Dominique Chen: Design Research of Human-Microbe Mutual Care

Dominique organizes Ferment Media Research, an interdisciplinary team seeking the possibility of fostering a relationship of mutual care with fermenting microbes, especially those dwelling inside a Nukadoko (Japanese pickles). In this talk, Dominique will present their current research activities, including the continuing research-through-design of the Nukabot (a nukadoko that translates the microbes’ status), microbial research on mutual transfer between human resident bacteria and the nukadoko’s flora, and (maybe) another research plan to realize “synlogue” with the microbes with the help of GPT-3 and other techniques.

※ Talks will be in Japanese, Q&A in English and Japanese

About Dominique Chen
Born in 1981 in Tokyo, a French citizen. B.A. from UCLA (Design/MediaArts), M.A. and Ph.D. from University of Tokyo iii (Information Studies). Currently Professor at Waseda University, School of Culture, Media and Society.
Dominique has been active in promoting the Creative Commons license in Japan since 2004. In 2008, he co-founded Dividual, an IT startup in Tokyo, where he has been developing numerous web services and smartphone apps, two of which were awarded Best of AppStore from Apple in both 2015 and 2016. He was also certified as a “Super Creator” by the Information-Technology Promotion Agency, Japan (2009).
Dominique is also an author of several books on Open Source and Free Culture, Neo-cybernetics, and Philosophy of Information, and has translated books on Positive Computing, Reality Mining, and Technological Singularity.

Organizer
Georg Tremmel