GENETICS GYM

GENETICS GYM is a speculative design project investigating how biotechnology and digital media co-produce new ideals of beauty, identity, and bodily optimisation.

Framed through fashion theory and critical design, the project equates ‘genetic strength’ with the ability to train machines to perceive attractiveness online, presenting five fictional body-customisation brands as provocations. Developed during the 2016 Designer in Residence appointment at the Fashion Space Gallery at London College of Fashion (UAL), the work examines how digital media reshapes the body silhouette, shifting the act of 'fashioning' the body into new, algorithmically governed terrains.

Created in collaboration with UCL’s Human Genetics and Embryology department, London College of Fashion’s Digital Anthropology Lab, and the Applied Psychology in Fashion department, the project comprises five fictional sub-brands that propose speculative regimes for enhancement. These include CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing and epigenetic interventions offering a customisable ‘menu’ of traits—from eye shape to muscle gain—prompting reflection on how ‘genetic strength’ is defined through algorithmic legibility and digital desirability.

Following its initial exhibition, the project expanded into a wider programme of international exhibitions, interdisciplinary collaborations, and ongoing research exploring how biotechnology, media infrastructures, and identity intersect in both speculative and applied design contexts. It critiques how algorithms are trained to recognise and reproduce culturally biased ideals of beauty, and the consequences of encoding these into our biological futures. Through sculptural installation, video, graphic illustrations, research documents, and a techno-soundtrack, GENETICS GYM presents a critical, unsettling vision of a future in which fashioned bodies are curated, commodified, and computationally scored.

Keywords - Artificial Intelligence, Bioethics, Computer Science, Consumer Psychology, CRISPR-Cas9, Cultural Analytics, Fashion Futures, Fashion Identity, Fashion Silhouette, Fine Art, Genetics, Identity Systems, Modifiable Bodies, New Media, Ontologies, Post-Humanism, Sculpture, Web3

GENETICS GYM – BRAIN-BODY-SOCIETY
The initial sketch investigates how cognition of beauty or appeal can be understood as a system of mathematics, semiotics, and signals, mediated through neurobiological responses and their connection to subjectivity and bodily adaptation.

Digitally-drawn giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag,
London 2016,
80 × 120 cm. Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM – INSTALLATION
Video Still

Over a 10-minute cycle, the five characters stand side by side, blinking, breathing, and twitching to a bespoke techno soundtrack. Every two minutes, the soundtrack morphs, with each character evolving into a new ideological representation of beauty or aspiration—what the project terms "brands"—offering a shifting matrix of speculative identities driven by consumption logic and aesthetic ideology.

Digitally-modified video portrait, prosthetics and makeup, digital video projection, 4K, 10 mins, London 2017, 700 × 250 cm, Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM –BODY SCANNING WITH FACIAL TRACKING: CHARACTER FIVE

To develop the aesthetic, each character was tested using scanning technologies.

Digital image (video still, London 2017, Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM – INSTALLATION
Video Still

Visitors stand before five projected bodies—each blinking, breathing, and subtly moving. Filmed at full human scale in 4K and looking directly into the camera, the figures invite the viewer into a moment of intimate, critical reflection. By meeting their gaze, the viewer is prompted to consider how technology is shaping aspiration, identity, and who we are being conditioned to become.

Digitally-modified video portrait, prosthetics and makeup, digital video projection, 4K, 10 mins, London 2017, 700 × 250 cm, Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM – BRAND QUADRANT

In critiquing branding and its ideological function, GENETICS GYM borrows the quadrant model commonly used in market research to map and study competing brands. This framework is reimagined to construct five fictional body-customisation brands, each embodying a distinct ideological representation of self. Within this system, characters edit themselves according to the traits offered by each brand, satirising fashion marketing’s role in selling aspirational, optimised identities. The quadrant is structured along two axes: ‘self-centred’ to ‘community-centred’, and ‘visionary’ to ‘populist’. These axes reflect broader tensions between sustainable responsibility and mass consumption, between radical innovation and cultural conformity. The fictional brands shift and fluctuate, but remain positioned in relation to one another, forming a speculative landscape of identity production in an age of identity optimisation.

