When tasked with designing a water bottle for 100 year's time, Tokyo designers Takram instead came up with artificial organs to help the body use water more efficiently as drinking water becomes scarce.
The Shenu: Hydrolemic System includes inserts for the nasal cavity to retain moisture normally lost through breathing, heat-exchangers and a radiating colar at the neck to lower body temperature and reduce perspiration, and a urine condenser and faecal dehydrator to reclaim water from waste before it leaves the body. They also predict that food will be replaced by capsules of nutrients and hormones.
The project will be on show as part of art fair dOCUMENTA(13) at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany, from 9 June until 16 September.
The details below are from Takram:
Tokyo based design engineering firm, takram design engineering, will be exhibiting their newest work at dOCUMENTA(13) in Germany. Their work, titled "Shenu: Hydrolemic System", was based on a theme to design a water bottle for the degenerated world a hundred years later. This artwork is a part of the group exhibition directed by a leading Korean artist duo, MOON Kyongwon and JEON Joonho.
A cathartic future in which many people and natural resources are lost due to the radioactive pollution and rising sea level. In this world in which potable water is extremely limited due to pollution, takram realized that it is impossible to devise a water bottle that is on a linear evolutionary trajectory of its current incarnation. Here takram proposes an entirely new line of products called "Shenu: Hydrolemic System" that includes the artificial organs as the water bottle of the future.
Takram is a design engineering firm of the new age that features a multilateral davelopment approach employing design and engineering perspectives. The techniques and methods developed by takram, such as design engineering, prototyping and storyweaving, were deployed successfully during it's realization process.
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… with thanks due to Frank Herbert and "Dune…."
I'll keep my stillsuit thankyouverymuch ;)
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear's path, and only I will remain
I find it rather disturbing.
And I feel there's something wrong with designers thinking they are competent in medicine and denaturalisation of organisms….
What is there to be bothered by when this is currently conceptual fantasy? And were we to come to the point of developing something as functional as a major internal organ, why not involve design? A PhD in medical design, or a team of doctors, geneticists, biologists and designers working to develop a heart that actively resists heart attack and the buildup that leads to one seems pretty good to me.
or they could have designed a water bottle for the next 100 years like was asked of them…
And Darwin could have wrote a book on the undeniable existence of god. Aren't we all glad he didn't?
the robots are coming
If such a design exercise is premised on the idea of a dystopian future then it’s all to the good for awakening us to the possibilities.
We ignore to our peril how little it concerns us that the very stuff of life (along with oxygen) is a finite resource, sensitive to the global misuse and abuse inflicted on it through an indifference to environmental concerns.