The Age of Algae: Seaweed, Systems & Regenerative Futures ft. Vasundhara Gaur & Simon Beirouti from Compound | 21

Plastic is everywhere, and not just in landfill. It’s in our clothes, our water, and the invisible systems that make 'single use' feel normal. We sit down with Simon and Vasundhara from Compound, a CoLabs venture exploring algae biomaterials, to ask a simple question with massive consequences: what if we could replace soft plastics with materials grown from seaweed?

Vasundhara brings an industrial design lens and a fast prototyping mindset, while Simon comes from tech and systems thinking. Together, they unpack why materials are the best place to start when you’re building towards a circular bioeconomy: fewer regulatory roadblocks than food, less capital intensity than carbon projects, and a direct path to everyday products people can actually touch. We also get into the uncomfortable history of petrochemical plastics, how wartime speed and cheap oil locked in “heat, beat, treat” manufacturing, and why the real challenge now is changing incentives, language, and consumer stress around recycling.

From invasive kelp like Wakame to local blue economy collaborations, we explore what resilient, bioregional supply chains could look like in Australia. Then we go deeper: biological time versus industrial time, designing for change and imperfection, and flipping the culture from unboxing to 'boxing it up' at the end of a product’s life.

If you care about regenerative materials, seaweed packaging, microplastics, PFAS, or life-centred design, hit play. Subscribe, share the episode with a mate, and leave a review so more people can find this work.

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This experimental and emergent podcast will continue adapting and evolving in response to our ever-changing environment and the community we support. If there are any topics you'd like us to cover, folks you'd like us to bring onto the show, or live events you feel would benefit the ecosystem, drop us a line.

We're working on and supporting a range of community-led, impact-oriented initiatives spanning conservation, bioremediation, synthetic biology, biomaterials, and systems innovation.

If you have an idea that has the potential to support the thriving of people and the planet, get in contact! We'd love to help you bring your bio-led idea to life. 
 
 

Transcript

Welcome To CoLabs And Complexity

Samuel Wines 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Stranger Tractor, an experimental podcast from CoLabs, a transdisciplinary innovation hub and biotechnology co-working lab based in Melbourne, Australia. I'm your co-host at Sam Wine, and alongside my co-founder Andrew Gray, we'll delve deep into the intersection of biology, technology, and society through the lens of complexity and systems thinking. Join us on a journey of discovery as we explore how transdisciplinary innovation informed by life's regenerative patterns and processes could help us catalyze a transition towards a thriving future for people and the planet. Welcome back to the Strange Attractor. This time we've sat down with Simon and Vasundra from Compound. So they are finding ways in which algae can contribute to the broader bioeconomy across materials, food, energy, health, all of those different domains. They've started with exploring ways in which algae can replace petrochemical plastics, specifically soft plastics. And it's a really exciting project to support as Vasundra is a designer, and Simon comes from a tech background. So it's fun for us to be supporting folks working in the lab who come from different disciplines because that brings a different lens and way of looking at things and doing things. So really excited to have them on board. Really believe in their vision and excited to see how we can support and help this become a really awesome venture. It's already plugging in with Ropa, one of our other members, who are extracting invasive kelp species. So Compound are now looking at using that to integrate it into their process to be able to use that kelp, as well as looking at collaborating with Off with the Pixies for with their OysterX product for Melbourne Design Week. So it's a fun little blue economy ecosystem that we're building here at Colabs, which is really exciting. If you or anyone that you know is interested in the blue economy, biomaterials, next-gen materials, or anything like that, or is just wants a space to be able to tinker, let us know. This is something that we're really, really trying to support the emergence of an ecosystem here in Australia. We need way more folks trying to find ways to build with biomaterials because they are kind of the only sustainable way in which we can look at building things in the future without depleting the very limited resources we have on this planet. So um, yeah, if that's something that you're interested in, please reach out. If that's something that you want to explore integrating into projects or anything like that, also reach out. We know some folks who we can put you in contact with. Um, and yeah, let's make this regenerative materials movement more of a thing here in Australia. All right, that's enough of a rant. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Vassundra and Simon from Compound. Sweet, awesome. Well, um, Vasundra, Simon, welcome. Thank you uh for coming onto the Strange Attractor. Um I know you've been busy almost seven days a week in the lab at the moment. Yep. Yeah, so I appreciate you guys making space to discuss what you're doing, the vision behind compound, and yeah, I'm really excited to delve into it.

Simon Beirouti 3:24

Yeah, so are we.

Samuel Wines 3:25

Cool. Um is there anywhere that you'd like to start? Like maybe a little bit of a background for each of you, just a little bit of a how you might introduce yourself if you're at Melbourne Design Week.