GENETICS GYM – CHARACTER ONE / FIVE BRANDS
Composite Video Still

Five brands applied to each character:
Brand 1 – Unsustainable Luxury ‘Self-Centred Populist’
Brand 2 – Punk ‘Manifesto-Visionaire’
Brand 3 – Beautiful Yet Vapid ‘No-Substance-Visionaire’
Brand 4 – Mainstream ‘Basic-Pleaser’
Brand 5 – Community-Focused ‘Communo-Consumer’

Digitally-modified video portrait, prosthetics and makeup, digital video projection, 4K, 10 mins, London 2017, 700 × 250 cm, Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM – BRAIN-BODY-SOCIETY, CHARACTER TWO

Building on earlier Brain–Body–Society sketches, each character is accompanied by an illustration mapping their body, brain, and cultural coding onto an architectural–mechanical system. These hybrid diagrams explore how identity can be visualised as an engineered interface between physiology, cognition, and social ideology. For Character Two, this system is further developed into a three-dimensional volume, abstracted into a sculptural form.

Digitally-drawn giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, London 2017, 80 × 120 cm, Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM –BRAND 3 - NO SUBSTANCE VISIONAIRE

Character One, Two, Three (top) and Character Three, Four, Five (bottom) - GIF excerpt

Digitally-modified video portrait, prosthetics and makeup, digital video projection, 4K, 10 mins, London 2017, 700 × 250 cm, Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM – BODY STRATEGY Research Document Installation

Research document explaining the rationale behind the body silhouette forms. The document maps five characters—each with distinct genetic conditions, including body types, gender expressions, sexualities, ethnicities, personalities, and embodied tensions- and combines them with five branded consumption ideologies. The five characters, combined with five ideologies, produce a matrix of twenty-five unique body-morphed portraits, visualising how identity might be shaped under different ideological conditions.


A1 printed research document on custom Perspex stand, London 2017, Edition 1/100

GENETICS GYM – MENU

The document features a genetic ‘menu’ of 23 offerings, used to construct the speculative body-morphs. Developed in collaboration with researchers from the UCL Institute for Women’s Health and the MSc Reproductive Science and Women’s Health programme at UCL, the menu operates on a sliding scale of scientific feasibility. Each item was cross-referenced against published scientific literature and assigned a feasibility rating from 0 to 5, ranging from 0 (scientifically implausible or “bonkers”) to 5 (plausible according to current research and achievable using existing technologies such as CRISPR or epigenetic editing). This calibrated approach maintains a level of scientific rigour while allowing space to explore visually poetic and conceptually arresting body silhouettes, using the wits of speculative design. In the top-right corner, a pair of cherries references a retro milkshake diner menu, satirising the ease with which consumers are invited to ‘select’ enhancements, highlighting the unsettling possibility of altering one’s body or cognitive disposition with the same casualness as choosing an ice cream. At the bottom-right of the menu, a discreet tag reads “! WARNING: RISK OF DEATH”—a dark reminder that such choices, while aestheticised, carry profound ethical, biological, and psychological implications.

GENETICS GYM – BODY STRATEGY DETAIL

The genetic ingredient list is mapped across all 25 body portraits, showing which components are applied to each form. Each body is assigned a scientific feasibility score, calculated as a composite of the genetic modifications required to produce each body. Behind the grid, a contour map generates a topographical landscape of feasibility: elevated regions indicate bodies that lie beyond current scientific reach, while lower areas correspond to those that could feasibly be edited today. Even at level 5, such modifications are often constrained by legal and ethical frameworks that vary across national and cultural contexts. This layered visualisation invites viewers to critically navigate a speculative body terrain, defined by the interplay between scientific possibility, political permissibility, and cultural desirability.

GENETICS GYM – THEORETICAL CONTEXT
Research Document Installation 

A second research document outlines five key drivers that define the theoretical scope of project: Genetic Tech Development, Photographic Tech Development, Shift in Media and Human Interaction, Shift in Public Anxiety, and Perception of Disability (1975–2045). Together, these drivers establish the socio-technical foundations for the emergence of a speculative Genetics Gym—proposing that such a product is not as far-fetched as it may initially appear. By tracing convergences across biotechnology, representation, and cultural anxiety, the study positions the Genetics Gym as a plausible, if provocative, response to current trajectories in optimisation culture and identity engineering.

