IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, the new free exhibition at Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, will explore why the disastrous can be devilishly entertaining, and whether there’s any truth to these dismal predictions. Join doomers, designers, and doctors as they lay out the top threats to our world, evaluate how likely they are, and spell out exactly what we can do about it. As part of this exhibition, scientists and engineers from iCRAG have collaborated with Jenny Lee, an American ‘Material Activist', to create an exhibit on biomining. Jenny uses materiality and design as a tool to provoke meaningful public engagement in questioning mankind’s role in the preservation of our future environments. The iCRAG researchers involved were Dr Anthea Lacchia, Tadhg Dornan, Alex Russell, Dr Roisin Kyne, Laura Berdi, Aileen Doran, Dr Fergus McAuliffe and Dr Siobhan Power of the Geological Survey of Ireland.
With depleting resources, we are facing critical challenges in how we continue to meet the growing needs of society. The mining industry has provided the fundamental building blocks for human development. The supply of metal and mineral products has underpinned human endeavour through millennia. They are key to all services and infrastructure from shelter to food, transportation to construction, manufacturing, entertainment, the arts, and the vast range of associated consumer goods and services.
Biomining is an innovative extraction method using microbiology technology to obtain desired minerals from ores. Micro-organisms are used to leach out minerals which is less damaging to the environment unlike traditional methods which rely on extreme heat or toxic chemicals. Nature has crafted its own systems for fabrication, manufacture and recycling. It has evolved, adapted, and perfected its systems over time, to create a sustainable closed loop system.
The project envisages a future where our basic material requirements become scarce. In order for mankind to continue, they must not only embrace natures living system to support their way of living but question how each precious material is utilised - should we for example use gold for body adornment or for cancer detection? Set in a future scenario where man’s role is to nurture nature. Low-tech living systems are devised for future mining practices.
Launching today, October 12th, the exhibition runs until February 4th 2018 in the Science Gallery Dublin.