myxomycete | Fabric | Nature | Human | Co-creation | Animism | Monism | Monument
myxomycete | Fabric | Nature | Human | Co-creation | Animism | Monism | Monument
Myxomycete + Fabric
The history of fabric can retrace to ancient before. Humans have used many diffeerent materials to make fabric.
What is the original purpose of cloth?
To cover. To protect.
There are many ways of making fabrics, weaving, knitting and woving, etc,.
Ancient Myxomycete
Myxoomycete - one of members of fungi family, has been living for billion years. The use of it has usually contributed to a shortest distance algorithm. And recently, the algorithm has been developed for self-driving car. And the algorithm has already matured.
Where can we have the opportunity to develop with myxomycete?
The use of Myxomycete
In Southeastern China, there is an ethnic group of people, Wa.
They believe in Animism that everything is in the nature.
Wa people have created a kind of fabric, using physarum - one of myxomycete, as patterm.
They traced the pattern of growth of physarum and transfered onto the fabric.
What if we can co-crreate the fabric with nature elements?
Fashion industry has been one of biggest sources of ocean pollution. And overconsump caused many envrionmental issues.
What if we can develop a self-decompose fabric with myxomycete?
Segments of /Sweet Moniment/
I. Experiment on fabric
Using physarum myxomycete, testing the growth and mixture with fabric
Testing on different physarum growing on each other to create different textures
Using position encoder and time-lampse, documenting the movement data
II. Zero-waste Cloth with Myxomycete fabric
Purposing a zero-waste drapping structure for clothes
III. Visualize the movement data of myxomycete
Using movement data to create a visulization of myxomycete growth, as the living monument.
Monism + Monument
The topics we discussed and touched on in the class are primarily about how humans can maintain the environment and coexist with the nature. This is actually a self-rescue. Nature does not need humans to save. Nature can be healed much quicker than expected as long as humans are absent from it. During the pandemic lockdown, nature was taking over what she belonged rapidly.
Nature has been in an objective place for so long. The monism of nature and humans is in the palm of mother Earth.
Like virus and cells, infectious agents attack a central cell, multiplying faster than they can be destroyed. It is a “romantic” story. The mergence of myxomycete and fabric is a way to describe human culture’s relationship with observing nature.
The linkage of natural elements from the past with a combination of the present imagines a better futre.
The perfect envrionment for physarum to grow it:
Moist but not dripping, warm but not too hot or too cold.
I placed a position encoder underneath the fabric and a time-lampse camera above. Since myxomycete cannot conduct electricity, I had to use a plastic cover to protect physarum from the room heating to main the perfect environment for them to grow. I set 9 glass bottles in positions to uplift the plastic cover to avoid it touching the fabric.
Different plasmodia from the same matrix of physarum could not blend in together
but created a stronger triple-layer texture
Same matrix cutting in pieces
Physarum can easily merge together
From two different matrix
Outter and inner physarums are from two different matrix of mold from a same ancestry. As they are growing, it did not seem as they merge together, but layered on each other.
Growth on fabric
with the ideal envrionment
slow but visual
Result
Effect of temperature on recovery time
Effect of humidity on the rate of movement
Effect of temperature on the rate of movement
Temperature/℃
Humidity/%
Temperature/℃
Time/h
Speed/ cm/h
Speed/ cm/h
Zero-waste physarum cloth
For deeper in this idea, I want to center the conflict but the harmony of human and nature, into one spiritual being, imanity. Myxomycete has been existed in this planet for thousand centuries as the tissues of the veins of the nature. Humans are living in the cocoon of this web. Bloodlast. The desire of human. The deity of this planet. They are the same.
Mourning our past, building our monument. Marching towards the moniment as we are, imanity.