4. BioChromes¶

Ispiration & Research¶

This has been the week of magic, potions and strange creations. It was very inspiring for me to see this new world. And in this research and development page of mine, I wanted to bring together what I learned this week with what is most inspiring to me. So I wanted in the research part to highlight how color first and the world of bacteria are inspiring the world of fashion and art. Not only in terms of coloring but also from an image perspective many fashion brands and artists are inspired by the appearance of bacteria. But it also seems that biologists are becoming more and more creative. I like being able to take inspiration from this limitless world with endless innovations.

KATHLEEN RYAN Bad Fruit

Ispiration bacterias from Pinterest

In the fifth image you can see a bacterium that looks like a work of art. Here the Link to the article, it seems that even biologists are getting creative. It is very interesting to see how even in a job like biology of trying to find inspiration. I think by now the world of bacteria is of strong inspiration for creation of textiles, embroidery, artwork of all kinds.

On the left an embroidered texture and on the right the texture of bacteria, pics by Pinterest

At this Link you can find the VICE article related to dyeing with bacteria, an article that goes back to 5 years ago...

Colour vision, How we see¶

"Light is therefore colour , and shadow the privation of it." J.M.W.Turner,1818

Colour is fundamental to our experience of the world around us. Think of hi-vis jackets, brands logos, and the hair, eyes and skin of those we love. But how is it, precisely, that we see these things? What we are really seeing when we look at,say, a ripe tomato or green paint, is light being reflected off the surface of that object and into your eyes. The visible specrutm, as you can see from the diagram below, only makes up a small proportion of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Different things are different colors because they absorb some wavelenghths of a visible light specturum, while others bounce off. So the tomato's skin is soaking up must of the short and medium wavelenghths - blues and violets, greens, yellows, and oranges. The remainder, the reds, hit our eyes and processed by our brains. So, in a way, the colour we perceive an object to be is precisely the colour it isn't: that is, the segment of the spectrum that is being reflected away. When the light enters our eyes it passes through the lenses and hits the retinas. These are at the the backof our eyeballs and are stuffed with light- sensitive cells, called rods and cones because of their respective shapes. Rods do the heavy lifting of our vision.

Text from the book The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St Clair

Tools¶

Bacterial Dye¶

presure cooker
pots
petridishes
protanebutane gas cylinder
screw top bottles : Luria Broth - Standard Agar
inaculating loom
Ethanol
Janthino bacterial lividum
Serratia Marcescens
Inaculating loom

Natural Dye¶

Alumn
Cremae of Tartar
Soda
Iron
Tannin
Acid
pots
wire whisk
wooden spoon
scale
beaker
measuring cup
bowls
petridishes
glass bowls
filters funnel
Mortar
PH strips
Fabrics: Silk - Wool - Cotton Jersey - Linen Bleached & Natural

Process and workflow¶

Bacterial Dyed¶

Preparation¶

First, when you enter the biolab you should try to be as little bacteria carrier as possible, so don't bring any objects inside, tie up your hair ( if you have long hair), and put on your lab coat. Disinfect your hands and you are ready to work!

If you want to color your bacteria you have to follow two different processes.

First you have to create your bacteria. We already had two bacteria ready so we could work quickly. One was Janthinobacterium lividum from this type of bacterium you can get the purple color. You can find this bacterium on the backs of frogs. The other was Serratia Marcescens from this second bacterium you can get the pink color, almost tending to fuchsia. You can find this bacterium in the grout joints of showers. Add to these the nutrients listed below and you will have your bacteria ready for dyeing in a week.

Also if you want to create a less expensive nutrient regarding serratia marcescens you can mix peanut butter with water, she seems to like it a lot.

Secondly proceed with coloring your fabric as I explain below

On the left Janthinobacterium lividum & on the right Serratia Marcescens, pics by Pinterest

Preparation of food for bacteria¶

You can prepare 2 different kind of bacteria's food: * 1.LB Luria Broth is more liquid , weigh 6.2 gr of Luria Broth (weigh with a small sheet folded in half, it will be easier to pour) add 250 ml of water put both ingredients in a bottle and shake it. You have to use this kind of nutrient when you want to color your fabric, so you have to put up your fabric that one. * 2.ST Standard Agar Weigh 9.287 gr. of Agar add 250 ml of water and shake it in the bottle. You have to use this kind of nutrient when you want to prolifire your bacteria.

