Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Designing for the Sixth Extinction
Designing for the Sixth Extinction
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
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Credit: Otto Felber
While conservationists struggle to protect existing ‘natural’ species and reverse the effects of the Anthropocene, synthetic biologists are busy engineering new organisms. Designing for the Sixth Extinction investigates synthetic biology’s potential impact on biodiversity and conservation. Modeled on fungus, bacteria, invertebrates and mammals, novel companion species are released into the wild to support endangered natural species and ecosystems – an act that raises ethical questions. What would the ‘wilds’ look like in a synthetic biological future? Can we ‘preserve’ by looking forward? If nature is totally industrialized for the benefit of society, will nature still exist for us to save?
Credit: Otto Felber
About the artist
Dr. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg examines our fraught relationships with nature and technology. Through artworks, writing, and curatorial projects, Daisy’s work explores subjects as diverse as artificial intelligence, exobiology, synthetic biology, conservation, biodiversity, and evolution, as she investigates the human impulse to “better” the world. She is lead author of Synthetic Aesthetics: Investigating Synthetic Biology’s Designs on Nature (MIT Press, 2014), and in 2017 completed Better, her PhD by practice, at London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), interrogating how powerful dreams of “better” futures shape the things that get designed. She studied architecture at the University of Cambridge, was a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and received her MA in Design Interactions from the RCA. Daisy exhibits internationally, including shows at MoMA New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, the National Museum of China, the Centre Pompidou, and the Royal Academy. Her work is in museums and private collections. Talks include TEDGlobal, PopTech, Design Indaba, and the New Yorker Tech Fest.