Bacteria Cellulose Planet

description
(a) Since kombucha is a living organism, not a substance, I want to use its still-growing characteristics to create organically changed tissues. In the HFF workshop, I tried to combine the dried kombucha membrane with the wet paper pulp and it went well.

However, after drying, due to the different shrinkage rates of the two, the surface became irregular undulating, and the paper pulp layer was still seperatable with bacterial membranes part.

(b) In this swatch, the pulp was put in vessel during the kombucha growing process, and it is expected that the bacterial membrane will form an organic combination with the pulp during the growth process and penetrate each other.

The result shows that the kombucha still doesn’t penetrage with paper pulp well. However the charcoal particle is found spreading on kombucha surface evenly, forming a meticulous texture, and after drying, the bacteria film will be flat, but the pulp is on it. Form the undulating surface.

(a) and (b) approaches gave different result and can be applied according to different need in the future.

material list
kombucha cellulose
paper mulberry pulp
activated charcoal powder
tea
brown sugar
wax

process photos
a. Mixing paper mulberry pulp with activated charcoal first, rinse over the extra activated charcoal powder, leave only the well mixed black pulp.
b. Prepare your kombucha liquid in conventional way,
c. Mix a. and b. fully and leave it for 7 days, wait till the kombucha membrane to get about 3mm thick.
d. Filter out the extra water, leave only the mixture of pulp and kombucha cellulose.
e. Drying.
f. Waxing, finishing.