Meet Compound And The Blue Economy

Vasundhara Guar 3:37

And you were um yes, I can start off with that. Yeah. Um, so my background is basically industrial design. Um and I did my bachelor's in India. I then went to Italy to do my postgraduate in um specifically in watch and I got very well versed with all the um processes and mechanisms that go behind manufacturing. And I then went back to India, worked with group, it's one of the biggest um the world. Okay. And um their portfolio is very diversified. They operate from food to making products to farming, etc.

Simon Beirouti 4:29

T ransport, like everything. Even when I was over there, it was just like ta-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Samuel Wines 4:34

I've I've seen the brand, but never really been able to pinpoint what vertical they operated in because yeah, you just see it like on everything. Kind of like you got a Mitsubishi pen, and you're like, wait a minute, right? You do pens and engines and cars, and I was air conditioning, yeah. Yeah, um, cool.

Vasundhara Guar 4:52

Okay, it is. Um, and there is where I got um, I worked in the watch and jewelry design department for about four years.

Samuel Wines 5:02

Got a very good idea of how things are made, um, right from materials to processes to looking at post-processing services and also how everybody how quickly products move, you know, because when you say move, do you mean like um how quickly they go through the process of being made or how quickly they they turn over from like a planned obsolescence or a like I'm really curious what you mean by move there.

Vasundhara Guar 5:30

I think how quickly they can be made, as well as how quickly a consumer would today would be like, oh I love this, and the next minute would be like I'm gonna buy it. And after two days be like, this is even better. I'm going to you know, invest in this as well.

Samuel Wines 5:46

I do that with pens all the time.

Vasundhara Guar 5:49

Stationery is a big um yeah wonderland. Uh dangerous. Yeah, and at the same time, so with um creating products whereby I was designing about 200 watches a year, looking at the fact that those are just dialed, and then you would have the mass production of it. I tended to wonder as to what uh would happen after. And I realized that in this entire production system, which is so centralized, um where products go after is a very decentralized and very diversified, I think someone else's problem.

Samuel Wines 6:29

You know, it's like not my problem. Like you see a lot of this, as you would know, with the transition away from product-based um businesses towards service-based. So even in the like like a physical product, you know, you're starting to notice Apple now is like, oh, buy back your old thing, you know, because then they've got a constant stream of parts to be able to then reuse, and you're seeing more and more people look at transitioning to a model like that with resource scarcity and things happening. So um it's nice to hear that you kind of grocked that or intuited that when you were looking at it, you're like, where does all this go?

Vasundhara Guar 7:04

Yes.

Samuel Wines 7:04

What happens next?

Vasundhara Guar 7:06

Yeah. And I think I predominantly came to that thinking also because I was looking at this one vertical at that time because this particular trend of sustainability back in I think I can say 2018 was something that everybody was very crazy about. They wanted to know um what's happening, where the product is coming from, where is it going, what are you using, and I think that started this movement and led us to this area where we are today where everybody's more informative of what they know.

Samuel Wines 7:40

Yeah, but specifically for you, it was like, oh wow, I need to be doing more. And then you came to Australia where you did your masters, and you know, that was like three years ago now. Yeah, but no, four years ago. Uh yeah, yeah. Four is years ago. I started. So four years ago, like thinking about this before other people have thought about it today. Maybe before it was super trendy. But I I mean I can I can deeply resonate with that. So 208, 2016, 2015, I came across holistic science, complexity theory, systems thinking. I'm like, this is the shit. This this provides a conceptual framework for how I've been trying to perceive reality that allows me to make sense of the world through that like living systems lens, but there was no people locally real. Like there was a there were there's not no people, there was quite a few people locally, but it was by no means you know, within the Overton window of what would be considered normal. Um, and it's still like still struggling to come through the the ranks now. I think people are kind of getting a hold of like circular economy and complexity and systems thinking a bit more now. Like things like um House of Complexity in Sydney have popped up, um, you know, the Griffith Center for Systems um innovation has been and gone. But there's just yeah, it's it's taken a while to kind of I feel like we're 15 years behind, you know, whether it's design or biotech compared to like Europe. Um and yeah, I found it can be quite a challenge, and it's that's why it's so nice to see you guys here now as well. Like you've been exploring this, you've been sitting with it, mulling on it, percolating for the last, you know, seven to seven to ten years. And then it's like, all right, let's make the things happen. And yeah, from my perspective, that's part of why we set up collabs was because there wasn't a space for people to play with this sort of stuff, and there weren't many people speaking from that like position, and we really need spaces for people to come together to do transdisciplinary innovation, otherwise it's just gonna be an idea and not a like physical reality that we can try and manifest collectively.

