What if in the future we will live in a world without bacteria? How will that effect our emotional state?

Hej everybody,

the semester is over, so I would like to explain a bit what it was my final work for the future spaces course.

First of all  I would like to say thank you to Eva Knutz , Thomas Markussen, Mette Gislev Kjærsgaard, Laurens Boer and Silvia Grimaldi.

The assigment is to create speculative design for the future using design fiction as amethod. During those weeks we created narratives by using what if scenarios with perceptual bridges to the contemporary time. With my project I wanted to give an answer to the following question: what if in the future we will live in a world without bacteria? How will that effect our emotional state? In my design process I have experimented with bacteria textile (textile made of bacteria). My final work consists of a second skin, a glove made of bacteria for the citizen of future. The narrative behind consist in the disappearing of bacteria from 2120 to 2142 that cause an increase of depression and autism symptom

in a special neighborhood in Kolding called Hide & Seek neighborhood. The glove helps people in 2142 to absorb the bacteria from the environment and all the process and the explanation is communicate through a speculative edition of National Geographic november 2142. The users of the design products are the people in the future but, of course, I want to enable our society to think about the future and how our contemporary behavior can compromise it.

The project is a strong critique of human’s behavior. People are obsessed by cleaning, using products that kill 99,9% of bacteria, using pesticides, but are they really effective?

The fear of being infected sometimes is unleashed in behavior more or less dangerous: from the mother who does not want the child to play outside and get dirty because it could come into contact with germs, to more serious forms of racism against people from countries with specific health conditions. The aim of my project is to demonstrate that bacteria might have a positive and strong role in our future society. Use my skills in research and instruct myself to use narratives to create a story, characters and scenarios and write scientific articles) and make experiments with materials (create textile from living bacteria culture) as a design method.

The research was the main part of my project. I have done research about bacteria, in the scientific field and also how designer use the bacteria nowadays. It was basically as inspiration process to create the scenarios and to be related to the contemporary world.

To create a project I needed to find a lot of information: how the bacteria behave and how I can use them to create textile. As soon as I have found some basic information I

started to experiment and at the end I succeeded. Also in term of creating the magazine I did a lot of research about layout, infographics, typography, picture and scientific language.

My design challenge (method that we worked with during this course) was to be able to create textile from bacteria and make a glove that absorb them. Helping people in the

future from autism and depression and design a speculative edition of National Geographic.

And now I want just to say....

Glædelig jul! :) See you in january!!!

ps: There was the light festival in Kolding... it was nice to stay outside drinking gløgg and eating æbleskiver 

pps: I really hope that your heads were up and you could enjoy the beautiful Geminid meteor shower last saturday!!!