Biodesign NYC

ASSIGNMENT TWO

ASSIGNMENT TWO

Throughout this course, we will have met with many members of the biodesign/bioart and bioscience community in NYC. They shared their work and interests with you, and we discussed the broad range of issues it raises and engages. We also met a diverse range of important makers/manufacturers, designers, artists, and architects, who are renowned for creating biomaterials and/or celebrated works of biodesign. And, we met critics, curators, and other thinkers who can help us understand and contextualize the many approaches to biodesign, and collaborations with nature, that are happening today. Their participation in our course has provided you with an intensive introduction to biodesign, and has supported the diverse conditions that are often needed for the creation of original ideas.

This assignment, Assignment 2, is an opportunity for each of you to build on that experience, by conceiving of a new work of biodesign that responds to at least one prompt/comment from any of our discussions with people we have met, or any of the readings/projects/videos that were assigned. Your work will be important, because your design will lend some vision as to the future of biodesign. Your work is meant to excite our imagination; so, the quality, credibility, and originality of your ideas, and how they are shared, will matter.

You are to propose a new work of biodesign by sharing your idea and illustrating your vision. You will not be designing a comprehensive work of biodesign. You will not be making or creating a work of biodesign, nor will you be completing a biodesign project. You will, however, need to find some way to share your idea for a biodesign project, and illustrate/show your vision so that we can better understand the proposition and its potential.

Your proposition shall focus on biodesign as design WITH/FOR biology, wherein biology is an integral and vital part of the design. You can propose any kind of object/artifact, space/environment, or system, but it must include biology, dead or alive, and at any scale (micro or macro). Your biodesign proposal shall not focus on the design OF biology; that is to say, you are not to focus on or propose the design of a living organism (e.g., the design of a new kind of plant that emits light or eats candy).

At 1:00 PM on Friday, January 24th, each student will present their proposal for biodesign. Each student will have five minutes to share the prompt they considered, present their idea, and show their vision with no more than three illustrations of their own making. You can present your proposition by using any means you wish, but you must only present your own work, not the work of others. Then, you are to guide any ensuing discussion for 10 minutes, and be forthcoming about your proposal’s promises and problems.

Also, before 11:00 AM on Saturday, January 25th, each student will create a documentation folder with their name on it HERE, upload high quality JPG/MP4 files of each illustration/movie to their folder, plus a 200 word text that describes their proposal. This work may be published with attribution in the future (e.g., on biodesign.risd.edu). Get it done by 11AM on Saturday the 25th. After that, access to the folder will be restricted and your work will be considered late.