Team:Weimar-Heidelberg Arts/Prospects

From 2010.igem.org

Future prospects and sustainability of the Project

The project "supercell" is a fictional supermarket offering speculative products which are all based on Synthetic Biology. As our aim is 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, 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. 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 the the exhibition will travel to Heidelberg and should be shown afterwards in various places in Germany and all over the world.

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. 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.