Vasundhara Guar 9:41

Um anyway, bit of a rant, but also that actually has made a big um I can see a leap in how we have also come across to making these products today because before this it was me at my kitchen bend, you know.

Samuel Wines 9:58

And then classic founder story.

Vasundhara Guar 10:00

Yeah, and I did not know um all the types of say protocols and the the kind of um controlled systems that I can use up until I came into a lab space where I was like, okay, I can make this something more serious. You know, I have the opportunity to really take it and do it better. So I should leverage that and work on it. And this platform that has been provided by you has um you can see from where we started in the past two months to now, we have accomplished making something which is pretty decent.

Samuel Wines 10:32

Still kind of rustic, but pretty much it's getting that sense. That's exciting to see. Yeah, it's um, I think, like we've said, so this is so cool. So this is the Coca one. Yeah, um, we'll we'll attempt to to show cameras at some point, but um yeah, it's so it's been such a I remember when you told me um, yeah, we got Melbourne Design Week, we want to display all of these different things. I was just like I love the the mindset of a designer of being like, yeah, and then the reality of like science, and you're like, no, okay, but you've actually far exceeded my expectations of what you'd be able to create in such a short amount of time. So I'd love to understand, like, we'll get to you, I promise. Yeah, don't worry about it. This is just no. Um, I'd I'd love to understand your creative process, and because you've neither of you have come from a biology background, if I'm correct. No. Um, and how does that shape or inform, like

Designers Prototyping Inside A Lab

Samuel Wines 11:32

because naive beginners mind, I'm curious to know if you're like how you've managed to get to so many different varying products um pretty quickly. Um, because as I as I said, like if if when I see a scientist do this, it's a lot slower, a lot more considered. Like, let me run that and then systematic. Yeah, yeah. So, not that there's anything wrong with that. Uh, this is why I think transdisciplinarity is so important, is that you can have people come across and be like, boom, here's like 10 different products in like three weeks. So, yeah, did you want to speak to that?

Vasundhara Guar 12:05

Yeah, I think um being trained as a designer, your first um instinct is to see whether um can I can I make if I have an idea, can I make a paper prototype of it just to see how it looks and feels, you know. Um so we want to try and have quick quicker prototypes just to understand, say in terms of material, the material better, the material more, or even um as opposed to yes, there's science, but with design, a lot of it is um also understanding the intuition and how you would feel about you know what you're doing and what you're creating.

Samuel Wines 12:46

So important for I speak to this all the time, the need to balance multiple ways of knowing. So it's not just like science is propositional, right? That's great, but you know, there is like feeling, like embodied somatic feeling, there's intuition and emotion. All of those things come into play. You know, the scientific method is a lens through which we can look through, but in reality, even using that, even though they say it's not values-based, that is a value set through which you're perceiving the world. Taking that step back, it's like, yeah, you want to be taking that approach when you're looking at creating or doing or designing or making. And if science is part of that, it's it is a part but not the whole. And bringing all of that together, yeah. I I thought you'd say something like that. So I was very excited to sort of see if you'd go there.

Vasundhara Guar 13:29

Yeah, perfectly. And I mean, uh, even in terms of us being humans, we have this data set with us, you know, which is informed on our genes from way back.

Samuel Wines 13:39

With the first LLMs. Yeah.

Vasundhara Guar 13:42

Yeah. So it's almost like even when I first touched seaweed, I was like, wow, this feels nourishing, you know, it feels good. It's something that's slightly slimy, can't see on your hand, whereof after that your hand feels good, you know. So how um nature informs us? Nature has its own way of informing us, and we have our own way of perceiving it. And where is it that we meet? And that intersection through the lens of biology, technology, I think design becomes that that little, I think, intersection point where you are able to.

Samuel Wines 14:20

Yeah, the Venn diagram.

Vasundhara Guar 14:22

Yes, yeah.

Samuel Wines 14:23

I feel like what you just said also reminds me. Are you familiar with David White? He's a poet. Um, he speaks about the conversational nature of reality, um, and how we are always in dialogue with nature, yeah, which is something like Nora Bateson and quite a few others in like Gregory Bates and father, and like the semiotics movement, they're like everything is communication, everything is dialogue. Um, it's just that we've anthropomorphized communication to mean words, yeah, or you know, maybe physical actions. But yeah, to your point, nature is always communicating and exchanging information with us if we widen our circumference of care or perception to acknowledge and allow that to inform us. Um, so yeah, it makes sense to me that you know you're having that tacit feeling and reaction, and you're like, okay, cool. And that then gives you an intuition of how that might work or what you might be able to do with it.

Vasundhara Guar 15:15

Correct.

Samuel Wines 15:16

And then you use something like a science to go, and then how might I create that and make that repeatable, reproducible, and then bringing in the design lens of can we make that desirable, viable, and feasible? Correct. And then how do we use like design thinking to do iterative feedback loops on how we can make it happen quickly?

