Manipulating the Living?
In this interview, the Cellular biologist François Képès calls for us to move beyond Manichean discourses in the debate around the manipulation of the living by making the question of use our main priority.
François Képès
François Képès is a cellular biologist and research director at the Institute of Systems Biology and Synthesis at Genopole d'Evry. His aim is to better understand the functioning of living systems, especially micro-organisms (bacteria or yeasts), and to influence their genome in order to call them a function. He is the author of many popular works, including Synthetic Biology, stronger than nature? (La Biologie de synthèse, plus forte que la nature ?).
Manipulating the Living?
Learning lessons from acknowledging the living presupposes a better knowledge of it. Cellular biologist François Képès emphasizes that the living is certainly characterized by evolution—permitting adaptation—metabolic functioning—the ability to transform incoming resources into differentiated products—but also by the capacity to mobilize local concentrations so as to optimize reactions. He distinguishes systems biology, which analyzes and explains, from synthetic biology which uses this understanding to act upon the living. Adding new molecules to traditional products of the living so as to compensate for the non-renewability of environmental resources, seems to him, despite a certain lack of understanding, to represent major progress. It is not a question of wanting to control the living, but rather one of domestication and negotiation, based on cooperation and care rather than domination. In this way, Képès calls for us to move beyond Manichean discourses in the debate around the manipulation of the living by making the question of use our main priority.
Talking Data
Caroline Goulard is a data journalist and co-founder of Dataveyes. She turns collected data into digital experiences to make it more understandable for everyone. Thanks to new ways of visualization, it is now possible to understand a population’s needs and to develop services that anticipate new uses.
AI doesn’t replace architects but supports them
Researcher and data scientist Stanislas Chaillou investigates how AI can enable architects to support and enhance their practice. A small sampler of a new book published by Éditions du Moniteur in March 2021.
Co-creating a learning society
François Taddei is a geneticist and co-founder, with Ariel Lindner, of the Learning Planet Institute (formerly known as CRI). Conceived as a school for the 21st century, the institute combines artificial intelligence and collective intelligence to reinvent ways of learning, teaching and doing research.
AI facing complex urban environments
Hubert Beroche is the founder of the Urban AI think tank, dedicated to the field of urban artificial intelligence. He is the curator of the Eyes on the street lecture series, run together in partnership with the SCAI (Sorbonne Center for Artifical Intelligence), and explains here how urban AI can help us understand the city.
Complexity, multiplicity, and adapatation within ecosystems
Contemporary architectural research is often fascinated by biological life but with an approach that goes beyond simple organic metaphors thanks to recent technological developments. Alisa Andrasek discusses the link between biology and her architectural practice, and her interest in the distribution of information in natural processes—a complexity that she tries to approach via big data. Her work in computational design is influenced by the convergence between information and materials, in an increasingly complex and open synthesis which enables it to go beyond the production of form and address the dynamic processes of matter itself. Alisa Andrasek is an architect, director and founder of the Biothing laboratory. She teaches at the Architectural Association of London.
Modeling the City Using Proteins
Researcher Claire Lesieur works at the CNRS Ampère Laboratory on the Go Pro project, which applies a computational model developed for protein folding to urban environments. The shape-changing properties of proteins are put to use in an attempt to map out the opportunities for urban growth that don’t involve urban sprawl.
Demystifying and Repoliticizing Urban Data
In the face of the promises of the prophets of artificial intelligence and the marketing of those major economic players promoting the smart city as a solution to urban ills, Jérôme Denis and David Pontille remind us of the irreducible materiality and fragility of cities. Demystifying what they perceive as a form of “neopositivism” of data, they point out that data doesn’t exist per se, and in fact must be generated and then maintained at a significant cost. As a result, data is never neutral and takes on a fundamentally political dimension. Understanding this framework leads them to promote a paradigm of maintenance and fragility, instead of the more common one of sustainability and resilience, when approaching urban realities.
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