IMARA

2025-current

IMARA (Interstitial Machine for Aggregate Reparative Anatomies) is a modified, DIY desktop bioprinting platform integrating digital fabrication, custom hardware, and experimental biofabrication protocols. The system operates through a workflow that combines 3D modelling, G-code, and extrusion of DIY bioinks. Within this framework, tissues and organs are fabricated as adaptive, hybrid structures.

Acting within a speculative dystopian future marked by cryogenic damage and bodily atrophy, IMARA reframes repair: multi-species anatomical strategies produce forms that exceed the vulnerabilities of human biology, producing soft, unstable, and variable anatomical forms. Rather than optimizing for control or efficiency, the system embraces maintenance, care, and failure as generative conditions. Biofabrication becomes an ongoing process of negotiation, where bodies are continuously reconfigured through interaction with vital material qualities, machines, and shifting environments.

IMARA was developed as part of the NEW SUNS Worldbuilding Lab for Radical Futures, hosted and generously supported by Artengine, and with support from the Alarcón Lab / INTBIOTECH at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. For more, visit the Artengine website: https://artengine.ca/project/more-human/