Team:ArtCenter MDP/Notebook

From 2014.igem.org

research

Week 1-2:
“...[Scientists are] embracing a wider vision of nature managed for a wider array of goals. Instead of focusing on the past, they are looking to the future and asking themselves what they’d like it to look like.”

Because we are outside of the field of synthetic biology we began by immersing ourselves in it, reading: Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature is a Post Wild World, J. Craig Venter Institute's Press Release “First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell,” Oron Catts and Gary Cass's “Labs Shut Open: A Biotech Hands-on Workshop for Artists” to name a few. This helped us gain a better understanding of the emerging research and conversations within synthetic biology. Generally everything we read blew our minds, everything was interesting! So this was really our research challenge as designers, where or what can we most effectively contribute to the field? What conversation can we offer another perspective to? Thank you Christina Agapakis and Ben Hooker for sources.

brainstorming

Week 3-5:
The team collaborated through a series of brainstorming sessions. Each person discussed their research. Through a series of white boarding sessions we developed a set of categories or groupings that helped identify where our research and interests overlapped:

Culture Reserves / Modeling Life:

human mediation in nature

the managed wilderness, perpetual weeding, perpetual watching

generating divergent ecosystems by accident - animals migrate

conservation, restoration - we recreate it ourselves

site specific

what is from scratch?

Ecosystem Design / Rewiliding & De-Extinction:

diversity occurs in unfamiliar places

extremophiles

“sanctuaries”,designing new ecosystems

the food chain

lack of predators

introduced animals are fenced in

Evolution / Time & Scale:

a slow learning process, we wish we could speed it up

compete, react, evolve, migrate and form new

a balance of life and death

human time vs microbial time

what are times for simulation, slow vs fast, the sims

lab scale vs life scale

evolution and repercussions

Coding Life / Using Nature to Carry Out Human Processes:

programming nature

game interfaces and the sims

dna as code/ using digital worlds and code to create

unity as our biobricks

copy and paste making it easy for people to produce, “childs play”

outside the lab, outside the gallery, garage labs

questions

Week 5-6:

As we developed our concepts certain questions kept coming up for us:

How could we use the process of generating simulations to expose new ecosystems to lead to additional research questions and concepts?

What concrete/real projects and behaviors could we use to make an interesting/engaging combination? environments/narratives surrounding existing synthetic biology projects, like electronics into gold, or glow in the dark [insert animal] ect. what happens when you combine these and they exist together in the same place? bacteria spreads.

How can we manipulate time? Could we expose future implications from this and design new questions/systems/objects ect. based on a simulation? set real world behaviors to live and exist in a digital environment at human scale?

What are the rules of the worlds that we are simulating?

Using / starting with UNITY/GAMING ENVIRONMENT can we simulate existing synthetic biology projects created in the lab and release them in a simulated "living" world? Does this help complicate the discussion around synthetic biology projects? What if that project is released into the wild? What are the unexpected new ecosystems / environments / sites / and interactions that would be generated through this simulated evolution?

concept development

Week 6-7:
Imagine huge bodies of water, giant ponds and lakes and just below the surface are trillions of organisms working 24/7, eating plant life and producing gasoline. - George Church, envisioning future synthetic biofuel production.
We developed a concept focusing on previous work in genetically altered algae for the use of biofuel production. what if people had their own fuel source, like their own pools of fuel producing bacteria in their back yards? Pool at the center, a source - an ecosystem (thinking about animals drinking from the watering hole but cars doing this but around pools)

Pools, private, public, community pools, water parks, hot tubs, oh my...

What are the degrees of quality? - abundance, obsession, need of fuel in connection with water + cars + LA.

Would LA be the most powerful? an energy epicenter?

What are the demographics of pool owners? 43,000 pools in the L.A. Basin, the average size was about 16 by 33 feet. Beverly Hills had the most pools per capita. Beverly Hills has 2,481 backyard pools.

How would pool designs change the production/ecosystem?

How would future pool & parking garage designs change?

Scale is an issues. The bacterial takes AWHILE to create enough to fuel. Reality in the behavior - take about 100 litres of bacteria to produce a single teaspoon of the fuel.

For large scale production it would take a lot of lakes/pools/time, what if people had their own smaller scale production or source - MOONSHINE, bathtub gin

Gas companies creating their own branded bacteria, the new role of the pool boy, gas station, gas station attendant

What new rituals form around maintaining this pool? - skimming to remove insects, leaves, the random mouse.

design

The ecosystem surrounding the pool became our site for investigation; our site to "play out" our design, questions, and speculation. Researching Los Angeles' own history of fetishized backyard aquatics, we found that the density of pools was drastically different from neighborhood to neighborhood. Beverly Hills had the highest concentration of private lagoons, while urban center-city Long Beach had the fewest. Designing an experiment to simulate different community scales, we created our own model pool communities and placed them throughout the city.

