At the Bioworks2 launch party last month, the Extrapolation Factory set up a pop-up futuristic bio-product assembly line inside the foundry. Guests selected two present-day signals hinting at possible biotech futures and then extrapolated from those signals to imagine a future product. The Extrapolation Factory team did the rest, transforming these ideas into futuristic objects.
Each object, with its bright colors and its 99 cent store packaging, brings together and brings to life complex ideas from the edges of what’s possible today. While very different from the kinds of organisms we’re prototyping in the foundries, the extrapolation exercise is a playful way of pushing the boundaries between imagination and reality.
The products are fun and sometimes silly, but they all tell a story about today’s technologies and their potential. Having this assembly line in our foundry, where we are building some of the present day “signals” was also really interesting. I don’t think we’ll be churning out Poopipes any time soon, but the exercise of imagining the future might help us come up with something equally unexpected.
Check out more photos from the installation on Flickr and learn more about Extrapolation Factory projects on their website.
