ABSTRACT
It was during one of researcher’s weekly Skype calls that a synthetic biologist suggested what was to become the guiding metaphor for the Synthetic Aesthetics project: the wedge in the door. The metaphor worked for all of them on the project team: for the two synthetic biologists, for the critical designer, and for author and the other social scientific researcher. Outreach is the one-way dissemination of a particular worldview, but a wedge, in contrast, is something that stops, obstructs and resists closure. The wedge might be a rather unsophisticated device, but the author decides to revive it because its simplicity and force have stayed with researchers all as they have moved on to new work. Researchers did not write about the metaphor of the wedge in the door in the Synthetic Aesthetics book because the critical designer on the project team regarded it as 'too self-deprecating'.
