Future Materials Bank, Maastricht
“The Future Materials Bank is an archive of materials that supports and promotes the transition towards ecologically conscious art and design practices. So, by collecting information and samples from makers around the world, the archive aims to inspire research and disseminate knowledge about sustainable materials.”
https://www.futurematerialsbank.com/material/scoby-3/
The Future Materials Bank, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht has recorded the Scoby probiotic microbial cellulose under the catergories: Bacteria, Biodegradable, Bioplastic, Recyclable, Regenerative and Smart Material. It is a sustainable material for sculpture.
“Jane Fox is attracted to an elemental engagement with matter. Her sculpture addresses the organic in more than shape…so we naturally turn to the facility in our thought and language to explain it through similarities – with tree-life, bone or stone; that is, with the matter upon which existence is built, grows and advances.” Martin Holman Art historian and writer.
Fermenting Scobys for Sculpture
The probiotic microbial cellulose is grown by fementing Scobys (symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeasts). The colonies are nutured, kept warm and fed traditionally with black tea and sugar.
Fermenting Scobys (Symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeasts)
Making Sculpture
The colonies grow into microbial cellulose sheets. The sheets are used as a bio-material for sculpture.
Qualities of the cellulose
The cellulose is visceral and moist. On removal from the fermentation culture the cellulose changes. Exposure to the air, drys the cellulose and it becomes skin-like; translucent, taut, wrinkled, blistered, fragile or leather-like.
Finished Sculpture
Connected/ Breathe-In/ Becoming Probiotic/ Becoming Plastic are a series of three prototype sculptures.
The Connected sculptures are evocative of human, animal and insect fragments; and microscopic forms. Bony, reminiscent of a ribcage, a pelvic girdle, a ball and socket joint and cross-species configurations.
Connected explores an intermingling of micro-plastics and microbial life across species, and so asks the question are we absorbing plastic as easily as beneficial spores and microbes?
Jane has an article published in Planet – The Welsh Internationalist magazine/ Welsh and International politics and culture called, ‘Becoming Probiotic – Health, ecology and our second brain’. ISSN 0048-4288. Therefore, this 2023 edition marks the NHS at 75.
https://www.planetmagazine.org.uk/planet-online/251/jane-fox