Totems

Biodiversity on planet Earth is under momentous threat, with extinction rates estimated between 100 and 1,000 times their pre-human level. The Mediated Matter Group has been in search of materials and chemical substances that can sustain and enhance biodiversity across living systems, and which have thus far endured the perils of climate change. Melanin is one such substance, enabling biodiversity at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels. It is the ‘universal pigment,’ found in skin, hair and eyes as well as in feathers and butterfly wings. It has been found in fossils from some 160 million years ago, and today can be chemically synthesized with modern techniques. It represents unity in the diversity of life on earth.
Overview
A biomarker of evolution, melanin is the color of life. The substance that defines the color of our skin is at once ancient and modern: melanin is found in fossils dating from the Mesozoic Era, and today can be chemically synthesized ex vivo with modern techniques. It is one of the most resistant, heterogeneous, and pervasive pigments found across the kingdoms of life. In addition to its critical role in providing protection from ultraviolet radiation, it has a wide variety of functions: mechanical protection, energy harvesting, cell growth, metal binding, thermal regulation, and protection from oxidative stress. It is the ‘universal pigment’ found in skin, fur, hair, and eyes. It is also found in the blue feathers of peacocks, the ochre wings of butterflies, and the brown skin of a ripening pear. Melanin’s value for human health is priceless. An intriguing vehicle for the exploration of human health and culture across regions and environments, melanin remains an identifying feature of all living organisms and is clearly linked to biological survival throughout the ages. Today, it is considered by some to be more valuable than gold, and its impact - in the age of climate change - is key to human survival on Earth.
Yet melanin’s most striking feature lies in the duality of the biological and societal roles melanin has played throughout natural history. While it has been biologically protective across all kingdoms of life, melanin has also been implicated in societally harmful effects.
This project seeks to address and speculate upon designers’ ability today to chemically synthesize the ‘pigment of life’ - literally and metaphorically - and program its interaction across scales and species. The technical goal is to understand, explain, and predict how types of melanin can, along with other derivative pigments, be generated on demand; the environmental and human factors involved in its creation, and how its formation can be tuned or even reversed.
In an age where we can engineer melanin, who owns biological color? What are the biological and cultural implications of these capabilities? What are their promises and their perils? The installation investigates the long and crucial intersection between culture and nature by questioning the dichotomy between the societal and biological roles associated with designers’ abilities to engineer melanin’s expressions within and across species. Through this investigation, we question our ongoing relationship with biology and natural history.
Research team: Sunanda Sharma, Christoph Bader, Rachel Soo Hoo Smith, Felix Kraemer, João Costa, Joseph H. Kennedy Jr, Nitzan Zilberman (curation). Undergraduate researchers: Joseph Faraguna, Sangita Vasikaran, Sara Laura Wilson. Prof. Neri Oxman.
Collaborators & Contributors: Natalia Casa, Eric de Broche des Combes (Luxigon), Kelly Egorova, Osvaldo Golijov, Gianluca di Ioia, Dechuan Meng, Hans Martin Pech; Prof. Christopher Voigt; Susan Williams; Stratasys, Ltd; Front Inc; Bodino; MIT Media Lab
Acknowledgments: NOE, LLC.; Design Indaba; The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Estée Lauder; GETTYLAB; The XXII Triennale di Milano; MIT Media Lab
Designed for Broken Nature: Design Takes On Human Survival, XXII Triennale di Milano, 2019, organized by Paola Antonelli 3D printed by Stratasys Ltd.
More information on our website: oxman.com/proj...
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