7. BioFabricating Materials¶

✧Research & Ideation✧¶

Going into Biofabrication week, I am exicted for the playful energy that we had during Biochromes week to return. I am interested in the sensorial and tactile qualities that can be created with biomaterials, especially in combination with the other skills we have learnt in e-textiles and computational couture week. The possibilty of materials that are sustainable and part of a regenerative future whilst still having amazing, aesthetic potentials for sculpture really excites me. Additionally, I am hoping to learn about grown materials and those made in collaboration with other living organisms such as mycelium and bacteria. I think that this week will give an opportunity to work closely with other species and understand the creation of something living, with its own agency.

Piero D’Angelo- D'Angelo's raison d'etre is grow your own couture. He creates designs in collaboration with living systems, including Slime Mould applied to fabrics and fashion, 3D printing and rapid prototyping as well as speculative bio-mimicry. I am interested in the textures and inticracies he manages to create in his garments.
Scarlett Yang, uses biodegradable materials made from Algae Extract. I am interested in the effects she is able to create using 3D printed moulds and scaffolds for her biomaterials. Her concepts innterrogate the relationship between the natural and artifical, material and immaterial.

I particularly love the way Yang's designs really harness the transulcency and shine of the alginate material. I am interested in biomaterials as you can really play with translucency and create materials that interact with light in a magical way. This is difficult in traditional sculpting materials as they are often toxic or high energy materials such as resins, plastics or glass.

Image From Scarlette Yang's Instagram

Diana Scherer is very famous for her work with root system domestication, creating beautiful textiles and artworks. I am fascinated by the inticracy that can be created with grown materials as well as the underlying care and patience that must be necessary for Scherer to collaborate with living systems in this way.
Lucia Giron's, Make Like a leaf project is a fascinating innovation in architectural material. The material is fabricated through photosynthetic biomineralization, embedded with cyanobacteria that capture carbon from the atmosphere and transform it into a binding mineral. Not only this but, the crystaline structure and vivid colour is mesmerizing.
The Growing Pavillion, Pascal Leboucq in collaboration with Erik Klarenbeek. I love that this work is both an amazing sustainable approach to architectural material but also is sensative to the beautiful textures, shapes and colours created by the mycelium.

DUTCH DESIGN WEEK FINDS!:

Myself, Carolina Beirao and Asli Aksan went to ☃︎ Dutch Design Week ☃︎ last weekend and it was perfect timing for getting inspiration for Biomaterials week. There were so many exciting projects and new processes.

Azul Espirito Santo. My absolute favourite from the displays was Santo's works, I was blown away by the delicate beauty of these works and how the light was allowed to pass through them. Santos makes textiles and hanging works from natural materials such as silk, cotton, hemp and wool exploring her locality both in material and image, creating landscape images which celebrate natures resiliance and renewal.
Coated textiles by Riikka Kiili & Sahar Babaeipour. This is an experiment with biobased coatings to waterproof textiles. I love the matt, waxy quality it gives the material as well as its promising use for sustainable, multifunctional outdoor textiles.
Beibei Tang made biodegradable buttons from Ramie waste! Exploring the industrial waste of her home region of Sichuan and creating designs reflecting her heritage in both material and design. I love the colours and almost transulcent, marbled effects she achieved.

All these projects inspire me for their marriage of material research with artistic application. I really hope to remain sensative this week to the sensory power of materials and their ability evoke emotion, memory and associations.

Lastly, a project we found particularly exciting and relevant for this week was Taïssia Visser's MA graduation project: Growing 3d shapes with SCOBY and textile. She created custom built bio-reactors to get Kombucha Leather way from its usual "flat morphology" and instead explore its potential growing 3D.

This got us thinking about Machine hacking week and how we could use machines and scaffolds to extend the possibility of the biomaterials we make.

✙Documentation Workflow✙¶

This week we needed to:

Produce at least one crafted and one grown material:
1. Crafted material - explore the different recipes and understand how to adjust them based on the ingredients:
2. Grown material - explore the different recipes and understand how to adjust them based on the ingredients

Assignment Criteria: Week 6

Include some inspiration: research on artists, projects, platforms that work with biomaterials, local ingedients and resources
Produce at least one crafted and one grown material:
Crafted material - explore the different recipes and understand how to adjust them based on the ingredients:
Grown material - explore the different recipes and understand how to adjust them based on the ingredients
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
Submit some of your swatches to the analog material library of your lab. (20cm x 20cm approx.)

