Our Open Wetlab regularly has guests working at their projects in our lab. Recently, Matilde Losi from TU/e worked at her 'Host' project here. She wrote me the following about it, that I would like to share with you:
During my exchange semester at TU/e, I attended Next Nature theme in Nano supermarket project team, which is related to the use of nanotechnology in products able to cause a debate regarding future scenarios, investigating how technology will change our habits and impact on our behaviour.
My project is called 'Host', a word with several meaning as the Eucharist bread symbol of Christ’s body, but also the verb “to host” which means receiving guests as happens daily to our bodies changing on the nanoscale due to all bacteria and micro organisms surrounding us.
After a long and varied research regarding the relation between science and religion, how they have been related to each other since the first scientific discoveries made by some religious scholars, I had the idea of designing some cards hosting yeast powder. In this card, science and religion collaborate: the biological reaction of the yeast, helps to understand the religious meaning of the Host. Eating this card, actually hosting some changeable living organism as yeast is, will make the metaphor of eating Christ’s body, the holy Creator, more evident and perceptible by our senses, through sight and taste.
The discover of the yeast as the best ingredients to obtain some reactions on the Host card has been possible thanks to the help of Pieter van Boheemen and other experts of the Wetlab at Waag Amsterdam. I went to the Open Wetlab to better understand ways in which my host could really 'host' a gm organism, as well as the possible side-effects of its consumption by humans. This allowed me to use their expertise in my experiments, incorporating yeast in silkscreen printing, shaping my designs and reaching more informed final outcomes.
The result of the Nano supermarket projects has been shown on the 4th and 6th of June at the Technical University Eindhoven in the Next Nature project space.
