Janès Zabukovec

Designer researcher based in Paris, Janès Zabukovec is passionate about new technologies related to digital and life sciences. He explores the regions of design alongside engineers, physicists, biologists and geeks to deal with the issue of new uses and emerging practices in our ever-changing society. His work seeks to deepen the relationship between design and science to think, script and prototype possible and desirable futures.

The coming decades will be marked by the advent of nanotechnology in our everyday life: nano-industries promise considerable advances and progress for humanity, but this is not without risks. Indeed, the fact that our health and well-being may be threatened suggests the worst scenarios; epidemics, contamination by water, etc. In this context, it becomes imperative to democratize the world of the infinitely small in order to better understand and interpret it. How can we then make the perception of the invisible accessible?

The microcosmos – not the last frontier but for most people just as vast and undiscovered. In an attempt to make the invisible life of micro-organisms more accessible, Janès installation Microrium, exhibited during the Dutch Design Week, offers the chance to observe and study micro-organisms from close by. Microrium is a biological interface to visualize the growth of microorganisms from a single drop of water. Many incredible beings find refuge there, live and seek to grow. The amoeba is perhaps the most remarkable of them; it’s characterized by a constant transformation of its unicellular body, thus taking a thousand and one faces. The aim here is to allow observers to decipher and follow the formal evolution of these amoebae. By changing the scale of scientific observation, Microrium facilitates access and shows what the microworld can reveal to us. As a tool for analysis and contemplation, this device proposes a new mode of interaction with microscopic beings. This project is thus an invitation to imagine new communication and communion media between the world of the very small and us: it becomes then possible to conceive potentials futures, in which biological devices such as this will have a place in our daily uses.