Top Tip!!!

If the colour you mix up for your bioplastics looks bad in the cup, don't add it to all your mixture.

Inspiration!!!

Scarlett Yang for how she developed biofabrication week into her final project.
Asli Aksan for precise and organised documentation.
Olivia Cueva for development into her final project.

⏛Tools⏛¶

EQUIPTMENT FOR THE WEEK:

Beakers and containers of Various Sizes
Pipettes
Syringe
Measuring Jug
Scales
Spoons and Ladles
Stove and Pans
Hand blender
Dehydrators
Autoclave or Pressure Cooker
PH indicators
Bunsen Burner
Inoculating Tools
Heat Pad
Breathable tape
Muslin and Elastic Bands
Fabric
Casting materials: Textured fabric, petri dishes and moulds.

BIOPLASTIC INGREDIENTS:

Polymer: Gelatine/ Agar Agar
Water
Plasticiser: Gylcerine
Filler & Stiffener: Wool, Eggshells, Reeds,
Pigment: Food colouring, Natural Pigment, Mica powder
Foaming Agent: Washing up liquid

INGREDIENTS FOR ALGINATE: * Alginate * Water * Calcium Chloride

INGREDIENTS FOR FISH SKIN LEATHER:

Fish Skins
Water
Oak galls
Ethanol
Glycerin

INGREDIENTS FOR KOMBUCHA LEATHER:

Sugar
Kombucha Mother
Tea
Water
Vinegar
Ethanol

INGREDIENTS FOR MYCELIUM LEATHER:

Mycelium Specimen
Agar
Cheap Honey
Ethanol

INGREDIENTS FOR CATTAIL FUR:

Cattails
Wood Glue
Cotton fabric

☊WHAT ARE BIOMATERIALS?☊¶

First, we had a detailed and exploratory introductory lecture from Cecilia Raspanti where she really went into the theory behind a regenerative, bio-driven future and why a biobased approach to material research is not only good for the planet but a fascinating artistic and design space.

She explained the basics:

A bio material is:

Bio- based: meaning it is derived from bacterial, fungal, vegetal, mineral, bio-manmade or animal sources.
Bio- Compostable: meaning it is composted within 90 days by bacteria, mycekium animal etc.
Bio-Degradable meaning it degrades in specific conditions e.g change in ph, thermo or enzymes.

These properties are a beautiful alternative to the synthetic materials which inevitably seep into the environment and cannot be digested by the earth.

Now we are into the realm of biomaterials, we can also classify and document our biomaterials within many catagories as a way of comparing our research and experiments.

E.G

CRAFTED MATERIALS : THOSE CAST AND ASSEMBLED 
* Bio Plastics: silicon, resin, foil, foam
* Fish: Leather, plastic 
* Fruit: Leather
* Algae: Leather 
* Plant: yarns 
* Tree Hair and Coconut: Mats

GROWN: 
* Microbial: Leather 
* Funghi: Leather 
* Lab Grown: Leather 
* Roots: Fabrics
* Spider: Silk

These materials roughly fall into 3 catagories:

Bio Plastics
Alternative Leathers
Bio Fabrics and Yarns

Image from Cecilia Raspanti's Biofabricating Materials Fabricademy Lecture, 2024.

♥︎CRAFTED MATERIALS♥︎¶

⚖︎BIOPLASTICS⚖︎¶

Here are some cookbooks and recipes for bioplastics.

We used Cecilia Raspanti's recipes for Bio Foil, Bio Silicon and Bio Resin. We wanted to make 3 big pots so we could do lots of experimentation with different colours, castings and fillers.

We followed along with the recipes that I have included in the google slides below. They were very easy and only had slight differences in plasticiser to polymer ratios in order to change the elasticity or hardness of the material.

The focus of my investigation was the bioplastic's opacity and interaction with light. These are properties I find interesting in materials and use a lot in my installations. I am always looking for bio-based materials that could be alternatives to plastics, glass and wax that I have used in the past to diffuse light and create translucent objects

Examples of my past work using unsustainable materials such as Parrafin wax, PETG and Glass

Therefore the main variables I experimented with in my bioplastic samples were:

The moulds and surfaces I used to cast the bio plastics on. Are these surfaces smooth or rough, what is their shape and thichkness? How does this effect the reflective quality of the material and way it interacts with light?

