Wanderers is a collaborative project between Neri Oxman and the team at the Mediated Matter Group at MIT Media Lab with Christoph Bader and Dominik Kolb to realize four digitally grown and 3D printed wearables. The teams are working on a computational growth process which is capable of producing a wide variety of growing structures. Inspired by natural growth behavior, the computational process creates shapes that adapt to their environment. Starting with a seed, the process simulates growth by continuously expanding and refining its shape. The wearables are designed to interact with a specific environment characteristic of their destination and generate sufficient quantities of biomass, water, air and light necessary for sustaining life.
From this process four wearables were grown. All off the grown wearables in this collection designed by Prof. Neri Oxman aim to embed living matter within 3D structures. The first piece, Qamar, is inspired by one of the most luminous objects in the sky – this piece embodies the surface of the Moon. Akin to a wearable biodome, the exterior contains spatial spherical moon-shaped pods for algae-based air-purification and biofuel collection to produce and store oxygen.
Zuhal is created to adapt to the vortex storms on Saturn. It has a hairy and fiberous large surface area designed to contain bacteria that convert the planet’s hydrocarbons into edible matter for humans.
For survival on Mercury, Otaared creates a protective exoskeleton around the head that can be custom-fit to the wearer.
Finally, Mushtari, Arabic for huge or giant, is designed to interact with Jupiter’s atmosphere. This tortuous piece is designed as a single meandering strand inspired by the human gastrointestinal tract. It is a wearable that will consume and digest biomass, absorb nutrients, generate energy in the form of sucrose or fuel and expel waste.
all images © YORAM RESHEF, courtesy of NERI OXMAN – video courtesy of DESKRIPTIV