Vasundhara Guar 15:33

Yep.

Samuel Wines 15:33

That to me, like holistic science, ecological or regenerative design, um, and then like the systems thinking, like bringing those together is such a formidable way to approach like challenge-led innovation, which is to me how I see that you've come at this sort of project, um, which is pretty exciting. Yeah, you've put it on very well. Yeah. Um even if you take it back a step, it's like one of your uh role models in a way is like Da Vinci. And Da Vinci is like one of the earliest system thinkers, like understood movement, human biology, engineering, but at its core was just a designer and was able to like and an artist, yeah, and just like plug these things together. And people will think of him as yeah, just an engineer, but it's like no, that was like one small aspect of this bigger picture, which is yeah, what we're always focusing on now.

Vasundhara Guar 16:25

And the simple thing, the simple things in nature is something that we also need to observe. For example, you might have heard of the golden ratio.

Samuel Wines 16:32

Oh, yeah, Fibonacci spirals, golden ratio, all that sort of stuff. The patterns in nature actually fascinating.

Vasundhara Guar 16:38

Absolutely blew my mind when I went to design school and I learned about it. And then I went to my very engineered dad. I was like, Did you know about the golden ratio? He's like, No. I was like, look, this is the way you know a flower blooms, or this is the way patterns are repeated in nature.

Samuel Wines 16:53

Yeah, so this is goes exactly to that point before when I discovered this like language of complexity, fractals, systems thinking, um, you know, nonlinear dynamics, scale, like multi-scalar sort of systems, it's like, oh shit, like that is exactly to your point, like when you look out in nature, that's just the whole thing. Yeah, you know, it's not a linear mechanistic process, it's this organic thing that's spiraling, twirling, branching. And when you have the the language, the conceptual language to be able to see those patterns in nature, it just makes everything feel so much more alive and symbiotic, yeah. And to that point, then you end up thinking much more like a Da Vinci, or you think much more like a lot of the original design that you see from humans is is biomimetic in a way. It's like you'll see lots of the fractal loops on like the old school architecture and patterns and loops and circles, and the flower of life is across every single culture. We've intuited and seen these patterns. It's only really with not that there's anything wrong with modern design, but it's definitely we've had a splinter point, which we've then isolated ourselves from nature and uh starting to look at design through like a a bit more of an abstract lens or a bit more of like a utility or human-centered design, no offense. It's like it's great that we're thinking about people, but like thinking about people is also why we've overshot like six or five of the planetary boundaries. Okay, um, so it's a it's like you can see how design can be a force for good, and how even in the times of the past, it's informed like the design of Florence, something like that. You're like, wow, beautiful city, you know, and then modern places like oh, I don't know, um Detroit, and it's just like a square grid, and you're like, oh yeah, Melbourne CBD, yeah, like square. Or even where we are right now, this is all square, all square, and trying to become more open and just natural, but trying to do our best, yeah.

Vasundhara Guar 18:54

Yeah, um, no, you're right. Um, especially when it comes to um how um this aspect would inform design, and the greatest um, I think, skill here that we as designers also try to put to use is observation. Um a lot of it um all through design school, we are so keen on looking at forms and so um focused on you know the I can say the the the composition of things, whether it's patents, materials, um, what you're working with, the mechanism that um when you're doing it in nature as well, you are trying to grab that information and put it into your work. And if you're at that point where you are trying to do that, um that informs a whole new system of design thinking, which um I think design schools now are really trying to focus on.

Samuel Wines 19:55

Yeah, they definitely I mean so biomimicry, Janine Benya sort of popularized that concept in the 2000s. Now there's master's programs at Arizona State Uni in biomimicry. Um like we've been chatting with a whole bunch of those folks about could we set up an educational institute here in Australia or partner with them to run a program to try and make stuff happen. So it feels like it is becoming way more trendy, but there's always like a danger with the the trendiness of terms. Um, but that's all right, I reckon