We casted using textured fabrics to create raised and rough surfaces. Some were cast in plastuc petri dishes which gave a smooth, shiny surface. Some were cast on diffraction film to give a holographic surface and some laser cut plastic moulds were used to play with giving the materials 3D stripes and striations

The colouring agent How this effects the opacity of the material?

We had a range of bio-based lake pigments we percipitated from our dye baths in Biochromes week. We also had translucent and matt food colourings and mica powder.

The fillers, How does this effect the density of the material and how light can pass through it?

Finally we had a range of fillers including different bio matter and reeds, egg shells, wool and of course the other biomaterials we had made.

To analyse the material properties more critically I have devised a rating system.

This system compares the:

Opacity (How well light can pass through)
Elasticity (Can the material be bent and stretched)
Shine (Does the surface reflect and diffract light?)

From top left to bottom right: Measuring the water, Adding the Glycerine, Melting the gelatine and Grinding the pigment.

Bioplastics by Isobel Leonard

To me there wasn't a huge difference between the Bio-silicon and Bio-foil as they were all very pliable, shiny and had some level of translucency. The resin took a long while to start hardeneding but was definitely more brittle and stiff than the other two recipes so I will monitor the materials and see if the differences become more distinct as time goes on.

Below is a video documentation of each sample I made as a way of better demonstrating their material properties:


Bio Foil textured with Fabric.	Bio Foil with Food Colouring.	Bio Silicon with Crushed Eggshells
Bio Silicon with Dyed Wool	Bio Silicon and Alginate Yarn with Food colouring	Bio Silicon with Alginate Beads and Food Colouring
Bio Silicon Foam with Cochineal Pigment. (We added Soap to this mixture and mixed before casting)	Bio Silicon and Food Colouring	Bio Resin and Reeds as filler
Bio Resin with Reeds as Filler and Food Colouring	Bio Resin with Mica Powder and Avodcado lake Pigment. Cast ong Diffusion Film.

☺︎MAKING ALGINATE YARN☺︎¶

Ingredients:

Sodium alginate powder - 6 gr
Glycerine - 10 gr
Water - 200 ml/gr
Water and Calcium chloride solution at a 90% to 10% ratio

PREPARATION:

Blend the Alginate, Glycerine and Water together with a hand blender to make a thick, jelly like mixture. (Add a bit of sunflower oil if you want your yarn to be more opaque).

Leave the mixture over night to let all the air bubbles come to the surface and pop.
Prepare your Calcium Chloride bath by mixing 10% Calcium Chloride with Warm Water in a large beaker that you want to extrude into.

EXTRUDE

Put your alginate mixture into a syringe or sauce bottle with a nossle the desired diameter of your yarnn.
Extrude the alginate into your calcium chloride bath. Try to keep an even pressure and flow to get as continuous a string as possible.

Take your yarn out of the bath and gently wrap it around a paper cup to dry and harden.

Experiments with food colouring and mica powder. Trying different thicknesses of yarn also.

☁︎VEGETAL FUR WITH CATTAILS☁︎¶

Cecilia wanted to try this amazing process using Cattails that grew locally in the amsterdam canals.

The amazing thing about Cattails (which have been used to make vegetal fur in Estonian Toy making tradition) is that they clean the water in which they grow. This makes this a great material to explore for a regenerative vision of design and of course means no little furry critters are harmed!

The process was very simple:

Harvest Cattails from the canal. Don't look suspicious!
Coat the cattail in a layer of wood glue.
Carefully wrap the glued Cattail in a thin sheet of fabric (we used cotton) apply glue as you roll the fabric around the reed. Make sure to coat the outside well and to twist the fabric around the stem at the two ends.
Leave to dry or dehydrate for speed.
Gently massage the cattail to loosen the reed from the stem.
Make a long incision along the reed making sure not to cut too deep, past the inner stem.
Massage gently again.
Unravel your vegetal fur carefully, peel out the stem and rub your soft, soft fur on your face!

The results were amazing. It really felt and behaved like fur. We saw no matting when touched and the colour was beautiful! Its safe to say we were all inspired by this material.

