I recently came across Biojewellery: Designing Rings with Bioengineered Bone Tissue, a project with the stated aim of creating “a debate about tissue engineering.”
From the website:
“Biojewellery is a collaborative project involving Tobie Kerridge and Nikki Stott, design researchers at the Royal College of Art, and Ian Thompson, a bioengineer at Kings College London, its aim is to bring the medical and technical processes of bioengineering out of the lab and into the public arena.”
They’re currently working with donor couples contributing bone tissue. The tissue will be cultured and grown on bioactive scaffolding to create raw rings. The rings, after finishing, will be worn by the couples.
I’m one of those technologists looking forward to the Singularity, granted, but what better symbol of union with your beloved than a ring made from their very substance? With Neoconservatives and the Religious Wrong tromping all over self-determination and humanism, projects such as Biojewellery, designing and working with the fabric of our bodies in an immediate and understandable fashion, are exactly what we need.
I’ll be following the Biojewellery diary at the site. I’m betting these folks set a new trend in modern fashion.
