Team:Weimar-Heidelberg Arts

Super Cell

Super Cell is a project developed for the iGEM competition 2010. It is a fictional online supermarket offering speculative products, which are all based on Synthetic Biology. By putting already existing and far-out future applications next to each other in a webshop, 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 of 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 will 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.

In the Super Cell webshop (see image on the right) each product is presented using one or more pictures, a product description, and a technical description, giving insights into the actual technical feasibility. The project is interested in possible implications of Synthetic Biology in our near future, therefor the website employs video and text comments. These are partly provided by the team itself as a means to think about everyday consequences and to enrich the narrative aspect of the products. Of course the commenting function is also available to visitors on our website to express their imagined interactions with our products.

For more information about the products click on Project in the menu above.