⚓︎Fish Skin Leather⚓︎¶

We went on yet another excursion to the the local fishmonger and asked if they had any fish skin waste they would share with us. They were more than happy to accomodate and we walked away with a stinky bag of skins to get leathering!

Again the process was very simple if a bit gross. Eventually we went nose blind and found the whole thing very meditative.

It is important to clean the fish skins very well so that there is nothing left on the skin that will rot. We decided we didn't want to keep the scales so we gently used a knife to tease away the excess flesh and scrape off the scales.
When we were satisfied we cleaned the skins in cold water and ethanol. It is so important not to use warm or hot water otherwise you will have ⭐︎FISH SOUP⭐︎.
Then we mixed up two jars of tanning mixture. In the first we mixed Water with powdered oak galls, a natural tannin. And in the second we mixed glycerin and ethanol with water. The oak galls will give a darker finish and the ethanol/glycerin mixture will make the skins a little more transparent.
Place in the jars and seal. Make sure to regularly shake the jars in the tannin mixture and slap the skins against the side of the jar. If you are feeling good, it can help to give the skins a massage with the mixture regularly.
Do this for 3 days to let the skins cure.

☼GROWN MATERIALS☼¶

❇︎Kombucha Leather❇︎¶

We had this bio-fabricating session with Maro Pebo! We were exploring ways to create materials in collaboration with living organisms such as mycelium and bacteria.

First, we started with Kombucha Leather. We learnt that Kombucha was a SCOBY:

Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast

The Kombucha leather is a result of symbiotic relationship between yeast and a bacterial culture which facilitates a fermentation process water, tea, sugar to create a biofilm of cellulose and vinegar.

The process was simple but precise as we had to work in a very sterile environment to avoid contamination from Aspergillus, a fungus that causes mould and circulates in the air and on surfaces around us.

Make a Home: In a large container we mixed about 1.5L of tea (any kind of tea is good) a good amount of sugar.
The scoby likes an acidic environment unlike our archenemy Aspergillus, so we add a good amount of vinegar to lower the ph. We tested this with ph indicator strips and were pleased with anything lower than ph 6. The goal is to get the ph as close to the ph of the kombucha mother as possible.
When the temperature of the bath has cooled down below 30 degrees you can add the Kombucha mother. (if you don't have access to a mother you can use the white particles floating in organic apple cider vinegar to see if you can get a starter).
Cover the bath with a breathable material such as cotton and secure with an elastic band.
Here in Amsterdam, we left this on a heat pad at 30 degrees (which is the optimal growing temperature) but of course this depends on the climate you are working in. We will leave this for around 30 days and watch for growth!

UPDATE!: Here is our 4 day progress with our Kombucha Leather, it is already growing a lovely sheet and is such a rich dark colour:

☙Mycelium Leather❧¶

Finally, we ended the week with very exciting things. I have always been facinated by mycelium and was really excited to get to work with some.

This particular mycelium is called Reishi.

First we created some containers which would be the home for our mycelium growth. We prepared some petri dishes and also some tupperware and jars. It was important to put some holes in the top of these containers so they were breathable. We put some surgical tape over the holes also to keep contamination out.
We created two different growing mediums, a solid and liquid medium. Our solid medium was Black Agar for our petri dishes. Our liquid medium was a mixture of cheap honey (as it is no anti-microbial, just glucose!) and water in the other containers. the ratio honey to water is 4%.
We placed our mixtures in sealed bottles and put them in the autoclave along with the petri dishes and tupperware we would be using for steralisation.
Whilst this was happening, we set up a sterile workspace by creating a ring of ethanol around a bunsen burner. The heat from the flame would evaporate the ethanol and create a sterile dome for us to work in.
When everything was sterile we began innoculating. We took a small slice of the Reishi specimen and placed it into each container/ petri dish of growing medium. It was important to steralise our knife in the bunsen burner flame until it glows red before touching the mycelium. We opened the petri dish lid so it is open towards the flame and blocking our mouth from contaminating the specimen. We cooled our instrument by tapping it against the jelly before slicing a piece. We tried not to speak and covered the dishes as soon as possible after inoculation to avoid contamination.

Then we sealed the petri dishes with parafilm and put them in an incubator at 23 degrees and waited to see what grows!

These processes are slow but I think this only adds to the anticipation for the beautiful materials we made this week!

UPDATE!:

Here is our 4 day progress! We can already see some lacey white mycelium starting to grow: