With a growing need to solve emerging epidemiological crises such as global pandemics, inherited diseases and evolving diseases, there has been an exceptional push to invest and move quickly in the biotech industries. Science, in the past decade, has come under increased scrutiny and criticism and has been undervalued over politicised decisions.  This backlash to science and fact-based reason has created a gap for which alt facts have filled. We now need science more than ever, but with a rush to save lives, what rules, ethics and limitations will be applied to research, and will scientific rigour and clarity become opaque to solve global problems faster.

CRISPR technology has become in recent times, both something to be feared - as experiments in gene editing becomes increasingly under regulated in different countries, and a great cause for hope - in our current condition crisis (Covid-19).

We plan to examine how this research is presented to the general public in different ways. 

• Via fact-based presentations, which often focus on the technology and the data with little ethics considered.
• Via media, online and other, which tend to focus on dramatic and extreme story lines.
• Via entertainment industries, films, books, comics and art, which focus on the human and social through storytelling.  

We will explore ideas around gene editing, mutations, and ethics within the research as well as the wider scope of technological advances to solve scientific problems, and the use of the arts to portray information and data in tangible meaningful ways. This will be the foundation of both our common language and common understandings/misunderstandings. This collection of information will inform the development of the body of work.