UCSC BioDesign Challenge Winners, Saul Villegas & Silvana Moiceanu created Worlds of Flora & Fauna as a tool for speculative thinking and design.
Using the Biodesign Challenge as an opportunity to create an immersive bioart world Villegas and Moiceanu aim to shift and open new possibilities for experiencing and learning about art, biology, and technology — unbound by the physical non-virtual world. Placing the SCOBY art lab inside the virtual world is just one example of what a bioart world-building environment can be — as a unique new lens created to alter and reimagine how we view the natural world — just as the telescope, microscope, and camera were lenses invented to gain new perspectives for understanding and knowledge building — the lens of virtual worlds offers an alternative lens to peer through for discovery and innovation. The immersive lens of Worlds of Flora Fauna reimagines the natural world as an archive, with an ecocentric view on methods created with interactive taxonomies for human and non-human participants.
Link to project https://openlabresearch.com/ucsc-biodesign-challenge
BioDesign Challenge: https://biodesignchallenge.org