As a self-described "science-fiction artist", Lucy McRae transports you into a surreal future, using short films and live installations that examine real scientific subjects - cloning, genetics, space flight - and explore their implications.

Take her recent Future Day Spa project. Originally designed to mimic preparation for space flight, the installation let audiences lie on a spa-treatment table before being wrapped in a plastic-foil membrane. The foil was then vacuum sealed until skintight - sending fresh oxygen to the lower body and giving the "patient" a sensation of intimacy.

"I'm very interested in biotechnology, in architecture," says McRae. "It starts with a curiosesity into something I don't know about." Her work ranges from design fictions - a perfume pill that secretes scent through pores; chlorophyll skin; a bio-bakery - to fashion and music videos for artists such as Robyn.

Her work can have a profound effect: "One Future Day Spa participant said to me, 'I don't choose to have contact with people. This feels like I'm being embraced," recalls McRae, 37. "At the end of the treatment, he sat up and hugged me." The experience inspired McRae to research the phenomenon of isolation, and the impact of art on her audience. "Can these dummy creations that I do in the gallery have actual, plausible scientific extensions?"

In June, McRae will debut her latest film, The Institute of Isolation, at the Science Museum in London. The film - and an accompanying live performance - will explore "the evolutionary consequences of gene therapy, and CRISPR". Interviews with scientists intersperse with McRae's creations: "I'm building an anti-gravity machine," she laughs. Its design, she says, is still being developed - McRae's art, like science, "is always evolving."

This article was originally published by WIRED UK