Design for futuristic synthetic biology "herbicide sprayer"

The idea of synthetic biology is to engineer modular genetic components that can be snapped together like Tinkertoys to create new organisms that don't exist in nature. Inspired by this incredible concept, designers Sascha Pohflepp and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg developed an imaginary design for a futuristic herbicide sprayer, constructed from engineered plant parts, that would "protect delicate engineered horticultural machines from older nature." From their designs, Sion Ap Tomos created antique-looking botanical illustrations of the various components. Top left, "Growth Assembly"; top right, "Herbicide Gourd." A video about the project is after the jump...



From the Growth Assembly project statement:

After the cost of energy had made global shipping of raw materials and packaged goods unimaginable, only the rich could afford traditional, mass-produced commodities. Synthetic biology enabled us to harness our natural environment for the production of things. Coded into the DNA of a plant, product parts grow within the supporting system of the plant's structure. When fully developed, they are stripped like a walnut from its shell or corn from its husk, ready for assembly.

"Growth Assembly" (Thanks, Mathias Crawford!)

• [Anonymous]

  The fruit on the left look like alien goatse.

• [Anonymous]

  This is, of course, the basis for Kathleen Ann Goonan’s works on nano/biotechnology and as a bonus they are essentially post-nanocalyptic:

  Queen City Jazz
  Mississippi Blues
  Crescent City Rhapsody
  Light Music

  http://www.goonan.com/

  And yes they are very strange, but excellent tales!

• [dimka]

  Codex Seraphinianus is the first thing that come in mind

• [teufelsdroch]

  Once again, Cronenberg got there first:

  Anders: They’re quite beautiful. What are they?

  Mantle: They’re gynaecological instruments…for working on mutant women.

  Anders: Mutant women? That’s a great theme for a show.

  Mantle: No, it’s not for a show. It’s not art. I’m a doctor, I need them for my work.

  Anders: That’s a little out of my line.

• [Boba Fett Diop]

  It seems a little wasteful to grow seven different plants to provide individual (and highly specialized) parts for a single consumer object. Wouldn’t it be more effective to design an herbicide producing plant that could be grown alongside the crops to be protected and periodically disperse a spray to combat invasive species?

• [Anonymous]

  John Varley’s Gaea trilogy. Grow me a Monroe. A big one.

• [eviladrian]

  @Piers W: Oh snap! It’s times like these I wish I could up-vote people’s comments.

• [Anonymous]

  “This would be a great counter-theme to the steam-punk genre. Some needs write a novel.”

  It has just been written:
  Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld

• [Piers W]

  Letter from artists to genetic scientist, 2009, ‘you put in other details’.

• [Anonymous]

  i wish i could buy prints of those sketches to put up in my apartment

• [desprez]

  This would be a great counter-theme to the steam-punk genre. Some needs write a novel.

  • [Lobster]

    Bio-punk?

  • [phisrow]

    Jeff Vandermeer’s Veniss Underground pretty much covered that one. While on the topic, City of Saints and Madmen kicked ass.

• [Anonymous]

  Atwood’s Oryx and Crake has many sections that could be said to be that novel already…

• [Anonymous]

  Didn’t they do this in Aeon Flux movie?

• [Anonymous]

  This reminds me a LOT of the Codex Seraphinianus, by Luigi Serafini. Especially those toroidal plant things hanging from the branches.

  Codex Seraphinianus. Google it, seriously.

• [Karl Jones]

  “Swarm” – short story by Bruce Sterling about a space-faring swarm intelligence which engineers component organism as needed. Not normally “intelligent”, the swarm grows an “intelligent” component in response to human intervention.

• [Seraphim_72]

  @Anonymous – yeah Varley kicked ass about this in the Gaea Trilogy. Essential the entity that was Gaea housed an entire ecosystem. She couldn’t create metal for her creatures to use so she bio-engineered everything from phones to zeppelins. A very good set of books. http://www.varley.net/