Ginger Lin

Ginger Lin has always been interested in experimenting with the possibilities of different materials and texture. By implementing them in her design work and developing into her design method, she believes that from the subtle tactile of those materials, we can explore another dimension of the products. Although most of Ginger’s work takes time and handcraft to manufacture, she believes that the slow process makes a product alive and connects these natural resources with the human-being.

Pressure from ethical, intellectual and regulatory institutions warn us about the fragility of nature and about the responsibility we have to preserve it for future generations. Therefore, designers today look at their methods and goals with urgency in trying to address the degradation of our environment and turn to biologists for their expertise and guidance.

Ginger Lin’s project for the Talent Pressure Cooker of 2017, ALGAEplex, is an ongoing research all about the hidden potential of Taiwan’s seaweed population. Different textures, different sizes, different colours are what fascinate the designer who wants to introduce you to the unpredictable possibilities to change the conventional image of algae. The project wants to change the general idea of algae as simple living organism into something different than their conventional image and experiments with methodologies belonging to the field of biology and design processes. Fascinated by the colours, but also the algae’s range in size from which they could be made into different textures, this project seeks to create a variety of materials together with substrates such as fibres or agar. Let’s start to ask what the world would look like if we could create these hybridized raw materials for the use in practical applications such as art, fashion design or food? Can they help the industry to adjust to a world of dwindling resources? The unpredicted outcomes made from such materials could help us to image the near future thanks to the designer’s view aligning with developments in the fields of design and biology.