During the London Design Festival an exhibition entitled Further Instructions showcased new work by Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen; two designers with an interest in where synthetic biology and nano technology meets design and speculation.
The show featured two new projects, Genetic Heirloom and Pigeon D'Or and were funded with the help of the Wellcome Trust Arts Fund and the Flemish authorities. Both exhibitions reflect an approach to design that goes further than the artefacts on display and propose fragments of a future, which, although fictional, are not far-fetched. Genetic Heirloom explores the use of tumour targeting nano-gold particles as hypothetical family heirlooms and Pigeon D'Or proposes the use of feral pigeons and synthetic biology for aesthetic interventions in urban metabolisms.