Wanderers is a collaborative project between Neri Oxman (and the team at the Mediated Matter Group at MIT Media Lab), Christoph Bader & Dominik Kolb (Deskriptiv) to create four digitally grown and 3d printed wearables that could embed living matter.

The teams are working on a computational growth process which is capable of producing a wide variety of growing structures. Inspired by natural growth behaviour, the computational process creates shapes that adapt to their environment. Starting with a seed, the process simulates growth by continuously expanding and refining its shape. The wearables are designed to interact with a specific environment characteristic of their destination and generate sufficient quantities of biomass, water, air and light necessary for sustaining life: some photosynthesize converting daylight into energy, others bio-mineralize to strengthen and augment human bone, and some fluoresce to light the way in pitch darkness.