Amanda Gelb
UX Researcher. Design Strategist. Experiential Educator. Social Entrepreneur.
Mushroom as Mechanism. Mushroom as Material. Mushroom as Va Va Voom.
Of all the readings. Of all the pictures. I keep going back to the structures themselves. The caps. The teeth. The tubular branches. The curves. Oh. The curves. Does mushroom porn exist? Cause...yah. As I pour through the images and theories of Mycelium Running, I keep circling back to this excerpt of the New Scientist Article by Richard Webb:
Like plastic, mycelium is formed of a flexible polymer material, in this case chitin. It’s fully biodegradable – and smart to boot. Given different starting materials, temperatures and humidity, it can be coaxed to grow to different densities and orientations and so produce materials with a wide range of properties such as tensile strength. “We point it in the right direction and it takes care of the details,” says Bayer..... medical implants that make synthetic bone using mycelium as a scaffold to fire-resistant insulating foam– and even moulded mushroom parts for electric cars.
From the underground 'neural' networks who can silently pulverize rocks with their calcium oxalate crystals over time, to clusters feeding off of a sapling and visa versa- if utilized the right way these guys pack a punch. What unique mycelium structures create the strongest bonds? What elements of physics or motion can we learn by tracing the dynamics of a mushroom's expansion and contraction- as it breaks through the earth or shoots spores far and wide? Why do some grow rounded caps and others tubular arms? What's the Darwinian advantage of one shape vs. another? Is there a learned pattern or mode of survival we can glean from their location and structure?
My final project will utilize all I can possibly gauge from the organic compositions themselves. Mycelium as material. Mycelium as mechanism. Mycelium as device. Mycelium as building geometries. Mycelium as...fractal?!
There's so much to learn and unpack here by studying the structures alone. Ideally these findings will apply to applications for building geometries, strength of the material at large, and the mechanics of survival.
I'm incredibly passionate about adaptive design, so if this can apply to that field all the better, but in part, I'm going to let the mycelium move me to deductions and theories, projections and maps of structure logic .
In terms of a person to study and interview...Phil Ross is doing some fascinating stuff with mycotecture, as is Ecovative but I'm also looking more for someone who knows the mushroom's internal structures quite intimately and isn't just using mycelium to stuff their plywood structures... like these folks did for different innovations.
or the simple breakdown of an organism's geometric patterns a' la' :
Photo Credits:
Image 1: http://www.fungi.com/tl_files/V1/images/about-pages/blog-life-cycle/life-cycle.jpg
Image 2: http://www.wired.com/2009/01/mushroommagic/
Image 4: http://www.tiltstudioinc.com/new/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/bio-shoes.jpg
Image 5: http://static.biomimicry.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/kingfisher1.jpg
Image 6: http://projectnorth.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Spirals21.jpg
DONT. TOUCH. IT!
My first memorable experience involves standing outside a hospital at the tender age of 5. I was getting tubes put in my ears and was about to go in for the procedure when this marvel of a thing- white, capped, brown speckles atop like some dalmatian from the earth, appeared in my line of sight. Naturally, I had to pluck it. Naturally, I had to eat it.
My parents were feeding a parking meter, it was Los Angeles after all. As it works its way from arm to mouth in a perfect arc, my mother cuts in- ruining my slow motion dramatics and yells at the top of her lungs “DON’T TOUCH IT, IT’S POISON!”
I didn’t give it much thought until something remarkably similar showed up in a salad the adults were eating a few weeks later. So now we’re eating poison? Maybe we just didn’t like the dinner guests?
Fast forward many years. Whole chunks of time swim quickly by as I admire a diverse (and pricy!) selection at the farmers market. They are objects of wonder and beauty. Yet as mesmerized as I am by the little buggers I have no idea how they “work”. Why that structure? Why that colour. Why on that tree and not the other? How do they even grow? I’ve never seen mushroom seeds or pollen… What would happen if they were removed from the ecosystem? What would crumble? What would replace them?
I came to ITP with a few projects in mind. One item I wanted to explore was biomimicry. I graduate this semester and it has not yet permeated my work or studies. This class is a conscious effort to reverse that. I aim to study the underlying structural integrity, the shapes and webs and underbelly of these mystical creatures. Are these replicated in architecture somewhere in the world? Are they replicated in drug design etc..? While the literal mechanisms and material that construct fungus hold my immediate fascination other points of interest include their healing properties and how they are viewed in art and society at large.
This may manifest as using fungus as a substrate to build something durable, or unearthing and utilizing a particular mushroom’s inner webbings/structure. I am open to being swayed by the process and enabling my findings and research to impact the final output and content of the project.
