Counting with Nature: Design Perspectives

Over the last 30 years or so, advances in biotechnology have enabled us to consider the processes of life themselves in a technical capacity. This talk offers a design perspective on working with living systems as a form of computation. Using dynamic droplets as an experimental model through which to test and explore ideas, a range of research projects are presented through which findings and challenges are discussed in ways that aim to help open up collaborative and innovation opportunities between the humanities and sciences in synthetic biology and other allied fields of scientific investigation.