“Breath is a temporary pact of volatile exchange between the animal and plant Kingdoms”
The Department of Culture for Breath in 2030 presents a digital archive of multispecies scents from native pine forests.
The project explores an unsettled future, questioning humanity’s relationships with other living entities. It proposes a series of speculative video capsules to highlight the value of breath — and the importance of our sense of smell — by examining them within a digital vacuum. AuraForest is a catalogue of loss: the loss of breath, loss of smell, loss of species.
The Library of Scents was excavated from the most ancient forest in Eastern Europe, derived from a tree known to humans as the Scots Pine.
A bio-capsule concept where the user is bestowed restorative benefits while giving a consumption break to the planet.
PARALLELUM isolation bio-capsule is a nutrient space for two weeks of hibernation. As oxygen and all the necessary particles are delivered to your organism, your body function will slow down to a minimum. Plant-based, antimicrobial properties from different types of species can be chosen, for example Pinus Sylvestris [Scots Pine] mode, which brings respiratory and immune system benefits. A hydration system will absorb water into the body and the bio-pod itself will be in a constant process of dissolving. Stress levels and toxins will be eliminated, vitals will return to the optimal capacities of a newborn.
A speculative work based on research started with analysing concerns in forestry at the Royal College of Art. While finding conflicting elements in the social perception of human beings as not belonging to nature, this work intends to flip the perspective by placing the subject in a passive position, allowing them to ‘charge’ their vital strength by simple symbiosis, absorbing nutritional properties while giving a consumption break to the planet.
Exhibited
Dutch Design Week 2020
London Design Biennale 2021
Design Futures platform 2021
[Design Products programme at Royal College of Art]
In 2020/2021 Design Futures explores the notion of the post-human to imagine the future from a non-human perspective and challenge what it means to be human. Underpinning our work this year is the desire to debate and reimagine the role of design in the face of pressing issues — we work towards a brief of Designing for the Unsettling, an exploration of the way design can respond and address conditions of transition, instability, opportunity and precarity.
Tutors: Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa + Oron Catts
Special Prize-winning during Grand Challenge 2020 at Royal College of Art with Logitech and CERN.
Evolutionary changes take many thousands of years to occur in nature. But what if you could experience multiple genetic adaptations, changes, incarnations in your own body… within a single lifetime?
This is the story of BODY FLUID, a virus that makes your DNA contagious. We’ve designed a future where evolution is possible without reproduction. In order to enhance the human, we chose this as it is the constant that has driven us to the stage where we are now.
In this future, an intimate act is the literal colliding of the body with an irreversible impact. But unlike other projections of genetic modified futures, BODY FLUID acts with a randomised nature, similar to how natural reproduction has worked for millennia.
BODY FLUID TEAM Melanie Glöckler Kamila Iżykowicz Peini Yu Jinglun Zhou Sandeep Hoonjan
Film by Kamila Iżykowicz
Love letter from the Future