Course Description
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Nearly a half-century since this motto inspired inventors of the personal computer, perhaps the best way to predict the future now is to grow it. Advances in biotechnology are outpacing digital technology as new knowledge and tools open astonishing possibilities. Artists have a vital role to play here. To grow a better future we must first understand emerging technologies and their contexts, imagine possibilities, speculate on their unfolding, and then test our ideas. It is also imperative that we understand the past, including colonial histories and persistent ideologies within science and culture that have contributed to social and ecological crises we must now confront. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, we combine biotech research, speculative thinking, and creative application to explore how we might grow the future.
This class participates in the Biodesign Challenge, a competition of top art, design, and research institutions from around the world. The BDC inspires students to imagine innovative applications of emerging biotechnologies. Through informed and creative thinking, small groups of students in this class will research, design, and prototype such a project. The strongest project in the class will represent MICA at the BioDesign Summit this summer at the MoMA in NY.
