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What if our plants
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could sense the toxicity
levels in the soil,
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and express that toxicity
through the color of its leaves.
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What if those plants could also
remove those toxins from the soil?
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Instead, what if those plants
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grew their own packaging
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or were designed to only be harvested
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by their owners own patented machines?
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What happens when biological design
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is driven by the motivations
of mass-produced commodities?
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What kind of world would that be?
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My name is Ani, and I'm a designer
and researcher at MIT Media Lab,
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where I'm part of a relatively new
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and unique group called Design Fiction,
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where we're wedged somewhere
between science fiction and science fact,
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and at MIT, I am lucky enough
to rub shoulders with scientists
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studying all kinds of cutting edge fields
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like synthetic neurobiology,
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artificial intelligence, artificial life,
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and everything in between.
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And across campus,
there's truly brilliant scientists
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asking questions like,
"How can I make the world a better place?"
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And part of what my group
likes to ask is, "What is better?"
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What is better for you, for me,
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for a white woman, a gay man,
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a veteran, a child with a prosthetic?
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Technology is never neutral.
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It frames a reality
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and reflects a context.
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Can you imagine what it would say
about the work-life balance
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at your office if these
were standard issue
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on the first day?
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(Laughter)
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I believe it's the role
of artists and designers
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to raise critical questions.
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Art is how you can see
and feel the future,
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and today is an exciting
time to be a designer,
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for all the new tools becoming accessible.
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For instance, synthetic biology
seeks to write biology
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as a design problem.
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And through these developments,
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my lab asks, what are the roles
and responsibilities
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of an artist, designer,
scientist, or businessman?
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What are the implications
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of synthetic biology, genetic engineering,
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and how are they shaping our notions
of what it means to be a human?
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What are the implications of this
on society, on evolution,
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and what are the stakes in this game?
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My own speculative design research
at the current moment
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plays with synthetic biology,
but for more emotionally driven [??]
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I'm obsessed with olfaction
as a design space,
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and this project started with
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this idea of what if you could take
a smell selfie, a smellfie?
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(Laughter)
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What if you could take
your own natural body odor
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and send it to a lover?
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Funny enough, I found that this
was a 19th century Austrian tradition,
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where couples in courtship
would keep a slice of apple
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crammed under their armpit
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during dances,
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and at the end of the evening,
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the girl would give the guy
she most fancied
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her used fruit,
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and if the feeling was mutual,
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he would wolf down that stinky apple.
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(Laughter)
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Famously, Napoleon wrote
many love letters to Josephine,
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but perhaps amongst the most memorable
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is this brief and urgent note:
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"Home in three days. Don't bathe."
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(Laughter)
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Both Napoleon and
Josephine adored violets.
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Josephine wore violet-scented perfume,
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carried violets on their wedding day,
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and Napoleon sent her a bouquet of
violets every year on their anniversary.
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When Josephine passed away,
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he planted violets at her grave,
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and just before his exile,
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he went back to his tomb site,
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picked some of those flowers,
entombed them in a locket,
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and wore them until the day he died.
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And I found this so moving,
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I thought, could I engineer that violet
to smell just like Josephine?
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What if, for the rest of eternity,
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when you went to visit her site,
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you could smell Josephine
just as Napoleon loved her?
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Could we engineer new ways of mourning,
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new rituals for remembering?
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After all, we've engineered
transgenetic crops
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to be maximized for profit,
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crops that stand up to transport,
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crops that have a long shelf life,
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crops that taste sugary sweet
but resist pests,
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sometimes at the expense
of nutritional value.
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Can we harness these same technologies
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for an emotionally sensitive output?
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So currently in my lab,
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I'm researching questions like,
what makes a human smell like a human?
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And it turns out it's fairly complicated.
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Factors such as your diet,
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your medications, your lifestyle,
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all factor into the way you smell.
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And I found that our sweat
is mostly odorless,
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but it's our bacteria and microbiome
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that's responsible for your smells,
your mood, your identity,
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and so much beyond.
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And there's all kinds
of molecules that you emit
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but which we only perceive subconsciously.
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So I've been cataloging and collecting
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bacteria from different sites of my body.
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After talking to a scientist, we thought,
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maybe the perfect concoction of Ani
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is like 10 percent collarbone,
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30 percent underarm,
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40 percent bikini line, and so forth,
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and occasionally I let researchers
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from other labs take a sniff
of my samples
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and it's been interesting to hear
how smell of the body
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is perceived outside
of the context of the body.
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I've gotten feedback such as,
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smells like flowers, like chicken,
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like corn flakes,
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like beef carnitas.
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(Laughter)
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At the same time, I cultivate
a set of carnivorous plants
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for their ability to emit
fleshlike odors to attract prey,
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in an attempt to kind of create this
symbiotic relationship between
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my bacteria and this organism.
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And as it so happens, I'm at MIT,
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and I'm at a bar,
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and I was talking to a scientist
who happens to be a chemist
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and a plant scientist,
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and I was telling him about my project,
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and he was like, well,
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this sounds like botany for lonely women.
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(Laughter)
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Unperturbed, I said, "Okay."
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I challenged him.
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"Can we engineer a plant
that can love me back?"
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And for some reason,
he was like, "Sure, why not?"
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So we started with,
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can we get a plant to grow towards me
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like I was the Sun?
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And so we're looking at mechanisms
in plants such as phototropism,
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which causes the plant to grow
towards the sun by producing hormones
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like [?], which causes cell elongation
on the shady side.
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And right now I'm creating
a set of lipsticks
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that are infused with these chemicals
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that allow me to interact with a plant
on its own chemical signatures,
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lipsticks that cause plants
to grow where I kiss it,
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plants that blossom
where I kiss the bloom.
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And through these projects,
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I'm asking questions like,
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how do we define nature?
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How do we define nature
when we can reengineer its properties,
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and when should we do it?
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Should we do it for profit, for utility?
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Can we do it for emotional ends?
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Can biotechnology be used to create
work as moving as music?
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What are the thresholds between
science and its ability to shape
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our emotional landscape?
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It's a famous design mantra
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that form follows function.
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Well now, wedged somewhere between
science, design, and art
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I get to ask,
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what if fiction informs fact?
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What kind of R&D lab would that look like,
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and what kind of questions
would we ask together?
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We often look to technology as the answer,
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but as an artist and designer,
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I like to ask, but what is the question?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)