BIODESIGNED
Biodesigned is an independent, not-for-profit online publication produced by Biodesign Challenge. The publication is a vessel for ideas and experiments that demonstrate the interconnectedness of life.
Daniel Grushkin (Editor in Chief), Alex Kisielewski (Managing Editor), Emma Hill (Editorial Assistant)
Art Direction & Design
Pearlyn Lii
Within a few short months the world has fixated on one thing: a virus. Covid is not only infecting our bodies, but also our minds and culture. In our inaugural issue, we offer another lens through which to view life during a pandemic.
Bodies—the fate imposed on them by culture is often far more insidious than the fate imposed by biology. In this issue, essayists search for the integrity of bodies in a culture that seeks to control them.
Purity and impurity, clean and dirty, good and bad—language fails when it lures us into binaries. Essayists here acknowledge contamination as the default, and in every case, that one insight remakes the world. Illustration by Pedro Lavin.
This issue is written in code (English) on a platform of code (0,1) about code (A, T, C, G). Meaning is mediated through multiple layers—yet when meaning appears, code seemingly vanishes. In these essays, code becomes a locus of discrimination, irretrievability, and discovery where culture and biology lock horns.
The love explored here isn’t purely human; it’s a search and a recognition, a curse and a cure. And for all you lonelyhearts, it’s ubiquitous.