In its early stages the ongoing project BIOmatters asked key questions of - Will manipulating bacteria become a new way of crafting and producing textiles in 2050+? Can bacteria be programmed to grow pre-embellished/printed materials? At the beginning the project comprised of a series of speculative works in the form of samples and photographic fictions, all part of a hypothetical Biotextile lab where a textile designer of the future is at work. The fictional photographs are a two-part series, the first series comprises a future textile designer working in a hybrid environment. The images present a workspace that is somewhere between lab and design studio, where the subject engages with reviewing, testing and draping biomaterials. The lab is developing materials for the fashion and textile industry through the reprogramming of bacteria utilising synthetic biology as a living technology to reprogramme the bacteria to produced pre-embellished and pre-dyed biomaterials in engineered patterns.

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