Research
KASK biolab contextualizes color in contemporary art and design questioning its related environmental issues. This proposal identifies the environmental impact of the color industry and envisions the shift towards a sustainable approach in color.
The Color Biolab project is funded by the Arts Research Fund of University College Ghent.
Ecology of color
KASK biolab contextualizes color in contemporary art and design questioning its related environmental issues. This proposal identifies the environmental impact of the color industry and envisions the shift towards a sustainable approach in color.
Current research is focused on finding alternative materials for the color industry, but does not question what color should be or how to interfere in production and application. Biolab approaches KASK as a living lab and introduces circular biobased economy systems by generating pigments from microalgae growing on KASK’s wastewater to initiate a sustainable internal color production. Once applied these living colors fade. Their characteristics will be explored through microalgae inkjet printing.
The second research line rethinks color generation structurally. Structural coloration produces color by microscopically structured surfaces in fine layers that interfere with light. Structural colors are responsible for iridescence. This research positions KASK as the first institution applying this technology in arts and design.
The Color Biolab project is funded by the Arts Research Fund of University College Ghent.
The Color Biolab
From 2016 to 2019, an initial research project was conducted at the lab focusing on new ways of creating colors: The Color Biolab. The Color Biolab was a transdisciplinary research project approaching the color field from different perspectives: from sustainable production and application to the use of color as a common language between art and science. This project aimed to reflect on the possibilities of new coloring sources, from traditional coloring to living organisms or waste and the implications involved.
Most of the work was developed in LABORATORIUM, the experimental lab for art/design and biotechnology at KASK. In LABORATORIUM, microorganisms were cultured, pigment extraction was performed and applied, and microbial visualization or chemical reactions were conducted. On this page, you can find a database of coloring materials used in the laboratory. To see the projects developed in this research, you can click [here](http://laboratorium.bio/projects.html).
Some of the results generated in this research were exhibited and presented in national and international conferences and art spaces. The knowledge that was generated was transferred via workshops, presentations, and seminars within and outside of the art academy. This project was led by María Boto and Kristel Peters, and it explored different approaches to the production and application of living, sustainable, and open colors at KASK/School of Arts-University College Ghent.
The Color Biolab project was funded by the Arts Research Fund of University College Ghent.