The London Lounge

Gents,

I don't recall seeing this mentioned previously here, but I've just become aware of the work of Oran Catts and SymbioticA, including the Tissue Culture and Art Project. Catts describes himself as a "tissue engineering artist" who has been a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School's Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Laboratory and now works at the University of Western Australia. The Tissue Culture and Art Project's web site is at http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/index.html.

One of their projects was the making of this tiny "victimless leather" coat grown from immortalized mouse stem cells. The project's aims are discussed here.



The potential implications of such things are staggering. Clearly such a coat could fit like a second skin. But, one asks, can they do a glen check with a lilac overplaid?

Doesn'it it bear a striking resemblance to Goethe's Homunculus? I somehow expect the phial to start floating about

Indeed it does. The potential of this kind of technology for regenerative skin "grafts" to make seamless repairs of defects due to skin cancer, burns, explosion trauma, and the like is gratifying, but for clothes I'm quite happy to stick to wool, cotton, linen, and such. Although I have considered pacts with the devil to get access to shoes narrow enough for me. . . .