Last Friday, Patrick Stevenson-Keating, founder ofStudio PSK, came to PM Studio to discuss one of his latest projects; Parasitic Products. Studio PSK is made up of a small handful of people who, despite having had formal training, have decided to tread a their own path in the design world. The ethos of the Studio is that questions take you further than answers. They would prefer to design for debate rather than for production. They are more interested in designing for dreams, both good and bad, not hopes, and feel that design and technology has an amazing ability to transform myths into reality.

The Studio has worked on many projects, which try to push design to the limit. Many of Studio PSK’s Projects involve creating clean, simple and fascinating little objects as vessels for exploring topics as tricky as quantum physics and disposal of the dead. Examples of these include the Quantum Parallelograph, which stimulates the experience of users being able to glimpse into their “parallel lives”, a miniature particle accelerator, and a cloud seeding balloon, which turns peoples remains into rain. Many of the Studio’s projects mingle scientific processes with philosophical ideas.

Patrick told us that the seed of his Parasitic Products idea was sewn when pondering not only how people react with objects, but also how objects react with objects. There are observable tensions between connected objects, and Patrick wanted to explore these tensions in further detail, asking the question; ‘what does it mean to connect?’. Patrick’s line of enquiry brought him to biology and the study of natural ecologies. He saw a direct link between natural, biological relationships, and certain relationships between electronic devices. Patrick wanted to illustrate these ideas by designing a string of objects, whose functions are directly inspired by the behaviours of certain parasites. Parisitism is a striking ecological phenomenon, which is embedded in the heart of every ecological system. It is a phenomenon that has been around for hundreds of millions of years; even dinosaurs had their own parasites.

In order to explore this idea further, Patrick went to speak with Dr Colin Sutherland, leading parasitologist and Dr Gavin Broad, senior curator at the entomology department at the Natural History Museum. One question kept recurring in Patrick’s mind; ‘how does a species become parasitic?’ He found out that initially all organisms were free living, but that some became parasitic by accident – a chance discovery that living was made easier by taking life-sources from a bigger organism. The question then emerged; ‘how can I map these behaviours onto synthetic objects? Will electronic devices begin to develop more parasitic behaviours in the future? Will we see digital ecologies beginning to form?

There are so many fascinating parasites, from the Blue Jewelled Wasp (who effectively performs brain surgery on its host, the cockroach, effecting its motor control and riding it like a horse) to the Gondii parasite, (who tinkers with the notorious cat and mouse relationship, causing mice to actively seek cats out in order for the parasite to complete its life-cycle). It is true that many of us have quite a rose-tinted, heroic idea of what nature is, but violence, predation, and parasitism is actually integral to biology. Design mimicking biology is nothing new, and even the severest of nature’s parasitic traits have been imitated in some fashion in the design of computer viruses, such as the 70s’ infamous Creeper Virus. Patrick feels that ‘designing deviance’ provokes us to truly contemplate what design is for, and what it should/could be.

Radios have a parasitic past. In the 1930s, when radios were first domesticated, no one quite knew how to design them as objects in their own right. They would often enter homes hidden in armchairs, sideboards and drinks cabinets. It was almost as though radios were entering people's homes in disguise. Studio PSK designed three radios that work parasitically, taking their energy from other, larger objects. Each radio is designed to behave in a way which takes direct inspiration from a specific parasite; the Hookworm, the Gall Wasp and the Icheumon Wasp.

The Hookworm; 
Patrick alerted us to the invisible yet gigantic impact that parasites can have on ecologies. In the early 20th Century, the Rockefeller Foundation embarked upon a massive public-health campaign that radically changed the economic landscape of the Southern States of America. It had come to light that there had been a silent scurge of Hookworm, or Necator Americanus in America’s South-Eastern States, which had drained the population of not only its good health, but also its productivity and wealth, profoundly effecting the economy. (This is a brilliant example of how unaware we are of the affects of these kinds of organisms; we don’t see ourselves as a damageable ecology). Studio PSK designed a radio that saps power from a telephone, and, in the same way that a Hookworm blocks communication channels in its host’s immune system, this radio keeps the phone permanently engaged and jams wifi within a 10-meter radius.

The Knopper Gall Wasp;
This parasite takes advantage of its host, the acorn, by injecting chemicals and genetic information into the bud. It changes the fundamental structure of the nut, creating a hard, horned structure, which provides food and safety for its larvae. Studio PSK has created a little radio that uses a chemical reaction between zinc and copper to create electrical energy. The radio has two electrodes, which pierce into a carton of milk or juice, and inject a small amount of salt. This salt helps speed up a reaction, which creates electrical energy whilst changing the chemical structure of the milk or juice. When the electricity is produced, it charges an internal battery.

The Ichneumon Wasp;
Ichneumon wasps are often parasites of parasites. Studio PSK designed a radio that tricks an iPhone (a device which often takes its charge from larger devices, and so could be deemed to have parasitic tendancies) into thinking it is a genuine apple accessory and therefore allowing it to slowly drain all its charge.

As natural organisms evolved to depend on other, larger organisms, there is a possibility that we could see this kind of parasitism emerging as a digital phenomenon. Transmission may be something that people are increasingly looking to syphon off for their own benefit. This uninhibited exploration of design may well give us an insight into the future of technological evolution. You can find out more about Studio PSK’s thought provoking designs by visiting their website.

If you are interested in exploring the kind of questions surrounding material/digital culture that Studio PSK’s projects evoke, you may be interested in having a look REACT’s Objects Sandbox microsite. Objects Sandbox will see the emergence of six projects formed of collaborations between academics and creative practitioners, who will be exploring the theme of the Internet of Things.