Tuur van Balen

Exhibition

Tuur Van Balen (Belgium, 1981) uses design to explore the political implications of emerging technologies. Through designing and experimenting with new interactions, he constructs thought-provoking new realities. Both the process of creating these objects, interventions and narratives as the resulting physical presence aim to confuse, question and confront different publics with the possible (and impossible) roles of technologies in our everyday lives. 

Since 2008, Tuur has been working on bringing design into the world of synthetic biology and vice versa. This has led to collaborations with the Centre for Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London, the BIOS group at LSE and the Haseloff Lab at Cambridge University. He has exhibited and presented his work in various contexts, both within the UK and abroad. 

Recently, he has won an award of distinction at Prix Ars Electronica with Pigeon d'Or, a project that proposes the use of feral pigeons and synthetic biology to create aesthetic interventions in urban metabolisms. The project is in collaboration with biochemist James Chappell. 

Tuur also works as a visiting tutor at Goldsmiths and as a freelance designer in service and interaction design.