Art Meets Agar: Karen Ingram Reimagines Biodesign
Karl Schmieder and Erum Azeez sit down with Karen Ingram, Creative Director & Designer at Karen Ingram & Associates, Inc. From her iconic Biogenetic Blooms—Petri dish paintings made with living yeast—to her innovative teaching with BioBuilder and playful experiments like Fallacy Bingo, Karen shows how science and creativity can merge to inspire broader engagement with biotechnology. She shares stories from the early Brooklyn biohacker days, reflects on teaching teenagers to think critically about designing life, and explains how art, games, and design can shape the future of the bioeconomy. This is where art truly meets agar—transforming living microbes into canvases and reimagining the possibilities of biodesign.
Chapters:
(00:00:00): Summer travel in the Hamptons.
(00:01:35): Sag Harbor’s Whaling History – The town’s past as a whaling hub using whale oil.
(00:02:31): From Bioeconomy to Petrochemicals – Petroleum discovery quickly ends whaling.
(00:03:59): The Basque Whalers – Early European whaling led by the Basques.
(00:04:54): Positive Whale News – Australia’s humpback whales are making a comeback.
(00:07:08): The Genetic Manual – Penn study finds 25% of young ICU patients have treatment-altering mutations.
(00:08:22): The Healthcare Gap – Why advanced health data isn’t used enough.
(00:11:08): The Wood Wide Web – Mapping underground mushroom networks that link ecosystems.
(00:14:11): Meet Karen Ingram.
(00:16:28): Karen’s Origin Story – Interest in tech and nature leads her to synthetic biology.
(00:17:58): Early Brooklyn Biotech – Founding Genspace and starting bio-art projects.
(00:19:51): Biogenetic Blooms – Karen paints flowers in Petri dishes with engineered yeast.
(00:24:19): Teaching BioBuilder – Co-authoring a book for teens on synbio and ethics.
(00:28:13): Designing for Accessibility – Making biotech exciting and easy to understand.
(00:29:44): Fallacy Bingo – Creating a game mixing nightlife with logical fallacies.
(00:36:31): Collab Futures – Building collaborations between scientists and creatives.
(00:38:28): Gaming in Science – Using games for emotional, memorable science communication.
(00:45:57): Biotech Collaborations – Karen’s stop-motion art with Triton Bio.
(00:48:50): A tool Karen can’t live without
(00:49:34): A SynBio project she’d revisit.
(00:49:51): Misconceptions about mixing art and science.
(00:50:12): Defining her true studio
(00:52:40): Super Convergence – Why merging disciplines matters.
(00:54:20): Endless Biotech Jobs – Encouragement for newcomers to explore creative biotech careers.
Episode Links:
Drivas lab demonstrates the benefit of genetic testing in critically ill adults
Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN)
BioFab Fair - Use promo code: GROW10 for a discount to attend!
