I am a multidisciplinary designer from England, France, and Greece, working at the intersection of social anthropology, environmental circularity, and design.
Game of Clones Sept/Dec 2021 / Episode I
Research / Spatial / Graphic Design
Game of Clones is an investigation conducted by Orchida Ahmed, Juana Mom and myself, Francesca Norrington in the Luxury Spatial Design Studio at ie university with Professor Igor Bragado.
Game of Clones is a two-part spatial design project. In the first part, or as we like to call it, ‘Episode I’, we carried out a journalistic approach to explore all there is to know about cloning today. After intensive research and exploring multiple existing spaces, such as a laboratory, yoga studio, and horse barn, we visualized today's cloning context on an A0 poster. In the second part, ‘Episode II’ we developed a thesis based on the primary and secondary research we carried out in ‘Episode I’. We then proposed space in Madrid as a solution for the investigated conflict.
Episode I
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We stumbled upon the heartbreaking case of suicide of a 28-year-old female named Miya Must, the daughter of a famous photographer known as Monni Must. Miya was the inspiration behind the first part of this project. After the daughter’s painful passing, the mother, Monni, decided to clone late Miya’s dog, Billy.
“Billy is a unique dog,” Must explains. “Having Billy is like having part of Miya. I knew that if I lost Billy, it would be like losing Miya again. That would be devastating to me.”
The cloning process gave birth to Gunni, a clone of 15-year-old Billy. This meant that Monni now had a perfect replica of the dog who has been a loyal and loving companion for more than a decade, it also meant that she now had an extra piece of her late daughter, Miya.
Kacee Must, Miya’s sister, also suffered very greatly from the loss. However, the trauma has led her to become an advocate for mental health. She opened up a yoga studio known as Citizen Yoga. This studio has allowed her to seek answers and purpose to help her heal from her sister’s painful passing.
We investigated the step-by-step process of cloning, examining the current companies that provide this service, a variety of their clients, procedures and prices. The process of this project was to dive into the inner workings of this complex and conflicting industry. It is very prominent in our world yet remains slightly under the radar, we uncovered some of the current case studies.
Through research, we found out that people clone their horses to “replicate their successes” as highlighted by Crestview Genetics, the cloning company in Argentina. We then landed upon the extremely interesting case of Adolfo Cambiaso.
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Cambiaso is an Argentinian polo player, he was the first-ever high-level player to introduce the notion of cloned horses in the game. After his huge successes in polo thanks to his gifted horse, Cambiaso decided to make 6 clones of this horse to replicate his success.
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The story gets more interesting. Alan Meeker, Adolfo’s partner, secretly used the gifted horse’s genetic information to produce and sell more clones to other buyers without Adolfo’s authorization, which led to Adolfo suing him. However, since cloning is a brand new service today, there are still no laws set in stone for it.
We were curious to understand where the public stands on the matter, is this process ethical? We used multiple research methods to collect perspectives on the topic of cloning to advance the next phase of our project in Episode II.
The most interesting opinion we found was from someone who was in favour of cloning to restore the diversity of races, such as the Yaghan and Beothuk, two races which have been entirely eradicated many years ago.
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We ended Game of Clones, Episode I by questioning:
"Should cloning extinct species be normalised, whether that be an extinct race of humans or an extinct animal? Why or why not?"