From Tech Questions To Seaweed Work

Samuel Wines 20:25

we'll survive, we'll make it work. Yeah, but um I feel like we should probably loop back. Yeah, I don't want you to feel left out over there. Try to find my way to weave it in and be like, let's not get off topic. Um but I think for me, I wasn't exactly having an existential crisis or anything, but I started to come across Jacques Fresco's work, um, and the seasteading as well. And then started to see that there have been people, you know, that have well, Jacques Fresco died a few years ago now, but you know, he was in his hundreds and from such an early age was so focused on system design. Like, how can we build communities that are autonomous, um focus on human like abundance versus this kind of like extractive process? Does he know Bucky Fuller? That sounds very Buckminster Fuller. Are you familiar with Bucky Fuller? No, I'm not. Um, the moment of the intro, you yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, he's definitely loved it. Um just to his work for sure. Um, but that got the ball rolling to that, oh, there are these bigger things, like the bubble that I lived in within Australia was like one subset of this greater ecosystem. And then looking at how my internal system can change, then led to how can I change the external? Um, and yeah, fast forward a few years, it's basically working within tech, um, but seeing how like sort of like linear that is, not really changing that much. Obviously, it's different now with AI. And now it's more okay. How can we bridge the two? How can we leverage this automation AI intelligence layer that's going to change humanity to then apply that into essentially humans, biology, the world at large for the greater good? Um, and yeah, here we are today essentially working with like very kind of like rustic approach. Um, you keep saying rustic, but yeah, I mean it's still used. I get what you mean. It's it's a work in progress, but that's I don't know, to me, that's a part of the beauty of it, to be fair. But okay, so and what did you do prior to delving into this? Because this is a relatively recent um like initiative or project for you. Like, what's what informed your way of thinking or being? Like, how did you end up coming across that sort of that work? You said existential crisis. Were you doing something beforehand where you're like, I feel like a cog in the machine? Yeah, I mean the usual, you know, like it's either working or finding a job or trying to figure out where to apply myself. And yeah, it it just felt like I wasn't really moving the needle forward. So you could ask my parents this, uh, Melbourne Design Week, but it'd be like, what was he doing? Nothing. Or if he was doing something, it just didn't feel like anything that was progressing. So yeah, it was just like I have to go against the grain. It was working for startups that were doing something new and innovative. It was um trying to learn abstract topics uh that people were just not talking about. You know, it's like could have considered me like a what is it, a um a conspiracy theorist. But it's not really, it's more like here's a topic that no one delves into. Let's try to find some substance that actually can benefit people. I I understand and resonate with this notion. I think, are you familiar with the flamerian image? It's like the the photo of a dude who is like leaning up underneath the earth and has like pulled it, pulled up a bit of a veil, and he can see the stars, and it's kind of like sort of signal. I'll get a I'll get a photo up there. It it's something that's definitely in forms, just my way of thinking with the world, is like there is all it's like kind of like a Plato's cave allegory, cave analogy, like sometimes you're gonna be so bound to the chains in that cave, and and you kind of think that normality is the all these shadows that we're getting shown. But if you can break free from those cages and and go up into the like where there's actual sun and trees and nature, you're like, damn, okay, there is so much more to this world. Exactly. And I I resonate because I had that same sort of thinking of just trying to make sense of things, and yeah, sure, there are some conspiratorial elements of things, but like, I mean, if you just use the word conspire, like we're conspiring right now, we're breathing together whilst exploring this, right? So, conspiracy theory, first of all, here's a fun one. It was a psy-up from the CIA to discredit anyone who, and you can broscience me here, and someone can prove that it's not a thing. It was a it was a psy-up to try and stop people questioning whether or not JR JRFK was assassinated by um the like was an inside job or not. So they were trying to discredit people and they came up with the term conspiracy theorist. Fun fact. Interesting. Um but yeah, I think it's often used to label people who are thinking about things that are a little bit different. But usually, don't get me wrong, like a lot of conspiracy theorists, their sense making is way off their pattern matching where there's no patterns at all. And it's it's it's if you use like the three types of facts, like there's physical reality facts, like you could like arguing with gravity being real when you run off a cliff, like that's that's that's gonna be a thing, right? Um, you know, then there's a second, which is like social facts. Yeah, so you know, um maybe 30 or 40 years ago, um uh if you're like someone who is gay or something like that, um, you might not be super open about it. You might not want to talk about it in public because you might be worried about how that will be impacted, right? And then you fast forward to now, and it's like, yeah, I mean, you be whatever you want to be. Like, of course, that's totally fine, at least in in the context that we're in in Australia. Um, you know, and that's positive social like growth, but that was still a fact, you know, back then that even though it might have been your personal truth that you are like Yeah, it's not the social truth, it's not the social truth. So then there's that that's the third one is the personal truth. And the issue is like a lot of people have this like personal or social truth and confuse it with the physical truths. So it's like you know, they might be like they take something here that's factual, take something there that's factual, and then make this massive cognitive leap and are like, yeah, and like the earth's flat, because if I look at it from here, I can't see a curve, and it's like phenomenologically, you are you're spot on. You it's pretty hard to see the curve unless you climb up to like 1.5 K's above, and then you can start to maybe see it if you really try. But it's that same sort of thing, it's like even with trying to find new knowledge that so for example, um, when I was into like health things back in the day, it's like, okay, like I'm pretty sure fat's not bad for you, but like 20 years ago, fat was the devil's ridiculed, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, oh, what do you know? It's like actually too many carbs isn't that great for you. So it's like these things are constantly changing, and this is how like science or thinking adapts and evolves over time is that there are people who have these ideas on the fringe, and it's that edge of emergence which is where the real new ideas tend to bubble up from. It's actually the most exciting place to be, but it is a frontier, and you're always gonna have like I don't know, um the naysayers be like, no, yeah, or you're gonna have conspiracy theorists or cult, cult-like figures who are gonna try and co-opt it and use it for their own gain. But you know, it's yeah, it's just really interesting hearing you speak to that because I had the same thing with like the holistic science complexity. I'm like, why are we not talking about this? Why is everything so reductionist? You know, and then it feels like we're now kind of coming around to it. So um, I just empathize with that. Yeah, no, for sure. Because I clearly remember the one video that I think set me on that trajectory, which was um the top five biohackers, and it was uh people implanting like antennas in their brain so they can communicate with people via radio wave. Yeah, um, but the most sane one is like Dave Asprey with bulletproof coffee. Yeah, and it was like whoa big fan of the bulletproof coffee that just yeah, set me on that trajectory, and then like as a swimmer, and then I guess as part of like a fishing family, seaweed was then this like oh I'm I've got a fish, no, it's seaweed, like it. And then it's literally called weed, you know. So we're framing it in a negative to begin with, literally, um, and then to understand that you know, again, this is like one fringe thing that's underexplored, underutilized, and it has all these benefits from material to food to fuel. Um, and there's a fourth one as well. Uh like I said health, uh yeah, so just general health. Yeah. So how can we how can we like empower people with something that is fast growing, simple to grow as well, um and very nutritive, very nutritive and just readily available as well. So pull that back if we're gonna lean forward. Um yeah, it is I think kelp uh and like microalgae, macroalgae, they're both fascinating um options for us to explore when we try and bring about a more circular bio-based and regenerative future. There is so much application across um those, I guess what we call like pillars of the bioeconomy that you sort of called out there. Um, I'm curious what drew you to um so like energy,

