Emi Kusano, Junichi Yamaoka: Instababy Generator

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Artist Statement:


    This artwork is an installation that expresses the future in which users can manufacture designer’s babies themselves. You can design, customize, buy and manufacture your baby with your favorite gene on your laptop.

    Today, with the spread of social media and e-commerce, it has become possible to purchase the products you love at a reasonable price instantly from all over the world. Furthermore, with the development of digital fabrication technology, the time will come for everyone to create custom-made products. This artwork is an installation that expresses the future in which users can manufacture designer’s babies themselves.

    Now that human genome editing is possible, we face the ethical dilemma of designer baby. Technology makes it possible to control children’s health status, IQ, appearance, and etc. This artwork is questioning the morality of people when designer baby technology become a more casual and fashionable trend.

    In this artwork, we conceptualize a society in which technologies such as digital fabrication, machine learning, biotechnology, and online shopping are highly developed.

    We want to give users an opportunity to rethink ethics by reimagining the world of technology acceleration.

    For that purpose, we developed a technology that expresses how the physical world and the virtual world switch. Furthermore, the image recognition technology is applied to incorporate expressions for designing fictional children.