OUR MISSION
Living Records is a speculative project addressing gaps in history stored through technology, memory, or legacy. Through our research in the lab, we contend with what is remembered, and what is forgotten. What echoes throughout history, such as the words of a President inspiring us to go to the moon, and what slips away, like the efforts of the underrepresented people who made that journey possible.
We propose a series of biologically fabricated records that highlight the impermanence of data technology and center histories that are forgotten or actively erased: a bacterial cellulose cassette tape, a biofabricated core rope memory circuit, and an oral history preserved through its audience. Living Records help us understand the unspoken labour that promotes human progress as well as the efforts that we, as fellow organisms on earth, must take to resist being forgotten.
As our technology decays, our values and stories don’t have to. Living Records acknowledges how human progress is directed by our stories and those who write them. Bringing forth the question: What will you do to hold these records?
Our Team
Bibliography/Dedications
01 BIOFABRICATED MAGNETIC CASSETTE TAPE
Our first record is a cassette tape made out of bacterial cellulose. We recorded John F. Kennedy’s iconic Rice University speech in favor of the Apollo 11 mission. The speech was about how getting to the moon was a marker of human progress and technological advancement. This can be considered as a developed understanding of non-human worlds, the worlds beyond our planet, and beyond ourselves.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because it is easy but because it is hard”
We were drawn to the urgency for needed progress regardless of the ease or obstacles. Working from a moment in history that has been preserved in legacy via oral traditions, we recon with ways to preserve history and memory.
Our Process:
The tape in the cassette is made of bacterial cellulose created by K. hansenii. Bacterial cellulose, when placed in a liquid media, produces a buoyant structure that floats at the top of the liquid surface. To create a thin, even layer of cellulose, we used silicone tubing, a permeable material that allows the K. hansenii to find the ‘surface’ of the liquid as the walls of the tubing itself.
We have given our cassette tape hard magnetic properties. Meaning, it can retain its magnetism in the absence of an applied magnetic field. This is essential for encoding data that can be read back.
We treated our very thin layer of cellulose with 2% glycerol to make it more pliable and durable. We are also able to adhere Fe3O4 iron oxide particles to the tape when they are applied subsequently.
Then the tape is dried, cut into strips and wound into a cassette capable of holding memories.
Now that we hold the inspiration that pushed us to reach for the moon, what does it mean to hold information and preserve that progress, that history? How can we further reinterpret old technology to make information storage more tangible? Who holds our memory?