A1 printed research document on custom Perspex stand, London 2016, Edition 1/100

GENETICS GYM – BRAIN-BODY-SOCIETY CHARACTER FIVE

For Character Five, the Brain–Body–Society system is extended into a three-dimensional volume and abstracted into a sculptural form—translating their internal logic into a material artefact that imagines an architecture for the complex mechanisms embedded within the cognition of appeal. 

Digitally-drawn giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag
London 2017, 80 × 120 cm, Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM – CHARACTER FIVE
Brand 3: Manifesto-Visionaire - GIF excerpt
Beauty isn’t solely about appearance; it also pertains to how you perceive the world and express your thoughts about it. For Character Five, under the Manifesto Visionaire brand, the body modulates genes linked to synaesthetic expression (scientific plausibility: 3.5/5), allowing the character to experience the world through altered sensory perception. In this context, beauty becomes a coping mechanism—a way of shaping one’s embodied perception of reality to better support mental and emotional wellbeing in a society of constant optimisation.

Digitally manipulated video portrait, prosthetics and makeup, digital video projection, 4K, 10 mins, London 2017, 700 × 250 cm. Edition 1/1

GENETICS GYM - FURTHER DETAIL

As part of the research phase, a public programme entitled Designing Sex was conceived, curated, and led as an interdisciplinary research residency at London College of Fashion. This included a symposium that brought together experts across genetics, public health, speculative design, plastic surgery, and digital culture to collaboratively imagine how cultural attitudes, digital aesthetics, and emerging biotechnologies might converge into future identity products. Contributors included Prof. Joyce Harper and Dr Helen C. O’Neill (UCL), Dr Agi Haines (CogNovo Lab at Plymouth University), Duncan Stephenson (Royal Society for Public Health), Dr Barry M. Jones (Royal College of Surgeons), and Henrique Mathias (Feeld). The event staged a post-disciplinary dialogue around beauty, body image, synthetic biology, and algorithmic desirability, raising urgent questions around reproductive ethics, gene editing, digital dating, and cultural aesthetics.

Following the symposium, a Speculative Body Workshop invited selected students from LCF and UCL, across fashion, psychology, and genetics, to explore self-redesign through speculative prototyping. Ideas generated, ranging from neotenic body edits to visual synaesthesia and golden-ratio-driven biometrics, informed the development of the five characters within The Genetics Gym. The workshop also surfaced disturbing continuities between contemporary optimisation cultures and early eugenicist aesthetics, reinforcing the need for critical frameworks in the face of accelerating biotechnologies.

GENETICS GYM has been recognised internationally for its critical engagement with genetic technologies, identity politics, and speculative design. Cited in public debates on CRISPR ethics and featured in the BBC iPlayer documentary DNA + Beauty, the project has contributed to broader cultural conversations on algorithmic bias, bodily autonomy, and the aesthetics of enhancement in the context of emerging genetic and artificial intelligence technologies. Its nomination for the S+T+ARTS Prize by Ars Electronica in Austria led to a series of international exhibitions and public programmes, including presentations at Science Gallery Melbourne, Dublin, and Monterrey, each accompanied by talks, symposia, and interdisciplinary panels.

The project has informed institutional research at UCL and UAL, shaped the thematic and conceptual foundation of the PERFECTION / SPECULATION residency at PRAKSIS Oslo, and continues to be referenced as a model for socially engaged, speculative approaches to biotechnological futures. It has been exhibited at Fashion Clash Festival in Maastricht, presented as the opening keynote at Product Innovation Apparel in Milan, developed into speculative body workshops for the MA Fashion programme at the Royal College of Art, and informed future-facing curricula within the MA Fashion Futures course at London College of Fashion (UAL), where it shaped the Speculative Prototyping unit. It also informed teaching at the School of International Art in Beijing for the course Future of Fashion, Identity and the Metaverse. Its research was published by Bloomsbury in Crafting Anatomies: Archives, Dialogues, Fabrications, where it anchors a chapter on speculative design and the politics of bodily modification. It is regularly cited as a benchmark for post-disciplinary, socially engaged approaches to design, media, and biotechnology, particularly in the context of aesthetically led biofutures.