6. BioFabricating Materials¶
- Produce at least two grown and/or two crafted materials:
- Grown materials - Grow a material, experimenting with at least 2 different recipes and variations thereof. Document the process, ingredients, changes, describe and compare the materials
- Craft materials - Craft a material, experimenting with at least 2 different recipes and variations thereof. Document the process, ingredients, changes, describe and compare the materials
- Document your recipes, the ingredients and process and if there have been changes, document your unexpected discoveries
- Name your materials, classify them by typology and display them in a systematic order of samples.
- EXTRA POINT Submit some of your swatches to the analog material library of your lab. (20cm *20cm aprox)
This week I worked on creating bioplastic from vegetal and animal resources. grown material, but it is planned that we will experiment with scoby in the upcoming days.
Research¶
First of all, I extensively explored Materiom, an open source library for biomaterial recipes. I picked up several recipes from it :
Cornstach biomaterial¶
The original recipe comes from Instructables.
Ingredients :
- 4 tbsp cold water
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 tsp vinegar
- 1 tsp glycerin
- 1 tsp pigment : blue wheelwright (optional)
Process
Mix all the ingredients, then turn the burner on low and constantly stir the mixture. When it starts to thicken up turn the heat up to medium and stir even more. When it starts to boil, keep boiling it for 5 minutes. Eventually, pour the mixture in a mold or on a flat surface and let it dry overnight.
I suspect not having enough stirred our mixture because it resulted in lots of lumps. As a consequence, we decided to make an other batch of cornstach biomaterial with a different color.
We reused the turmeric paste that Sarah produced during the Biochromes week so as to colour our biomaterial. The result turned out to be a bright yellow material :
Conductive gelatin¶
Original recipe from Materiom.
Ingredients :
- 26 gram gelatin
- 10 gram glycerin
- 100 mL water
- 2 gram activated charcoal
Process
Stir the gelatin on low heat in a cooking pot and let it melt in water. Wait until the mixture thickens like a glue. Start to heat the mixture on high heat. When the preparation become liquid again, add the glycerin. Lower the heat as soon as you start to see a white foam appearing on the surface of the mixture. Remove it with a spoon. Add the activated charcoal and stir. Pour the preparation on a flat surface. The recipe asserts that the mixture should be left 4/5 days to dry, but our conductive gelatin was already dry after only 1 day.
Resistance test
After one day, the material was dry and I decided to test its resistance with a multimeter. I did a cartography of this material in terms of resistance property, by mesuring the value of resistance for each centimeter. I noticed that the resistance of the conductive plastic was non homogeneous. This behaviour could be interesting to use this material for artistic purposes.
Afterwards, I used this bioplastic as a potentiometer, to change the brightness of a LED or the pitch of a music sequencer.
Gelatine Agar bioplastic¶
Original recipe from Materiom.
Ingredients :
- 1 tbsp agar agar
- 1.5 tbsp glycerin
- 2 cup water
- 20 grams gelatin
- 1 tsp pigment malachite (optional)
Process
This recipe was one of the easiest to reproduce. Mix all the ingredient and stir until the gelatin is completely melted. Finally, pour the material into a mold.
Finally, I experimented with combination of pigments such as malachite, methylene blue, blue wheelwright, oxyde of iron red :
Spiruline bioyarn¶
Original recipe from Materiom.
Ingredients :
- 2 gram spirulina
- 1 gram beeswax pellets
- 250 mL water
- 20 gram glycerin
Process
Mix all ingredients in a pan. Bring the mixture to the boil. As soon as it is boiling, remove from heat. As fast as possible, with a spoon try placing the mixture in the shape of a strip on a flat surface, and let it dry for a couple of days.
The texture was really liquid add has still not completely dryed. I decided to try the recipe again and adapted it with soya wax :
Ingredients :
- 2 gram spirulina
- 2 gram soya wax pellets
- 100 mL water
- 20 gram glycerin
Xanthan biomaterial¶
I also experimented with Xanthan, which is a gum obtained from fermented sugar. with methylen blue and hibiscus ink.
Ingredients :
- 1 tbsp xanthan gum
- 100 mL water
- 1.5 tbsp glycerin
- 1 tsp methylene blue
- 1 tsp hibiscus ink
Process
Mix all the ingredient and stir until it boils. Finally, pour the material into a mold or on a flat surface.
Mold making¶
I conceived a 3D printed mold so as to pour biomaterial into it. To do so, I reuse the 3D scan from the Digital Bodies week :
