Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices

Bio-Textiles as Living forms

In my dreams, we are all dressed with ephemeral clothes. Rather than trying to change the human behaviour of consunption, I suggest a change in materiality. Materializing clothes and jewellery with epehemral bioplastic, that fade during the time, with controlled biodegradability. All the material diversity comes from nature, in flowers, bacteria pigment and all the biotechnologies tools possible, creating a natural, but authetic way of dressing. Every piece is one of a kind and keeps modyfying during the time, in their own life cicle. In this way, people can still follow the “fashion trends” (even though now they will be fading as, this purpose also suggest a more individual an authentic way of dressing), without harming that much the enviromnet and re-think the way they see ephemarity and time-passing. It can help with fashion trash problems and all the excess of material that we have in the planet right now, and also help people to develop their own personality and authenticity.

For this to happen, I would suggest, first of all, some goverment funds to research, together with higher taxes for fast fashion companies and higher control of modern slavery in this companies. A big part of the money that comes from this, its applied to this New Materil´s funds and other real enviromental friendly actions.

You can see another examples of actors and actions below. This table suggest some action to implement practices that could be taken as complementary in the whole Bio-Textiles Development. As new materials that bring questions about ephemerity, they are also a tool to re-think how we consume. These measures are suggested with the objective of make this bio-world more acessible and make this subject more accessible to the public, because the real change can only happen in large scale. It purpose some actions that could bring a new expand access to scientific and material exploration, strengthen genuine sustainability practices, ensure user safety and material transparency, and increase cultural and market understanding of living and transformative bioplastics.

- I cant find a way to insert my table here :(

If this technique becomes more widely adopted, it could happen that people end up using pieces with mold, simply because they don’t realize the items are contaminated and already fading in their life cycle. For this reason, it is also important to provide proper training and information about the material. That’s why I initially suggested that these materials should be applied mainly in performance contexts, for example, artists on tour, since at the end of the tour the material could be returned to the earth. Another issue could be the difficulty for stores to maintain stock, as the degradation process of the pieces may begin while they are still in storage. A further challenge is the strong “one-of-a-kind” nature of these items, which might not attract as much of the general public, since many people want clothes identical to what they see celebrities wearing, rather than something only similar. Also, since biotextiles come from natural sources, large-scale consumption could also become a problem, as it might lead to the predatory use of the raw base materials.

Assignment (Week 2 Lecture Prep)

1 - The polimerase error is around 10^5-1010 error rate, depending if its before the repair of after. Human genome is 3.2x10^{9, so it would be around 3.2x10. To copy with that, this enzime is able to detect and correct the error in some cases, that´s why this error rate can lower from 10}5 to 10^9.