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Synthetic Aesthetics: The Book!

Synthetic Aesthetics is a project that brings together artists, designers, engineers, biologists, and social scientists to investigate the design of living things.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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Synthetic Aesthetics is a project that brings together artists, designers, engineers, biologists, and social scientists to investigate the design of living things. The book, published last week, includes essays on the science and technology of synthetic biology, the conflict between the engineering mindset, the logic of biology, and the language of design, as well as explorations that blur the boundary of the real and the imagined, the living and the designed. These projects include biological computers that calculate form, speculative packaging that builds its own contents, algae that feeds on circuit boards, and my project with Sissel Tolaas on human cheese.

Christina Agapakis is a biologist, designer, and writer with an ecological and evolutionary approach to synthetic biology and biological engineering. Her PhD thesis projects at the Harvard Medical School include design of metabolic pathways in bacteria for hydrogen fuel production, personalized genetic engineering of plants, engineered photosynthetic endosymbiosis, and cheese smell-omics. With Oscillator and Icosahedron Labs she works towards envisioning the future of biological technologies and synthetic biology design.

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