Our first investigation centered on two miniaturized communities of three pools, built to reference the god's-eye view of geodesic satellites. On a sunny rooftop in Pasadena, CA, we inoculated two groups of six pools with algae samples from across Los Angeles. Measuring the contamination rates, acidity, population, and color of the pools against a constant, we were able to determine productive environments for algae contagion.

Our second investigation enlarged our geographic scale and context. With two inflatable kiddie pools placed 10 miles apart, and with algae from the Los Angeles "River," we simulated the actual backyard experience of tending for a biofuel pond and observed how the system integrated into the vibrant urban ecosystem.

Our third investigation incorporated our deep research into the sustainable production of biofuels and proposed an extended Los Angeles County boundary to include more water and c02 sources for better biofuel production. Los Angeles has a long history of aquatic imperialism dating back to the largely illegal import of water from hundreds of miles away. In a search for a more sustainable future, Los Angeles' creation of a "green belt" of algae conducive land in a deterministic manner would not be surprising.

site visits

Based on advice from our advisors, we started to grow our own algae as a way to prototype and simulate our localized fuel production model. Creating home growth algae kits, we needed to source algae from around Los Angeles. Samples were pulled from the Huntington Library Koi Pond (pictured right), turtle ponds in Chinatown and at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and from the Los Angeles River.

simulation 1

For our first investigation, we built two miniaturized communities of three pools on a sunny rooftop in Pasadena, CA. We introduced algae samples from ponds and rivers across Los Angeles and monitored day to day growth and activity for four weeks. We measured against a constant, observing contamination rates, acidity, population, and color of the pools. With enough to time to grow a large colony, we were able to determine how to create productive environments for growth.

To create the models, we used CNC milled foam for houses and vacuum formed plastic for the pools. All samples were collected by hand, and water replenishment was carried out daily.

simulation 2

In our second investigation, we enlarged our geographic scale and context. Our growth sites were 10 miles apartment, one in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the other in Highland Park. Using two inflatable kiddie pools, we introduced hand-collected algae from the Los Angeles River. Because the experiment was done at a human scale, the work of tending the algae colony grew exponentially. The pools required stirring and monitoring, with mosquitoes and raccoons making regular visits to both sites. By actually incorporating the pools into backyards, we were able to explore the behavioral outcomes of actually monitoring an active biofuel pond.

The pool models we used were store-bought inflatable pools for children. All samples were collected by hand, and stirring, skimming, pH testing, and partying was carried out daily.

so.cal. igem meetup

Over the summer Media Design Practices hosted the Southern California iGEM meetup. We had been in contact with local teams such as UCLA, CalTech, LA Biohackers, and UCSC and found time to organize a group session in our Pasadena Studio. We talked about current iGEM projects, learned about genetic synthesis, and socialized with other interested and interesting people. Knowledge transfer definitely occurred.

observations

Throughout the process, we realized numerous insights:

First, mosquito control became a serious problem. As a West Nile outbreak sizzled in the region, we had to find tools that could address the problem without hurting algae growth. We ended up using bug bombs to attack the larvae, anything more powerful would have negatively influenced growth.

Second, the pools' integration into the urban ecosystem required constant surveillance to watch for animals. In the heat of summer, raccoons, squirrels, cats, and opossums all took interest in the algae pools.

Third, the perception of the surrounding community became more intense and the simulations wore on. Neighbors were often grossed out by the pools, and sensed some sort of danger from the algae growth. To promote knowledge and interaction, we began holding "pool parties" and inviting neighbors to take part in communal maintenance.

Fourth, maintenance needs became increasingly labor-intensive. Materials like yeast were needed to jumpstart growth, and pH testing and color observation became daily activities. Environmental changes also needed to be made to create a healthier growth environment, and it was common for us to move pools to sunnier areas.

insights

The process of simulating biofuel production and multiple scales led to valuable insights about sustainable production on a large scale:

First, we learned that wildlife management would be come a pressing matter as scale increased. Control of the environment surrounding the pools was key, and moving forward new methods for addressing wildlife interaction would be needed. Proposed solutions would involve signage and new pool access (or inaccessibility), incorporating design changes with a spatial reimagining.

Second, finding ways to research and disseminate farming techniques to maximize yield would become necessary on a community to community basis.

Third, the economy born out of large-scale production became the largest sphere of change. Beyond how the shift from a gasoline-based to an alternative transit economy would affect the city, the necessity of new technicians began to alter the future community. The pools created a need for an entirely new specialized industry, and the technical expertise would be needed in every pool-inclusive community.