LabStudio: Interview, Fall 2010

The Fall 2010 Breadboard Residency is occupied by two members of LabStudio, Jenny Sabin and Andrew Lucia. Sabin+Jones was recently awarded a $2,000,000 National Science Foundation grant for their pioneering work, and Jenny Sabin was the recipient of a 2010 PEW Fellowship in the Arts. The LabStudio Project page is HERE. Below is the transcript of an interview with Jenny Sabin and Peter Lloyd Jones, co-founders and co-directors of LabStudio, including some images and a video documentation of their work.

Sabin+Jones LabStudio (Lucia)

Dan Schimmel: LabStudio is involved in the study of living cells, in particular the structural behavior/activity of cells as a function of  inherent (DNA) and environmental conditions. Are there specific types of cells you are studying and why?

Peter Lloyd Jones: Within my laboratory, we aim to understand how the immediate 3-D microenvironment that surrounds cells, particularly a structure called the extracellular matrix, controls the behavior of tissues during development and with disease. More specifically, we are determining how this matrix, which represents both a structural and informational entity, controls gene expression and tissue behavior in breast cancer, during blood vessel formation and with lung vascular disease. In a predominantly gene-centric world, the notion that structure can dominate over the behavior of genes still represents a radical departure from traditional thinking, yet much evidence over the past 40 years points to this very notion. For example, a recent study by Dr. Agne Taraseviciute, a former student in my group, showed that by simply changing a normal 3-D matrix into a tumor-associated matrix, normal human breast cells embedded within the latter will begin to make proteins that actually promote breast cancer. Furthermore, by blocking interactions between this altered tumor matrix, the “transformed” breast cells reverted to a normal mode of behavior. Structure is the message!

Sabin+Jones LabStudio (Sabin)

DS:  In LabStudio’s proposal you state: “Organic models…afford new modes for understanding issues of feedback, adaptation, growth and self-assembly as they negotiate truly dynamic environments with nonlinear responses.” What are the “organic models” you speak of and how do those models relate to the 3-D objects you will be fabricating at NextFab Studio? Is it your aim to fabricate scaled-up models of cellular structures (self-assemblies) that you observe in the lab?

Jenny Sabin: ‘Organic models’ refer to the abstracted set of rules and relationships that we extract from the biological systems of study. For example, we have modeled and mapped the quantifiable and spatial attributes of cellular and tissue contour information using mammary epithelial cells cultivated within a 3D normal or tumor-like microenvironment. Specifically, we were interested in studying morphogenesis and packing behavior as a response to alterations in tissue surface design. While this example is based on the mapping of a particular biological data set, the digital models featured additional abstractions in the form of 3D geometric filters or graph tools. The key here is that the data, the inherent relationships, are not undermined, but the way that we visualize it and ‘see’ is inhanced by computational tools and experimental visualizations. These virtual and physical abstractions, what I call ‘organic models’ are at once natural and artificial. We are interested in morphology and behavior, not a simple translation of shape. Behavior and relationships over mimetics is the key message here. ‘Organic models’ are an intermediate step, they allow us to translate across scales and work with other constraints that come into the mix, such as materiality, fabrication constraints, etc. So, no, our intent is NOT to simply scale up these cellular structures into fabricated architectural objects. We are interested in embedding biological behavior in other material scenarios. We like to describe this as ‘cellness’ or ’tissueness’ as opposed to ‘cell-like’ or ’tissue-like’. This is what we will be focusing on during the NextFab studio residency.

DS: You talk about “cellness” and “tissueness” and wanting to embed “biological behavior into material scenarios.” This makes me think of animating the inanimate. Ultimately you are talking about mechanical functionality as behavior as opposed to developing materials that behave organically, yes? Will the forms and models you fabricate at NextFab potentially lead to development of more versatile building block (i.e. building materials) in turn offering new material functionalities in architecture and design applications?

Frei Otto, Tents and Wells in the Sand

JS: When I write about ‘cellness’ or ’tissueness’ and ‘embedding biological behavior into material scenarios’ it doesn’t mean literal movement. The final fabricated products may actually be quite static. Consider Frei Otto‘s analogic models based on the behavior of soap bubbles and mounds of sand or the catenary experimental structures developed by Gaudi to understand the flow of forces through a material in tension and compression. He also studied models found in nature and imbued them with material properties. We have actually steered away from mechanical functionality in favor of passively responding materials and in some cases, static models. It’s about embedding biological relationships and morphology into material systems. Within the next few years we hope to be designing passively responding material systems at an architectural scale. These WILL be active and moving, but in response to macro-scale constraints such as heat and light. We have some more tests to do before we get to that point and our residency at NextFab will considerably propel some of our efforts on this front, especially in terms of abstraction and experimental design. The products that we will produce at NextFab will be a continuation of studies in generative fabrication and experimental material systems. This is very much process-based research. We don’t really know what the products will look like, but we do work w/ rigor at all scales. So yes, the forms and models that we will be making at NextFab have potential to become new building blocks toward the development of new building materials that are in turn more versatile and offer new functionalities in architecture and design. We are also keen on productive failures! They may not literally move, but they will be beautiful!

About the video below:
Coordinated endothelial cell networking, a component of angiogenesis, is required to form and refine the exquisite fractal network that emerges in the developing and mature lung to facilitate efficient gas exchange from birth onwards. This movie depicts real-time imaging of endothelial cells cultured within a specialized extracellular matrix (ECM) microenvironment, designated the basement membrane. The original data set has been filtered to extract relevant vector information so that further analysis and visualization may take place with custom-written and geometric digital tools. Original dataset courtesy of the Jones Lab, UPenn. Digital tools courtesy of Jenny Sabin and the Sabin+Jones LabStudio.