Biodesign 2026

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Elemental Imprints: Bio Design Lab South Asia — Bangalore Lab

(Art)ScienceBLR is the Bangalore laboratory node of Elemental Imprints: Bio Design Lab South Asia, an initiative of the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan that brings together bio design labs across India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The Bangalore lab is hosted by (Art)ScienceBLR, the public laboratory at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, and coordinated by Yashas Shetty.

The Bangalore lab takes silk as its anchor for exploring biomaterials.

The Network

Labs participating in Elemental Imprints:

  • Bangalore & Chennai
  • Colombo
  • Delhi
  • Dhaka
  • Kolkata
  • Mumbai
  • Pune

The Bangalore Lab

Context: Karnataka and silk

Karnataka produces roughly 70% of India’s silk. If it were a country, it would rank as the world’s third largest silk producer. The state’s silk ecosystem — sericulture, reeling, weaving, research institutions such as the Central Silk Board, IISc and NCBS — forms the local ground for the lab.

Approach

The lab’s practice works by making imperceptible biological phenomena sensory and experiential, treating biological phenomena not as metaphor but as design material. Earlier (Art)ScienceBLR projects in this vein include the petrichor/geosmin project at NCBS and Biodesign for the Real World, a collaboration with EPFL and Lifepatch.

The two research directions grew out of provocations from Kumar, a textile engineer, whose hand-drawn diagram and correspondence on static electricity in textiles seeded the project.

Research question

What are the living properties of biological fibres that we have not yet learned to design with?

Research Directions

Silk Origami

Directing silkworms to spin onto bioprinted scaffolds that encode folding geometry. The direction takes its provocation from deployable structures, such as solar panels that unfold in space: can a living spinner lay down a material that already knows how to fold?

Static Electricity as a Biological Phenomenon

Making the electroactive properties of silk and other biological fibres sensory and experiential — treating static charge not as a nuisance of textiles but as a living property of the material that can be sensed, heard and designed with.

Workshop

  • Duration: 10 days
  • Dates: last 10 days of November 2026
  • Participants: 10 — a diverse group of artists, designers, scientists and engineers
  • Venue: (Art)ScienceBLR, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru

Rough structure

  1. Ethics discussion
  2. Brainstorming
  3. Prototyping
  4. One-day mini exhibition

(Participant list, detailed schedule and documentation to be added.)

Travelling Resource Centre

The project includes a Travelling Resource Centre (TRC), shaped by a curators’ group. The Bangalore lab’s proposal for the TRC argues for physical artifacts rather than a purely online exhibition.

Proposed concept: The Unfinished Laboratory (“Tomorrow’s Laboratory”)

  • Tools travel between the labs.
  • Biological materials stay local, rooted in each bioregion.
  • Tools can be remixed across labs as they move.
  • The accompanying publication is a “laboratory manual of tomorrow.”

Common Grounds

The shared principles of the Elemental Imprints network.

Situated Relevance over Scale

We prioritise contextual relevance over growth or scalability. What matters is what resonates with those who live within the bioregion.

Design as Ethical Practice

Every design decision must serve a social, cultural, or ecological purpose. Saying no, embracing limits, and acknowledging failure are treated as active ethical tools of our project.

Non-Extractive Collaboration

The project does not take from communities; it enters into relationships based on agreement, mutual learning, co-design, and shared responsibility.

Collective Ownership & Shared Authorship

Outcomes are governed through community trusts, shared patents, and common traces, ensuring that benefits and recognition remain collectively held.

Process as Primary Outcome

We value process over product. Negotiations, failures, and adaptations are documented and treated as central to the project’s meaning.

Designing with Time

Rather than seeking permanence, we embrace change, decay, and afterlife, allowing designs to evolve, dissolve, or be repurposed.

Material-Led Thinking

Materials are not passive resources but active agents that shape imagination, ethics, and form. Their heterogeneity informs both design and ecological responsibility.

Bioregional Embeddedness

Knowledge flows through bodies, territories, languages, and stories. The project situates itself within living bioregional networks rather than abstract systems.

Knowledge Systems

Understanding emerges through making, sensing, and engaging. We aim to foster cross-disciplinary knowledge systems that remain open to re-articulation, empowerment, and future transferability.

Living Archives & Continuous Re-articulation

The website and documentation act as evolving ecosystems rather than static repositories, enabling representation, empowerment, and the ongoing redefinition of biodesign.

Bangalore Lab: Tentative Schedule

Venue: (Art)ScienceBLR, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru
Dates: last 10 days of November 2026 (tentative)

This schedule is a placeholder and will be filled in as the programme takes shape.

Day Date Focus Morning Afternoon
Day 1 21 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 2 22 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 3 23 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 4 24 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 5 25 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 6 26 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 7 27 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 8 28 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 9 29 Nov TBC TBC TBC
Day 10 30 Nov Mini exhibition (one day) TBC TBC

Links

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