Interactive paint, medical candy, lab grown meat and the Twitter tooth are a just few of the products that might hit the shelves in the future.

The artist and philosopher Koert van Mensvoort (1974, Netherlands) designs speculative products to provoke debate on the new technologies that are transforming our lives. Director of Next Nature, the 21st century environmentalist movement that intends to "advance – and not retreat – toward nature", Koert van Mensvoort will show how technology becomes nature in seven steps and what we can learn from this process. Man-made systems that lie beyond our control, genetic surprises, autonomous machines and beautiful artificially created black flowers: our technological environment has become so complex, omnipresent and autonomous. In this conversation – moderated by Vítor Moura, a professor at the University of Minho, with a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison – Koert van Mensvoort will show that, despite our deep-rooted relationship with technology, most of us are still relatively unaware of how new technologies are introduced, accepted or discarded within our society.

In collaboration with mala voadora