BioHybrid Device – Grown Technology

The Biohybrid Device is a video game controller grown in living biofilm (SCOBY), embedding inputs / outputs components by the natural morphogenesis

This project is now archived and was part of DDW24

This project is part of
The Symbiocene Forest - Coexistence

The game controller alone

Madalina Nicolae and Vivien Rousse

Our biodesign research team at IFT Paris has developed a method for growing hybrid artifacts using biofilm growth. The aim is to eventually replace plastic and move design into a new production paradigm by cultivating artifacts using morphogenesis as a manufacturing process.

BioHybrid Device – Grown Technology

For decades, technological innovation has been agnostic to sustainability constraints. Unfortunately, this is not viable anymore. We need to radically rethink our relationship to materiality and approach of conceiving technology. What if, in the future, we could biologically grow functional interactive devices? What would they look like ? The Biohybrid Device is a video game controller created by the fusion of biological and digital manufacturing processes. It blurs the boundaries between living and non-living systems by using the manufacturing process of morphogenesis to encapsulate electrically interactive elements. Thus, the controller slowly takes shape as the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast grows and reproduces absorbing the conductive elements, sensors and output components into the material. The Biohybrid Device addresses the sustainability, limits and implications of a biotechnological future, and invites to question the status of objects as well as our current means of production.