Now you need to put your bottles in the pressure stove to "cook your nutrients." Remember to leave the top of the bottles a bit open. If you want check the pressure of the pots you can also mark the cap of the bottles with a special autoclave tape, when you can see the diagonal lines that are transparent the pressure inside is good and the process is finished. Run the steam until the pressure button goes up, from the moment it goes up you have to wait 15 minutes and then your process is finished. Be careful when you take the bottles out they will be very hot. Now your food is ready, you can make the bacteria.

Sterilization of the fabrics and materials you're going to use¶

You need to sterilize your fabrics. First decide how you want to fold your fabrics for dyeing. I made knots to have a tye-dye effect. After that put your sample in the petridishes and put everything inside the pressure cooker. You have to leave some space between the base of the pot and the petridishes,they must not touch each other. Run the steam until the pressure button goes up, from the moment it goes up you have to wait 15 minutes and then your process is finished.

Coloring¶

Ploriferating of Bacteria with ST nutirent¶

How to recreate the bacteria. Every time you want to color something you still have to recreate the same bacterium. Because the risk of killing it in this process is other. So below are the steps to follow for this process:

Disinfect your base with Ethanol.
Light the fire of your protanebutane gas cylinder and hope the gas is not gone, I can't advise you how to change the gas, it seemed difficult.
You have to use the bottle with ST Standard Agar nutrient, the gelatinous liquid. It becomes gelatinous if it is very hot, so make sure when you do this process that the bottle has just come out of the pressure cooker.
Take your empty petridish and superheat the top of the bottle with fire and then pour a small amount of nutrient into it. Cap it with the lid and wait for the liquid to become gelatinous.
When the liquid is ready take the petridish with the bacteria and your empty petridish.
disinfect the base
The transfer time must be short because otherwise you risk bacteria getting inside. Don't talk, don't breathe and be quick ;)
Light the fire of your protanebutane gas cylinder and pass the inaculating loom over it
Now open the lid of the bacterium a little and pass inaculating loom over the nutrient first, you should hear sizzling and then you can rub over the bacterium and get some of it.
Now open your petridish with the nutirente and put in the little scraps you got from the previous step and close the lid
You can replicate these two steps if you think you have not inserted too much bacterial waste
Close your new bacteria petridish with a film tape

My bacteria is growing :)

Coloring the fabrics with LB nutrient¶

How to color the bacteria. After sterilizing your tissues follow the following steps :

Disinfect your base
Take the bottle of LB Luria Broth while still warm
Light the fire of your protanebutane gas cylinder
Take your petridish with sterilized fabrics and superheat the top of the bottle with fire and then pours some of the LB nutrient inside the dish particularly over the fabrics
Now open the lid of the bacterium a little and pass inaculating loom over the nutrient first, you should hear sizzling and then you can rub over the bacterium and get some of it.
now open your petridish with the LB nutrient and sterilized fabrics and pass the small amount of bacterium you made over the tissues and over the nutirente and close the lid.
Close your petridish with a film tape

Incubating¶

Put all your dishes inside the incubator and wait for your bacteria to grow. It seems that the pink color comes out within two days instead the purple color I chose will take a week. So leave everything in for a week.

Killing the bacteria¶

To kill the bacterium the process we will have to follow is the same that we followed for the sterilization of tissues.

Be ready to resist a terrible smell!!

You have to put your petridish inside the pressure cooker. You have to leave some space between the base of the pot and the petridishes,they must not touch each other. Run the steam until the pressure button goes up, from the moment it goes up you have to wait 15 minutes and then your process is finished. Put a piece of autoclave tape on top of the petridish so you can check if the pressure process is done!

At the end of the process, you need to rinse the fabric with water, do not worry, your bacteria are dead, you can touch the fabric :)... After rinsing you can allow the sample to dry.

I am very happy with my scarf dyed with the bacterium, I like the final effect, I made a lot of knots and so I created an interesting design.

Natural Dye¶

Scouring¶

There are two different types of scouring, one for Vegetable Fabric and one for Protein Fabric.

Protein Fabrics ( Silk - Wool )
Vegetable Fabrics ( Cotton Jersey - Linen )

It is possible to choose different types of fibers for dyeing, both vegetable and animal. Animal fibers, being made up of proteins and therefore having a suitable conformation, have the characteristic of absorbing color more easily than vegetable fibers, which, being made up of cellulose, can retain color with more difficulty and need further treatment with different mordants. You can use different kind of mordant to make the finishing process stronger of the dye inside the fiber. You can use mordants like Alum, Copper, and Iron. After this process when you have your dye bath ready you can also ass some modifiers to change the shades of your color. Here below a list of some modifiers:

Acidic
Alkaline
Copper
Iron

I was in charge of following this process for silk and wool.