Choosing Materials As The Starting Point

Samuel Wines 30:08

health, materials, um, food systems, like what drew you into the material side of things first? So we initially started looking at how we could leverage micro and macro for carbon sequestering. And like that's that's a big task in itself, something that we're already putting billions of dollars into globally. Um, but it's like, is that feasible now in the short term? No. We then looked at food, um, and yes, doable, but again, there's a lot of like red tape that we would have to go through. And it was like the low-hanging fruit was material. And how can we do that? We can essentially buy like derived powders from red seaweed and even some brown kelp, and just validate that yes, this is possible. You know, there are already companies validating it, but in terms of us here in Australia, it's a way that we can validate it, we can leverage essentially Versundra's design skills, have that into everyday products, like this light potentially in the future, and just be like, cool, there is an alternative path here.

Vasundhara Guar 31:19

So And it's also looking at the fact that as a starting point, um, this is something that, say, for example, I know more about in terms of design, so I can work on it.

Samuel Wines 31:32

It's very stock standard design school is like build a product, design product versus like design a whole system. Like futures thinking is still a thing, yeah. But like designing an ecosystem of initiatives that all interweave, which when I look at like the compound farm, compound labs, compound community, or commons, like the the vision that you've got there is like 100% yes. But to that point, it's like that is a a gesture towards a direction or a vector that you want to go towards, but you got to start somewhere, and then this is something that you can find as a drop-in replacement for petrochemical plastics and then sort of move on from there because like not only is it good for plastics, but even fuel, even um fertilizers. So there's so many ways in which you know, maybe like parts of this that don't end up being used can be repurposed and close the loop into other value-added products. Um but yeah, is there any way you want to go from here? Um, I think it's yeah, just like on that one thought exercise I think people can actually start to think about is if you have a manufacturing or processing plant for petrochemicals, it's heated close to 800 degrees just to make the actual plastic itself. Um, and there's like one case of a shipping container with the plastic pellets that fell overboard, washed up on beaches. They look like rocks, but they're not. So if you then think, okay, that's high impact, bad for the environment. But if you were to drop uh, even when we clean lab equipment, spray water, like that can go down the sink. It's it's low impact.

Vasundhara Guar 33:11

Yeah, it has nothing toxic in it. Nothing.

Samuel Wines 33:14

So this is the grim chemistry concept, and back to what you're saying there, like less energy. So Janine Benius talks about like heat beaten treat, like our current modern industrial civilization is built on that, and then digging up really random shit out of the ground, which should probably fucking stay down there because it'll kill us. Yeah, literally. And instead of using that, we're designing using life's principles, which is like using the most abundant um uh what do you call those things? My god, uh, atoms in the universe, you know, the the basic elements. So we're gonna be using those to design and create things first and foremost, and the ones that are friendly towards life, and then trying to make things at ambient room temperature, yeah, you know, rather than relying on crazy amounts of heat. So I mean, the fact that you've already, you know, embodied a few of those with this is uh is really exciting to see. Um, and it's something that we hope more and more folks who venture into this space can start incorporating like what you would call like life centered design as well. Correct. Um, so yeah, that's really exciting to hear that you're just like you're from the onset, you're trying to bake that in. Yes. Because a lot of people are come to it and then go, you know, well, if I try and apply that to my current process or where I currently am, it's gonna take a lot of time, money, you know, but I'm just so familiar with this. So and to their defense, it's like we were talking about this last night. Um it was in 18 1870, is when the first sort of like plastic was made. Um it was like cellulose, and then it was then uh exhibited in London, and then fast forward like 40 odd years later, um, I think it was German. Is this a PHA? It was PHA discovered ages ago, wasn't it? Well just wasn't commercial something? Yeah, um late 1800s for like a first kind of like plastic, yeah, and then early 1900s for something that was synthetic and um and that got the ball rolling.

Vasundhara Guar 35:18

Yeah, but it's funny how sorry.

Samuel Wines 35:20

Oh no, it's okay.

Vasundhara Guar 35:21

Yeah, it's funny how they didn't take the bio-based approach and they decided to be just like we went with a synthetic approach.

Samuel Wines 35:26

It'll be the exact same time that we came up with. So you know that we came up with solar and electric cars before petrol um or in concurrent timeline with it. But then what happened is we made it really fucking easy to tap into oil. Yes, so it actually became way more cost-effective to just do oil instead of electric. I dare say this would have been around the same time, so like we would have been using rubber, like shellac, cellulose, um, so you know, rubber from trees, shellac, I think, from shell like insects, and then cellulose plant fibers and all that sort of stuff. So um, yeah, from what I got here, let's have a look. So the first semi-synthetic were late 1800s, cellulose nitrate, yep. Um and then yeah, milk proteins as well. So casein was used for buttons and jewelry, and then yeah, it was 1920s that we switched to petroleum-based synthetics with bakerite, was the first one. Yep, baker light. Um, and yeah, so it's put aside because of the cost of oil. Um, but yeah, it's only just really been rediscovered now. But I imagine, man, this stuff would have been crushed from like a PR slash perverse interests perspective by folks in the medical industry. Like it's possible that's the case, more it's likely the case, actually. Um, but it's also a where is technology and engineering at? Like at the time, everything is just so crude, it's big, it's heavy, it's dirty. So try to go in or trying to go down that cleaner path just wasn't realistic back then. And it's also costs a cost thing, it's it was more money in that crude approach, yeah. And it's also kind of I I love to think of it as being like a cabal, but realistically as well, to your point, it's the incentives as well, right? Like designers would like if if you said to a designer, here is a frame through which I want you to look at this thing. So, like, prime example being Gore-Tex, um, make this water repellent. It's like, cool, if that's your only design parameter, make this water repellent, not make this water repellent and ensure that it doesn't cause liver failure and kill people by just existing. Um you know, so that they they they succeeded in their main design intent, but not having the other one in there, which is and now also ensure it's life-friendly chemistry. Yeah, that I think is a big shift. And I feel like a lot of the time, you know, I like to think it's not that I like to think people are evil, but it's just I think it's really reassuring to try and assume that someone's got worse morals than you. Well, they're just doing that because they're an arsehole. Where it's like realistically, it might just be like they're nice, great people, they're a part of a system where they don't really have much of a choice, and these are the parameters they've been given to work with, and that's why we get the exact output that we're getting. Yeah. Um, which is way less like you can't point a finger. No. But it's more probably more accurate to how I think. Well, I think the bell curve is essentially applied to everyone in life. You're going to have you know, the mundane, the boring, the average, the exceptional, and that applies to human morals as well. You're always gonna have the really good and the really bad.

Vasundhara Guar 38:44

And I think another thing that just to uh yeah, go back on that. I think um along with everything in the 19, I think early 1920s, what informed most of I think the trajectory came about. And I think it was during this World War period where there had to be so much innovation. They had to look at the speed essentially, actually.

Samuel Wines 39:12

Yeah, yeah.

Vasundhara Guar 39:17

Communication so much of what we got come from wartime economy. Textile genes.

Samuel Wines 39:24

All of our good fashion, I think.

Vasundhara Guar 39:26

Yes, most of it has come from that time, and I think that has basically spiraled into the world we're living in today.

