Central Saint Martins (U.K.) / Tutor: Kieren Jones (2016)
The human body is composed for the 90% of different microorganisms, most of which are beneficial to their host. Microbes as bacteria, fungi and viruses are part of our skin flora, covering both the inside and the outer surface of our body. Even though invisible to our eyes, our microflora has a symbiotic relationship with the interface between our body and the environment — our skin. Future Flora aims to incentive this symbiotic relationship that raises the beneficial presence of microbes and bacteria in the human body, suggesting an alternative to wear probiotics and keep our body healthy.
Future Flora is a harvesting kit for women to treat and prevent Candida Infections. The project tackles the experience of growing and nurturing living organisms at home. The bacterial pad grow the necessary strings of Lactobacillus bacteria to create a hostile environment for the further development of Candida Albicans, acting as living culture of probiotics. By placing the pad in contact with the female genitalia, the healthy bacteria grows on the surface of the infected area, reconstructing the microflora missing in the vagina epithelium and maintaining a lower pH level in the vaginal area. This generates an intimate and delicate interaction between the action of nurturing bacteria as they grow, and to wear these microorganisms as a second layer of your skin.
Candidiasis is an infection caused by the over growth of Candida Albicans, a fungus that coexists in our flora and when the vaginal flora is disrupted it suffers a mutation leading to the overgrowth of the yeast creating discomfort and vulnerability to the woman. Candidiasis is a disruption of this balance, affecting 75% of women every year. My aim is to raise the awareness to this social taboo and provide an alternative for this treatment by nurturing these living organisms that balance our equilibrium. For that I designed Future Flora, to open the possibility of wearing living organisms in the future, aiming towards a new health proposition of female biophilia.
The kit is composed by an inoculation loop, a spreader, a pipette with freeze-dried bacterial compound and the nutrient agar-agar recipe, plus an instruction leaflet providing the necessary steps to grow and harvest your ownpad at home. The included tools are now considered basic laboratory equipment.
In this project I examine the possibility of these tools becoming part of our everyday life, as quotidian as a makeup kit. This receptiveness to science is a trend manifested by the growing of biohackspaces, citizen science and DIY biology. Nevertheless this project aims not to engineer nature but to design with existing resources. This is an important step to empower citizens with scientific knowledge on the edge of the biorevolution, where the female becomes a participant in the culture and the knowledge of science.
Futura Flora is addressed to females that are taking control of their bodies as a new precious and intimate practice of self-care. The iteration itself of making the living culture pad, introduce the user in the unknown place of a laboratory, aiming to identify her curiosity in becoming a participant in the citizen science. It engages the woman in the process of understanding the value of her body and the feedback that the body is constantly sending to her.
