The lines between futurism, architecture and conceptual art continue to blur and fade (if they ever existed anywhere other than our own minds, that is); a chap called Mitchell Joachim is working on making a house from meat. Yes, a house. Made – grown, to be more precise – from in vitro tissue culture. A meat house. House made of meat. [image ganked from INHABITAT]
While we’re talking about in vitro meat, Wired UK turned over the mic to Warren Ellis, as they do on a monthly basis, and he decided to talk about cannibalism. Fans of Ellis’ reputation-making series Transmetropolitan will remember that The City was full of places where you could eat pretty much anything, all the way up (or is it down?) to cultured human flesh, and that riff gets echoed here:
… the technology is there to start generating human meat without the dubious ethical intervention of human slaughter. Which is harder than you’d think, and the artificial meat version wouldn’t have any Rohypnol precipitate in its cell structure. If there’s no human shoe-beasts involved in the butchery, where’s the problem? Show me the ethical hurdles to ordering a cultured manburger.
I demand that science do its job and allow us all to indulge in a consumer experiment: are humans the most delicious meat of all? Furthermore, I think there’s an easy way to access more funding for this goal: celebrity cell donation.
Of course, Uncle Warren is being ironic here, and has no real interest in eating human flesh, cultured or otherwise.
Probably.
Oh god. That is so disgusting. I think it made me throw up in my mouth a little.
The meat house part, I mean.
And it makes me think someone spent a little too much time playing Kingdom of loathing.
(Even though I’m a vegetarian) I don’t have anywhere near the same gross-out factor at the idea of cultured human meat being sold as a foodstuff. I wonder about the efficiency of it, in terms of energy in vs. energy out, compared to something like mycoprotein. (It’s gotta be better than free range beef.)
Also:
“Dr. Joachin admits that the home is not all that pretty, but his work in exploring radical new ways to create futuristic buildings is a provocative reminder that sustainability requires a radical new vision of our cities and homes.”
How is the meat house sustainable? It’s basically an animal without a brain. (And if he wants it to regulate temperatures and start having sphincter windows opening and closing in response to stimulus, it’s going to need a nervous system.) It’s going to require a constant stream of nutrients. It’s going to give off waste. I would think a lot of both, if it’s going to be big enough to live in.
Well at least if another housing crisis hits, no one will starve. Mm mm, sub-prime ribs!
“Ironic”? Shame on Ellis if he doesn’t mean those quite-reasonable words.
I’m a vegetarian, too, but I eagerly look forward to eating people.
Vat-grown cloned celebrity burgers make an appearance in my short story FALLOUT, which was published in the CONFLICTS anthology from NewCon Press in April this year.