At the ISEA 2025 symposium in Seoul, Institute for Future Technologies (IFT), PhD candidate Vivien Roussel, presented Living Machine. This speculative installation merges biology, algorithmic design, and digital fabrication to question our relationship with production and living matter.
Positioned between biopunk and solar punk imaginaries, Living Machine invites a new kind of dialogue between humans, machines, and more-than-human life.
A hybrid research project at the crossroads of design, biology, and technology
Vivien Roussel is conducting his PhD research at De Vinci Higher Education Institute for Future Technologies within the doctoral school ED583.
His work is carried out in partnership with the design lab, Projekt, and the biology lab, UPR CHROME. Positioned at the intersection of computational design, biomaterials, and speculative thinking, his practice aims to question how artifacts can emerge through co-creation with biological processes. His project, Living Machine, embodies this vision.
Presented at ISEA 2025 in Seoul — the International Symposium on Electronic Art — this bio-cybernetic installation speculates on the future of production systems.
Rather than extracting from nature, what if we produced with and through it? What if we could partner with living organisms to fabricate our material world?
ISEA and the biohybrid approach: beyond biopunk or solarpunk
Since 1990, ISEA International has promoted exchange at the intersection of art, science, and technology.
As part of its 2025 edition in Seoul, Vivien Roussel, alongside Marc Teyssier, IFT Deputy Director, and Lucile Haute, presented the collaborative research work Cultivating Biohybrid Artifacts: Reinventing Production Between Biopunk and Solarpunk.
In this context, the Living Machine operates as a living installation. The project uses SCOBY — a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast — to grow bacterial cellulose inside a rotary bioreactor. Integrated sensors track the material’s micro-responses to external stimuli such as light, vibration, humidity, and temperature, as well as internal metabolic shifts.
What emerges is a self-fabricating system, both alive and computational, that reacts to its environment in ways suggesting non-human cognition.
Designing with evolution: algorithm meets biology
The structure of Living Machine is built on a 3D-printed base generated through an evolutionary algorithm. This scaffold is not just a passive support but a dynamic framework that allows bacterial cellulose to grow, adapt, and reshape the system itself.
By fusing digital fabrication with low-tech bio-processes, the project highlights an alternative model of design — one where materials, algorithms, and living systems co-author form and function.
Computational constraints and biological rhythms work together to produce a form that is both designed and grown.
This co-evolution between machine and organism creates a living artifact whose architecture changes over time in response to environmental conditions beyond the designer’s complete control.
Between discomfort and fascination: confronting the bio-aesthetic
The materiality of bacterial cellulose often elicits visceral responses, ranging from fascination to unease or deep curiosity. Its fleshy texture, translucent qualities, and ambiguous identity prompt viewers to reconsider what constitutes life, technology, or matter.
Rather than offering clear answers, Living Machine poses open questions: How can we relate to non-human intelligence? Can hybrid systems become allies in redefining sustainability? Are tools of control also tools of coexistence?
Vivien Roussel uses this living apparatus to challenge boundaries between art and science, human and machine, and organism and object. The installation serves as a political platform for rethinking our engagement with energy, materiality, and ecological futures.
A singular doctoral journey supported by ESILV
Developed within the research environment of the ESILV’s Institute for Future Technologies, Living Machine reflects the school’s commitment to fostering interdisciplinary exploration at the frontier of design, biology, and engineering.
Vivien Roussel’s work opens new avenues for critical engagement with technological systems — not as tools of domination but as potential ecosystems of negotiation, intelligence, and transformation.
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