A foray into the aesthetic expressions of bacterial cellulose-knit textile composites challenging anthropocentric agency through human/non-human design collaboration
Define the problem/need you are solving or addressing with your project. How does it address the Open Call criteria, such as environmental impact, social engagement, circularity, user experience, resource efficiency, and community-driven solutions?
Bacterial Brickbats proposes self-assembling properties of bacterial cellulose (BC) delivering textiles for fashion applications BC is organic, compostable, and being treated only with beeswax, poses little environmental detriment. Scaffolds were manufactured from cotton yarn to maintain the library monomaterial, as this facilitated recycling and appeared to be BC’s preferred basal material. Making processes rely on bacterial organic growth processes, significantly reducing manufacturing costs, resource consumption, and chemical and water impact. Bacterial brickbats negotiates the systemic leap towards regenerative design by placing its main contribution in knowledge and its proposed method. It exemplifies what can be accomplished with available techniques and materials, but encourages investigative openness and iterations with different materials to better understand the interaction between living materials and textiles. This enhances localised design, as available materials will vary regionally and produce different results from the same methodology, and suggest a comparatively greater attachment formed between designer, artefact and non-human.
Please describe your project, reflecting on the concept, inspiration, materials, technical aspects, methods and process(es).
‘Bacterial Brickbats’ explores reassembly as a subsidiary property of bacterial-cellulose’s (BC) natural growth and self-assembling potential through a comprehensive material library. This consolidates the understanding of BC as a living textile and acknowledges BC’s organic intelligence as capable of designerly agency by rooting its design method in biological growth patterns and BC’s behaviour towards knitted textile scaffolds. From human perspectives, the proposed textiles probe for colour, texture and form studies exploring the optics of textile translation into artefact. Later stages speculate around situated artefact creation and body applications, emphasising transparency and light interaction as unique properties to BC-based composites. Proferring concurrence between bacterial processes and human design conventions, this multi-species approach heeds human and non-human roles in the design process by progressively and gradually shifting agency between them, affording the human the chance to observe, understand and design in synchrony with BC’s morphology and behaviour.
What do you think makes your project innovative compared to the existing efforts and ideas in the field it addresses?
Bacterial Brickbats takes a more-than-human approach to textile design-make potential by acknowledging the agency of non-human stakeholders collaboratively with the human designer. From technical perspectives, it relies on bacteria’s organic growth to assemble textiles and explores possible fashion future applications ; the artistry involved regales the human with the designerly expression of the non-human, and how to achieve this through collaboration. Artefact, partner, confidant,… the single-minded nature of living materials casts a unique light on design, as the nascent material itself dictates the final outcome. Deciphering what bacteria communicate in their own language illustrates the meticulousness of biodesign, a process that spills beyond textile making; from nurturing the bacteria to caring for them once the design flow concludes and the artefact moves on from the human designer’s hands. Through this approach, Bacterial Brickbats surpasses circular design, reaching for regenerative ways of designing and making textiles and fashion.
Does it impact or reflect young people need(s) and how?
By advocating for the inclusion of the non-human in textile and fashion design cycles, Bacterial Brickbats proposes novel pathways for design expression and development with a solid grounding in scientific investigation, facilitating the shift towards circular and regenerative economies crucial to our ecosystems’ wellbeing now and in future generations. Its roots in slow manufacturing encourages taking time to make and understand these textiles, as well as highlighting the importance of craft in the making of fashion and adapting its methods, visuals and ways of wearing/using to contemporary contexts, merging past with future, and illustrating how human needs are connected to nature and other species cohabiting these spaces.
