FLOATING KĪPUKA GROW KIT
by Corinne Takara
Corinne Okada Takara
Corinne Okada Takara is a Honolulu bioartist/STEAM educator who creates playful art/science workshops celebrating culture and creativity to empower community voices in conversations centered on sustainability and biotechnology. Her father introduced her to biology through hands-on making with natural materials, and storytelling with endemic, invasive, and canoe plants on Maui. That deep multifaceted biology engagement inspires her to connect science to place and community through food, playful making, cultural knowledge, and agricultural labor issues. She creates playful experiences and tools that value cultural storytelling and knowledge as we imagine equitable biotechnology futures.
Contact info
Email: corinne@okadadesign.com
The Floating Kīpuka project is a modular play platform for multidirectional knowledge sharing as we dream of equitable sustainable biofutures.
It aims to collaboratively expand our notions of what is science and who drives that dreaming. Using LEGOs, clay, and locally plant and biomaterials on an elevated platform for above and below build surface designing, the kit invites participants to bring their own knowledge to innovation conversations.
The custom assemblies, and custom-designed LEGO pieces bring ancestral and cultural knowledge and ethics directly into early bioengineering and sustainability design conversations. The Floating Kīpuka aims to empower more people to see themselves as co-shapers of biofutures. The resulting accessible play kit will be open source and shared via a website with downloadable activity cards and downloadable custom brick pieces.
Project website: https://www.floatingkipuka.com/
Instagram: @ginkgocreativeresidency
https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/2022/09/28/introducing-our-2022-creative-resident/
Images:
1. Floating Kīpuka Lego Table
2. Noche de los rábanos LEGOs: radish figures from la noche de los rábanos and mukimono carved radish
3. Aspergillus LEGO
4. Mini kokedama and bioplastics in clear lego board
5. ‘Ulu (protein rich breadfruit), Puakalaunu flowers used in leis, and roots
6. Floating Kīpuka design categories
