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Synthetic Aesthetics is a project that brings together artists, designers, engineers, biologists, and social scientists to investigate the design of living things. The book, published last week, includes essays on the science and technology of synthetic biology, the conflict between the engineering mindset, the logic of biology, and the language of design, as well as explorations that blur the boundary of the real and the imagined, the living and the designed. These projects include biological computers that calculate form, speculative packaging that builds its own contents, algae that feeds on circuit boards, and my project with Sissel Tolaas on human cheese.
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