Nano Ecologies
Nano Ecologies hint at the fulfilment of the promise that nanotechnology will save the environment, but through localised sustainability rather than grand gestures.
By harvesting unused nano-particles of ‘programmable’ food using microbial cells and enzymes present in our bodies and those of animals, we could create personal eco-systems. The reformulation of these nano-particles could be used to produce new substances controlled and manufactured within the home, reducing waste from nano-enriched food and promoting self-sufficiency.
With Will Carey and Eva Kellenberger.
Film
Nanotechnology could help engineer new ecosystems, changing our relationship with the environment around us as we become a more active component of the food cycle.
Nano frugality: learning to control unused nano-sized ingredients in commercially produced nanoengineered foodstuffs, which could enable the manufacture of new products at home.
Background + Research Method
”I’d like to drink a glass of water and know that the contents are going into my stomach - not my lungs. We are giving very toxic chemicals the ability to go where they’ve never gone before,” says Dr. Qasim Chaudhry of the British government’s Central Science Laboratory.*
The food industry is exploring nanoengineering in two very different areas: functional foods (improving nutrition, vitamin preservation, fat reduction etc) allowing you to enjoy a guilt-free steak where the bad cholesterol has been 'locked' away, and 'interactive foods', a new entertainment area. Kraft, for example, is developing a ‘programmable' drink that you’ll design after you’ve bought it. Just zap the product with a correctly tuned microwave transmitter to activate the nanocapsules containing your chosen ingredients: fancy a green-hued, blackcurrant-flavoured drink with a touch of caffeine today? These ingredients will be activated while the other unactivated options pass through your body into the waste stream.
Development 1: Self-Harvesting
Unexpected consequences of nano-engineered foods?
Despite legislation lagging far behind technological development, some dismiss the need for regulation. Nanotech is natural, they insist. It uses the same substances, just smaller.
But other scientists disagree. “Matter has different behaviour at the nano-scale,” says Dr. Kees Eijkel, “Meaning different risks are associated with it… and the current regulations don’t take that into account.” For example, aluminium is stable in the ‘big world’ but explosive at nano-scale and some carbon nanostructures already used in electronics are highly toxic if released into the environment.
The size question is central to these concerns. Nano-particles under 100 nanometres wide - less than the size of a virus - can cross the body’s natural barriers, entering into cells or through the liver into the bloodstream and even through the cell wall surrounding the brain. Where will they end up? Might unforeseen benefits of new technologies outweigh these risks?
Could the green colouring you didn’t select be excreted through your skin, hair, or breath to be harvested and used again? As waste excretions become secretions; the promises that nanotechnology will save the environment might be realised, as no longer producing waste, we become self-sufficient. Nano-particles could be ingested, react within your body to be farmed into new nanostuffs and then intentionally secreted for harvesting. Nano-engineered interactive food need not be entirely decadent.
Green-hued liquid comes out of your mouth, red-coloured liquid is secreted from your scalp. Fat particles that you did not turn on build up into massive fat deposits in sewers to be reintroduced
into rivers and streams to become a new winter food source for wildlife or to be hunted like rare truffles. Could we have control over the environment, through control of what we consume, produce as our bodies become 'pharms' for useful nano-secretions for home-manufacture of foodstuffs or cosmetics.
Development 2: The Body Farmers
We conducted the following experiments as a means of developing new research methods, getting away from our desks to try and generate different angles on the project.
HYPOTHESIS 1
Can we overcome our instinctive fear of bodily
secretions?
How does it feel to purposefully harvest body
secretions?
EXPERIMENT 1
Greenhouse Cultivation
Will we prepared to accept new behaviours, like harvesting fat?
EXPERIMENT 2
Harvesting Secretions
How did a human subject feel about
self-harvesting her secretions?
HYPOTHESIS 2
Are animals ready to embrace a new kind of food
supply, enabled by nanotechnology and secreted
from our body?
EXPERIMENT 1: Pink Goo
Will birds eat unfamiliar foodstuffs?
EXPERIMENT 2: Human Hairball
Are birds fussy about eating human products?
EXPERIMENT 3: Green Goo
Will birds consume what they can see has come out of your mouth?
EXPERIMENT 4: Fat Hunt
Will animals hunt the unfamiliar, as nano-engineered foods enter the ecosystem?
EXPERIMENT 5: Cat Nip
Will animals reject adulterated food in favour of ‘traditional‘ produce?
Links
* Welcome to the world of nano foods
Regulating Nanotechnology and Designing the NGOs of the Future
A life in the day: Rob Smith