to grow scales or change our skin colour? What else? The project consists out of two parts: creating a platform with a collection of interviews that allows an intellectual dive into the topic of genetic modification and on the other hand exploring through speculative skins what this technology could become.

Bich Tran, recent graduate and trained at the Design Academy Eindhoven, looks at his practice through the kaleidoscopic lens of design, science and the humanities. As a conceptual designer he's seeing a new field surfacing, where designers will work and manipulate biology as they did in the past with materials like clay, wood or letters.

Machina Synthetica Communicatia - The Living Phone by Lukas Adrian Jurk

Recent findings and developments in the field of synthetic biology take first steps into or indicate the future generation of organisms that could take over functions of current electronic smart devices. Machina Synthetica Communicatia imagines a world of living products that are becoming integrated with the human body. There are numerous promising advantages of such a design and production principle: Disruption of the current environmentally and socially hazardous product life cycle of smartphones, less dependency on raw earths, sustainable energy supply and higher performance than current chip technology. However, the new technology entails lots of critical questions. How do we personally and legally treat living products? How does it change the identity of our body acting as a battery and receiving augmented abilities? Who controls the production and how does it change the processes and locations of consumption?

Lukas Adrian Jurk is a research driven and conceptual designer operating at the physical and abstract borderlines of object design, narration and space. Past and present fields of operation are hospital design and the exploration of how synthetic biology might change our body identity and wearable products. He is currently working as a researcher and product designer at Institut für Industriebau und Konstruktives Entwerfen at Technical University Braunschweig while parallely realizing independent projects.

Microbial Self by Valerie Daude

Microbial Self explores through speculation how relationships between humans, as well as between humans and micro-organisms will be affected through advances in microbiome research. Microorganisms are responsible for many aspects of our physical and mental health. Especially bacteria inside our guts help us to digest certain food, balance our immune system, and they even influence our cognitive functions, mood, and behavior. Understanding how these organisms interact with their human host could explain different aspects of many complex diseases and enhance human potential. Therefore, Valerie Daude developed Microbial Masks which make our bacterial levels visible.

We live in a microbial world, without being aware of it. Sharing our highly unique microbiome levels with others, like data, will transform our relationships with humans and nonhuman bacteria.

Valerie Daude is a social designer with an interest in our gut microbiota’s effect on human's mental and physical well-being. She aims to understand how these organisms interact with their human hosts and how this knowledge may enhance human potential.