The bio-hack academy is focussing on bio-materials and living organisms this week. Since i have a big obsession with food and fermentation this sounded like a really interesting class to join.
Mycelium material-bank
We started with making a material-bank for mycelium.
First we needed food for the mycelium. This consists of the following ingredients:
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Peptone (containing animal protein, but a vegan peptone is available)
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Agar
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Malt
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Water
This mixture is placed in a glass bottle in a pressure-cooker to sterilize.
Next we poured the mixture in a petri-dish. It is very important to work VERY sterile. We disinfected the table and our gloves and used a gas burner to keep the air around clean.
We waited to the mixture to solidify, forming a gel-like substance.
When the mixture was solid, we scraped a bit of mycelium of a mother-bank and impregnated our petri.
We sealed the petri and placed it in an incubator. After two weeks we should have enough mycelium to work with.
Instead of using the normal mycelium mother i used tempeh starter (Rhizopus Oligosporis and Rhizopus Oryzae).
Using SCOBY culture as biomaterial
Next we watched a lecture about using a SCOBY as biomaterial. We saw multiple applications, which gave me a lot in inspiration.
I didn’t follow along with the SCOBY making since i have an overflow of SCOBY’s because of my fermentation project.
Some projects i’d like to do with SCOBY:
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A cover for my notebook out of SCOBY leather.
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A phone cover.
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Using SCOBY as a conductor to incorporate into my electronic designs (RESEARCH -> conducting properties of cellulose).
Setting up a SCOBY for SCOBY-leather
After 20 days
Then i washed the SCOBY with water and soap to make it less sticky.
I set-up a few different experiments to try with the leather.
I rubbed one piece with tung-oil, i put two pieces on different textures, i left one raw and i put two pieces on top of each other to glue them together.
I places all the SCOBY’s in the dehydrator on 70* for 12h.
Results
There was a big difference between the SCOBY with oil and without.
The SCOBY with oil was more flexible and less brittle compared to the SCOBY without oil.
There was a high level of detail visible in SCOBY’s placed on a texture.
The pieces stacked on top of each other glued together as if it was one piece.