Scouring is the first process that you have to do, in which you clean our fibers. We were to prepare about 126 gr of material ( silk and wool). Based on your weight you need to calculate 15% Alumn and 5% cream tartar. We then filled our pot with water up to half and added 19 gr of Alumn and 6.5 gr of Creme tartar . Then we waited about 15 minutes for the substances to dissolve well and for the water to become slightly warm and then we lightly wet the fabrics and put them inside the pot I was in charge of following this process for silk and wool.

Leave the fabrics for about 1 hour in the pot for this scouring process.

At the end of this hour you can remove your fabrics and rinse them in cold water and then hang them on a hanger so they can dry a little bit.

In the meantime you can prepare your color

To extract the dye¶

I chose Annatto color for my dye. This is the first color I got with the first bath, when wet it was perfect, it was just the color I wanted, but as it dried it lightened a lot, you can see the different shades in the experiment section below.

Annatto is a red-orange food coloring or seasoning obtained from the seeds of the achiote tree (Bixa orellana), which grows in the tropical regions of South and Central America (1). It has many other names, including achiote, achiotillo, bija, urucum and atsuete. It is most commonly used as a natural food coloring, as it gives a bright color ranging from yellow to deep orange red, similar to saffron and turmeric. Annatto seeds were into a paste and used by natives of Central and South America as a body paint, a tradition that still survives in Mexico.

Annatto trees have large, heart-shaped, papery leaves. It takes several years of growth before they flower and form dye-producing seeds. When the rosy-pink flowers do eventually appear they form attractive clusters before developing into bunches of red or maroon seed pods. The pods open when ripe to reveal small seeds with a red sticky pulp.

Good to know : No mordant is necessary for Annatto.

WORKFLOW GIF

1 Scouring
2 Dye Bath
3 Put a little soap to get a stronger color

Here below the steps about fabric coloring :¶

Fill your pot halfway with water
Simmer 50 gr of Annatto seeds in water for 1 hour
The water for this type of seed can boil
To get the maximum color from the seeds, add one or two teaspoons of washing soda to the water in which the seeds are simmered to extract the dye color.
To make the color more intense you can also add a little soap ;)
After one hour you can soak your fabrics in the bath
Before you soak the fabrics, filter the seeds out of the color and put them in the mortar, so you can press them and get out even more color to add later to the bath
Put the seeds once pressed in a bag so you can put them in the bath and let them boil with water and fabrics
From now on according to the more or less intense color you want you can remove the fabrics. I removed a first part of the fabrics and got a very light color. I then decided to leave more in to get a more intense color for more than two hours. Finally I let the fabrics soak for two days to get the strongest color.

Create pigments¶

To get pigments from your bath follow these steps:
Take half of your color bath and pour it into a glass cylinder
You have to add on the bath Alumn 15gr + Soda 7.5gr (the half of alums)
First put 15% Alumn in a cup with hot water, swirl until all the alumn crystals are dissolved then add it to your bath
You can do the same with soda, put 7,5% in a cup with hot water, add it to the bath and with a whisk quickly swirl the liquid, letting air into the movement.
We have to measure the Acid, the PH strip must be yellow/green to have the right acidity
Wait for your pigments to come down to the ground and the water to stay afloat
Now with a funnel and paper filter your liquid so you get the pigment

Ink¶

...Unfortunately, I have not been able to create something with my ink yet, but here below you'll see the final consistency of my ink.

Experiments¶

Since Annatto is already a fairly acidic compound, I could not experiment as much. This type of color had big changes in contact with iron, Alkanet and Campeche.

So I had fun creating shades of color from orange to green and from pink to deeper red. The color change also depends on the type of fiber you use.

CREDITS¶

The Secret Lives of Colour book Link
The Secret Lives of Colour: An excerpt read by Kassia St Clair Link
Beautiful bacteria: winners of the 2015 Agar Art Competition Link
KATHLEEN RYAN Bad Fruit Website
Ispiration bacterias from Pinterest
These Beautiful Silk Scarves Were Created With Bacteria, Link

Last update: 2023-06-02