LOUISE PERMIIN

Design researcher, educator and consultancy

What if our colourful bodyfluids could lead to behavioral change?

Peeing, Processing, Producing – Exhibition, 2018

This design project approaches urine as a representative, informative, and poetic resource to create an ever changing collection of textile dyes that reveals our individual and societal actions.

Peeing, Processing, Producing is a travelling archive visualising a range of urine-produced textile colours. Urine has long been used as a natural fixative to dye textiles because of its ammonia content. This project now uses urine itself as a self-produced textile dye in order to create a closer relationship between our daily behaviour, our bodies and the environment .

Field work

Field work; Testing urin samples from 25 participants. Image taken 2017

Design process

The range of colours in our urine reveals a record of our daily consumption of food, medicines and chemicals. Some effects are plainly visible. Others, like the substance Bisphenol-A (BPA) – in plastics, cans and receipts, only appear after chemical reactions. This reaction is revealed as a blue textile-dye on each archived textile, if the chemical is present.

Design process; Chemical analyse of BPA in urine samples from 25 participants. Image taken 2017.

Design

Design; A developing colour scale of BPA present in the collected urine samples. In yellow colours BPA are not present in the urine sample where in the dark blue colours BPA are present in the urine sample. Image taken in 2018.
Design; A 3D graph made of 25 urine samples. Each fabric represent one urine sample and the length of the textile represent the amount of urine produced at the collected period. Each textile has its own colour and BPA analyse in the corner depending on the individual sample. Image from exhibition during Dutch Design Week 2018.

“It surprises me that you can use urine itself as a textile dye – and it does not even smell”
– Audience during DDW2018

“I am intrigued about the scale of colours urine contain”
– Audience during Istanbul Design Biennale

Project management by

  • Louise Permiin (MA graduation project)

Collaboration

Publications

  • Klimaretfærdighed, RESPONS, Responsmedie.dk, DK. 2021 
  • ArtyFarty: Klimakunst og kæmpetrolde, DR1 TV, Copenhagen, DK. 2021
  • DO IT OURSELVES, by Jeroen Junte, NL. Page 218. 2019
  • Der er plastik i dit tis, KEA, Copenhagen, DK. 
  • Microplastic in our body, P1morgen. Copenhagen, DK. 2019
  • WASTE; Peeing, Processing, Producing. Istanbul Design Biennial, TR. 2018