Biofutures, 2015

Biofutures was developed for The Tech Museum in 2015 as a participatory installation exploring synthetic biology. Visitors began with examples already in use, then imagined a near-future application of their own. A short fill-in-the-blank questionnaire helped turn an idea into a story, and participants added imagery to give their proposal a visual form. Previous entries offered further starting points, making other visitors’ ideas part of the process.

Submitted stories entered a shared ecosystem simulator, displayed on a large map alongside the touchscreen stations. Here, concepts and choices were affected by other submissions. The interaction placed individual proposals within a world shaped by many people, opening questions about how an invention intended for one purpose might change the conditions for another.

By moving between scientific examples, imagined applications and a shared display, Biofutures invited visitors to consider biotechnology through both personal possibility and collective consequence. What might we want to make, who might benefit, and what could happen when many such ideas coexist? Visitors contributed the stories through which these questions could be explored.

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