2017 CAST Symposium BEING MATERIAL: Manu Prakash, PROGRAMMABLE

Manu Prakash, Assistant Professor, Bioengineering, Stanford University. Prakash is a scientist and physicist working at the intersection of physical biology and computing. Manu also developed the Foldscope, a dollar microscope, and is a pioneer of the frugal science movement.

BEING MATERIAL:
In 1995, MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte predicted that “being digital” would have us entering a realm increasingly unconstrained by the materiality of the world. Two decades later, our everyday lives are indeed ever more suffused by computation and calculation. But unwieldy materiality persists and even reasserts itself. Programmable matter, self-assembling structures, 3D/4D printing, wearable technologies and bio-inspired design today capture the attention of engineers, scientists and artists. “BEING MATERIAL” showcased recent developments in materials systems and design, placing this work in dialogue with kindred and contrasting philosophy, art practice and critique. Panels on the PROGRAMMABLE, WEARABLE, LIVABLE and INVISIBLE—along with a concert, AUDIBLE—explored new and unexpected meetings of the digital and material worlds.

PROGRAMMABLE:
To program something is to impart a set of executable instructions into a medium to perform that process. From Ada Lovelace’s first hand-written program to today’s algorithmically animated robots, clothing, and living material, programmability has expanded its purview to embrace everything from the digital to the physical, from the synthetic to the biological, and from the scientific to the artistic. How have ideas about creativity, craft, and matter transformed in the process? What novel science and art emerges when material becomes programmable?

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