Some people have been wondering what the difference between biopunk and steampunk and what Biopunk Fashion would look like. It seems that, no matter how you decide, the future of man is not human at all. Science fiction talks a lot about cyborgs and transhumanism and the innumerable ways in which people transform themselves with machines. These are the concepts that will be launched on the upcoming Hybrid Skin, which will be inaugurated this week in the Netherlands. The exhibition presents a series of projects by futuristic designers who have expressed this ‘biopunk’ ideology through fashion.
It is scary and it comes from someone who deals with things like the third ear, the bodies of spaceships and the transfer of the mind to earn a living. But as the areas of biopunk and genetics progress, creative methods to shape the body do the same, creating a “biopunk” movement – a do-it-yourself philosophy that we do with our genetics and our bodies.
Real Biopunk Fashion
Because the line between biopunk and steampunk is so thin, it’s hard to really distinguish between biopunk fashion and dressing up in metal random gears. There is a difference though. So you might be wondering, do I need to dress up in plants or biological material for it to be biopunk fashion? The answer might surprise you.
Hybrid skin certainly takes a page of biopunk ethics. This is to solve the ethical problems that inevitably arise when you start talking about tinkering with the building blocks of life. “Are your body and your genetic code the property that you can copy, remix and destroy?” the exhibition asks. “Is the biological material of an innocent laboratory used, because no human or animal is dead, or does it have its own memory and its own life?” Can we change nature into the vagaries of fashion? ”
More biopunk fashion examples and definitions
The depicted projects question all boundaries of the human body. For example, a designer has created a ‘bulletproof vest’ by strengthening the human skin with spider silk, even more, resistant than steel. The vest was made by implanting transgenic spider silk into the human skin. Another piece, called “Like Living Organisms”, is a techno-skin color (yes, a dress that resembles a skin) that moves and breathes as if it were alive. It is designed to express the excitement sometimes felt by two people when they meet for the first time. You can see what looks like an impulse through the veins of the dress that accelerates when it is exciting.
“The tension is increasing, the closer the viewer gets to his work, the faster he can beat,” says the Vimeo page of the project. “The neck, a sensual part of the body, is hidden until someone dares to come into contact, then the suit relaxes and shows him his vulnerable side.”
A short film presented at the exhibition, entitled “Make Your Maker”, takes biological transhumanism so far, people become essentially laboratory rats. The film offers a future in which genetic manipulation and cloning are not only common, but clones are then consumed by others so that people can absorb their sensory effects and become super observers.
Biopunk Fashion Conclusion
The book is well-written, entertaining and somewhat revealing that Sterling’s assertion that a biopunk scene has become a reality, 30 years ago, there was a parallel development of computational biopunk fashion and a critical moment in bioengineering. But Biopunk has a broad blind spot and it is his ignorance about the discursive framework in which biopunk fashion functions as a cultural formation. In order to capture the equation with fashion, the book would have gained a great deal by recognizing the cultural discourse that the social perception of do-it-yourself fashion has formed and continues to form. This blind spot has yet to be corrected.
