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Team:Weimar-Heidelberg Arts/Project
From 2010.igem.org
Why a Supermarket – general aims
The project Super Cell is a fictional supermarket offering speculative products which are all based on Synthetic Biology. The projects aims to improve public awareness about Synthetic Biology and at the same time foster a debate on how we want to see it manifested in our everyday lives. Implications of Biotechnologies are usually discussed on a philosophical, ethical, legal or maybe religious level. All these areas share a pretty abstract perspective on the matter. By designing speculative products and presenting them in a familiar environment such as a webshop, we aim to create tangible manifestations which allow specialists and non-specialists to engage in a discussion about desired and undesired implications of Synthetic Biology. If we -as a society- want to influence how this powerful science will affect our future lives, this kind of discussion is essential to have now.
As we want that discussion to start Super Cell doesn't end with iGEM Competition 2010. Rather the Jamboree is the starting signal for an intensive presence in public with which we want to guarantee the sustainability of our project.
Bacteria Game
With our game kit we provide everything you need to culture and train your own swimming bacteria at home. You can take part in local tournaments against your friends' teams demonstrating the dominance of your bacteria squad.
Bacterial Fridge
Keep your goods fresh and lasting – anywhere. Bacterial Fridge conserves foods without cooling and electricity.
Pulldate
With that tupperware product the user is on the safe side! Who doesn`t know that situation: Is the food inside bad or not? This product lets know you when your food is about to get bad.
Sasha
Sasha is a sensual communication tool for men and woman. It helps you to understand your needs and advises your partner. Sasha can be used for massages and caress.
Tweedlewheedle
Turn into a plant whisperer with Tweedlewheedle! The discreet nasal translator plug, will make you understand the needs of your greens with only one sniff!
Kokoromo
With kokoromo - the new hygienic moss for indoor vegetation, allergens like fungi, polls and dust don't stand a chance! Useable as a perfect organic alternative to regular carpets and wallpapers, kokoromo will enchant your living space while keeping it green and clean!
Baby's Best
Baby's Best Night Care is a diaper that reacts on your child´s needs for an all around service at night. It cares for nutrition, causes harmonious dreams and transforms excretions to a warm and dry cotton-like inlay. Baby's Best Night Care – sleep well!
Sporal Up-Ready
This product enables the user to produce their own natural pesticide! The parasites be killed by a fungi growing inside their bodies. This way your garden will be dung naturally without any contamination of the soil.
Deo Yeast
It`s a real alternative to pertrochemical deodorants. Be independent and safe harmful industrial substances.
Odeur Cuisine
A Starter-Kit introducing you to the world of Odeur Cuisine, a new experience of dining and cooking - extending a good meal into a good digestion.
Balcony Menue
Balcony Menu is homegrown organic food for a delicious meal. It combines multiple organic ingredients in one plant. After growing, the plant is harvested in one piece and provides you with all the organic ingredients the menu involves.
AphrodiTec
Stop heartache - start living - with the power of the 'god of love' Aphrodite! In this new formula the essence of love is concentrated to prepare you for the real love. Fall in love and be loved – with the help of AphrodiTec. True love comes from within!
Bio Bin
Is the animal food production more ethical than the usage of synthetic life or not? Which way is the best and the most ecological? How is your decision?!
Cyano Fuel
Cyano-fuel-pump harvests fuel by extracting algaes and cyano bacterias from pods and lakes.
BacteSafe
BacteSafe is a highly individualized security system - using person recognition based on DNA traces and different possibilities to mark intruders - from color-trace to viral infection.
Perfect Body
'Perfect Body' is a collection of replaceable body parts made of industrially grown human tissue. Always be in fashion - the new 'Perfect Body' body parts adhere perfectly in just 60 seconds and integrate perfectly into your system both sensually and visually.
Active Bacteria Lotion
The needed supplement to exchange your body parts.
Ant Army
Ant Army is an inovation to protect your trees and other plants.It uses pheromones as an effectiv weapon against any kind of animal which could possibly destroy your harvest!
Future prospects and sustainability of the Project
To achieve this three things will be focussed:
1 The webshop Super Cell
The web shop Super Cell will be available all over the world. People can experience a world in which products that are enabled by synthetic biology belong to our every day life.
In the shop included are products that come from the art context and tend to start a societal discourse, unconvertible today but with a clear biology background that proves that in (far out) future they might become reality. But the shop also highlights products that are based on previous iGEM projects, with already working mechanisms of the synthetic biology.
Conceivable is to keep on working on the Super Cell web shop and to include over the years more and more possible products that come up with the iGEM competition.
2 Exhibitions
As Super Cell is an art project it will be presented in exhibitions.
Enter the synthetic biology supermarket, smell it, touch it, feel it. Buy and change your life.
In the exhibition the already existing and far-out in the future applications are put next to each other – on supermarket shelfs, in walk-in environments and access points to virtual representations.
The first exhibition will take place in Weimar, Germany in spring 2011. Starting from that the exhibition will travel to Heidelberg and should be shown afterwards in various places in Germany and all over the world. The first international exhibition is expected (but not 100% sure yet) to take place in Vienna, integrated in the “Bio:Fiction Science, Art and Film Festival” from May 13th-14th 2011 at the Museum of Natural History.
3 Presence in Media and the press review
As far as we can say now, media has a great interest in our project. The well known german radio station WDR is producing an feature about Super Cell, the newspapers „FAZ“ and „Die Zeit“, both read in germany nationwide, want to report about our project.
As most german iGEM Teams the radio station „Deutschlandradio“ and the internet TV station „Biotech TV“ presented our project in their program. Also the regional media in Thuringia is very much interested in our Art&Science project – for example the local radio station F.R.E.I. produces a series of interviews, accompanying the project from the first ideas to the jamboree and the first exhibition.
Important to point that, as explained, the most important phase of the presence in public and communication with the society will start with and after the Jamboree – so that the presence in media is anticipated to advance.
Safety - or: what happens when an idea is born...
As mentioned we want to start a societal discussion about synthetic biology with our project Super Cell. We don't want to give a judgement but to bring synthetic biology out of the laboratories on the street, to connect it with our every day life to arouse an open discourse about chances and dangers, probably needed protective mechanisms and to do away with prejudices against synthetic biology with the aim to cultivate new competencies that this new technology claims.
Some of our products are quite controversial, nevertheless approximately most of the products presented in Super Cell would find a brought sales quantity.
When an idea is born it starts to walk and becomes autonomous. We thought of that and appreciated the safety of our ideas. Can we take the responsibility? What happens if a “real” business company gets inspired and transposes also the controversial products to reality as economic success can be expected? Hopefully than the now started discussion yields fruits and consumers have the competencies to deal with “synbio-products” to include them into a self-determined life.
