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BioDesign Studio: Creature Creation Station

Visitors combine tangible bio-element tokens at a curved table to design a hybrid synthetic creature, which then animates in a shared projected ecosystem.

Visitors at the curved Creature Creation table in BioDesign Studio. An adult and several children assemble tangible tokens while a synthetic creature they have designed animates on the projection wall behind them.
Creature Creation Station, BioDesign Studio, The Tech Interactive, San Jose. Image: Local Projects / The Tech Interactive.
Role
Project Director, Concept, Development Lead, Evaluation
Organization
[The Tech Interactive](https://www.thetech.org/) (institutional), San Jose
Years
2013–2017
Location
San Jose, CA
Category
Biodesign + synthetic biology
Status
Completed

What it is. A station inside BioDesign Studio at The Tech Interactive, the permanent synthetic-biology exhibition that opened March 18, 2016. At a curved table, visitors combine tangible bio-element tokens to design a hybrid synthetic creature. The creature is then released onto a shared BioPool projection wall, where everyone’s designs move through the same simulated ecosystem.

The design problem. Genetic design is abstract and usually screen-bound. The station’s job was to make the act of composing an organism physical and legible to a first-time visitor in under a minute, then give the result a social afterlife on a wall the whole room shares.

What I did. Project Director, Concept, Development Lead, and Evaluation on the Tech Interactive side; the interactive build was a partnership with Local Projects. The Creature Creation Station is the piece carried in the IxDA Interaction Awards entry for BioDesign Studio. The studio overall received AAM Silver MUSE, a D&AD Wood Pencil, and a Core77 Runner-Up in 2017; see the BioDesign Studio page for the full award and collaborator record.

Three visitors stand at the curved BioPool projection wall, each holding a snake-arm tangible controller. Glowing synthetic organisms drift across the wide screen in front of them.
BioPool wall, Creature Creation Station. Image: Local Projects / The Tech Interactive.

Collaborators

Press and references

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