Vitra Design Museum: Better Nature exhibition

摘要

Until 24 November 2019, the Vitra Design Museum, in Weil am Rhein, Germany, presents a solo exhibition from critical designer and artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. As design discourse embraces ideas of biotechnology the museum saw the importance of displaying her work. With an interest in design's premise of 'making things better', Ginsberg casts a critical eye on the idea of for and by whom is this 'better' designed in synthetic biology. The emerging technoscience -the focus of her work and this exhibition - might be more simply put as the design of living things. Trained in architecture and interaction design, Ginsberg has been interested in synthetic biology since learning about it as a student in 2008, and in the intervening years has collaborated with synthetic biologists while encountering the many associated political, cultural, economic and technological implications of the field. The exhibition presents six projects developed in collaboration with experts from different fields between 2009 and 2015, to offer different narratives that might lie behind the design of 'Better Nature'. They include man-made companion species to support endangered animals and plants; an imagined future of genetically engineered plants capable of producing everyday consumer goods; and bacteria engineered to make biodegradable plastics and genetically modified bacteria that can diagnose disease when ingested.