tattoo and gene splicing, KnoWear is a creative effort to understand the epigenetic and imagine a radically open body. These artistic explorations suggest new ways of thinking about design. If we can map and modify an epigenetic landscape, which then alters a human genotype, physical form, and behavior, then by designing a network of systems, we can design a body and vice versa. In this model, the design process focuses on the molecular level, the less visible layer. New roles for artists and designers Edgerton’s camera revealed more than the unseen dynamics of atomic explosions. It also suggested an unsettling truth about how little we understand of nuclear energy and, by extension, the planet’s delicately balanced systems. Thanks to contributions by Edgerton and others, artists and designers have new tools with which to graph, extrapolate, and contextualize data, helping us better grasp the forces interacting in our environment and constituting the extended human body. In turn, we can intervene on the public’s behalf by advocating for design that recognizes the deeply interconnected nature of the ecosystem. Opportunities to do so have arisen in a growing number of areas through methodologies ranging from process design and service design to genetic design. We must use the insights arrived at through design thinking to establish models of sustainability incorporating a holistic consideration of the extended body in political, economic, and environmental systems. Japan’s historical and recent experience with the disastrous effects of technology on humanity and the environment makes clear the risks of designing only for the obvious body. Ed Keller is associate dean OF Distributed Learning and Technology at Parsons. He is a co-chair of “Transhumanism Meets Design: Humanity+ Partners with Parsons The New School for Design,” a conference to be held at Parsons, on May 14–15.
This photograph of the Trinity atomic bomb test, taken in 1946 by Harold Edgerton on his specially designed camera, illustrates the power of images to convey the complex interaction of forces unleashed by scientific discoveries. Photographs such as this one awakened public concern over our ability to manage the potentially disastrous effects of technology.
Photograph by Harold E. Edgerton. © MIT 2011. Courtesy of MIT Museum