News / Bio Design by Paola Antonelli

" The work of bio-designers generates uncanny visions that can confront our deepest beliefs " Paola Antonelli 

States of Design 07: Bio-design

Domus Magazine November 2011

 

" Susana Soares graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2007 with her project BEE'S, New Organs of Perception, comprising a series of three alternative diagnosis tools that use trained bees—which have an extraordinarily sensitive olfactory system, able to detect pheromones and toxins—to perform a health check-up, detect diseases and monitor fertility cycles. Each object has a number of chambers related to the diagnosis (two—yes/no—for pregnancy and three for fertility cycles) and bees trained by Pavlovian reflex to target a specific marker odour in the breath; when the insects sense a specific smell they go into the corresponding chamber, thus indicating the diagnosis. Soares's work has continued with mosquitoes—Am I Attractive? (2009) studies how different individuals' body chemicals prove attractive or repulsive to mosquitoes, in order to find one more weapon in the effort to defeat malaria—and has recently moved into hunting, instead of harnessing, pathogens of all kinds— Pathogen Hunter (2010) is a timely system of tools and training for detecting pathogens and managing outbreaks."