Samuel Wines 39:34

Um we just turn instead of turning the machines off, we're like, fuck, how do we keep making all this stuff like globalization? So maybe we just make things for everyone, which made sense at the time if you thought that the earth was infinite and there was no shortage of resources, but you know, infinite growth on a finite planet, we all know, is yeah, self-sustainable. Self-terminating, so it's not gonna happen um forever, and we're already seeing resource wars kicking off, so yeah, it's a thing. Like Russia taking Ukraine and um the stuff happening in the Middle East. Um, these things are very resource-based as well as political. Um, but stuff like that's gonna just keep happening until we find ways to work with more abundant materials and things from like place. Hence why I always sort of go on about the bioregional transitions and the need to try and work with the atoms that you've got within that region, um, and then maybe ideas and things come from overseas, but try and work with keeping things as local as you can, which

Why Petrochemical Plastics Took Over

Samuel Wines 40:35

is what's so exciting about this as well, right? Like, you know, I'm I'm sure you're prototyping with stuff where you're just sort of getting it to begin with, but um, from wherever it can be ordered from. But the long-term thing here is being able to work with someone like like a ropa um or other people who might be able to provide you with feedstock, absolutely, like local feedstock, and then being able to convert that into like products, which I just think is such an exciting beginning of kicking off like the blue economy.

Vasundhara Guar 41:05

Additionally, um, there's this one thing which I came across in design school, which I find very interesting, is the pure reversal design theory.

Samuel Wines 41:13

Oh, I love it. Yeah, yeah, as a uh Tulo Escalar.

Vasundhara Guar 41:18

And um I think in India we were trying to sort of put that into practice as well because we are trying to step away from this uh well, he terms it as the um colonialist way of uh living. And you know, you you're taking away yourself from like community, from your craft, from your local um uh you can say lifestyle and how uh your immediate environment would inform you of say the decisions that you would make. Um and this universal design theory is something which I feel we can really bring into play in Australia, and we can try and weave that into this bio-economy culture that is building up here now. Um we are abundant on resource, it's just about how we are able to responsibly manage everything, and which is a challenge. Yeah, which is a challenge. Yes, but it's doable.

Samuel Wines 42:23

It it obviously is doable. Indigenous folks who've been living here for you know anything up to hundreds of thousands of years have been um, you know, it's interesting. Initially, you you look and you see like they're like, Oh shit, we might have uh wiped out the megafauna. But you know, from these early interactions, learning okay, my my interactions with the environment have a like a direct outcome. So, you know, they've they've figured out ways to live in symbiosis within the carrying capacity of a bioregion, albeit this was pre-industrial sort of um, so it's very different to now, but there's so much that we can even learn from that in a way that's trying to not be exploitative of that way of like knowing and understanding and doing things. Um, but yeah, it is so it's so interesting to that point. Like, I we really do have the potential here to to do amazing things in this space. It just we have to create the enabling conditions for it to emerge. Um, but so far, Australia has primarily been designed and structured as an extractivist colony that takes all of the resources and gives them to multinational organizations, whether that's our gas, our coal, all of our resources um for little to no tax. The whole thing's been set up to do that intentionally, and then we kind of are just like attachments to that system um that help kind of keep it all going. And then obviously, you know, serp number one service export is universities, so we just convince people to come and come and get degrees um because they think that it's like good. Um, and then I'm one of them. Yeah, yeah. No, well, I'm grateful for that though. I'm glad that you've learned these things in in in your Uni. But it's like we we have a lot of uh retooling of the dark matter, of the invisible social structures that underlie the patterns that shape our culture. And we really need to be also addressing that in unison with trying to build out the new infrastructure of the future. You know, it's not one or the other, it's kind of like both and. And it feels like this is like we're starting to see that now. And that was why, you know, I could really see like building a space like this as like the starting point to create a place for people to come together where you can then start exploring how do we create cultures or an ecosystem that adopts this worldview or way of looking at things. Um, so yeah, it's very much to use a Bucky Fuller quote: like, how might we um not necessarily compete with the current system, but how might we design a new system that makes the old one obsolete? But in a way in which we can still support the transition of that or the hospicing of modernity into a more viable way of relating to the world. Um so he yeah, he has this concept of the world game, which is how might we make the world work for 100% of people in the shortest possible time with little to no environmental detrimental impact. Um and that's kind of informed like what we're trying to do here. It's like, all right, the world game, that's what we're trying to do. How do we make that happen? And you know, when you guys applied to the impact program, I was like sick. These are people who are whether or not we've been reading the same things, they're like, you know, we might have come to this from different places, but we're you know we're joining as different tributaries to the same river system, yeah. You know, so it's really nice to see you guys come through and be able to provide the support to help you bring these ideas to life.

Vasundhara Guar 45:50

Yeah, but speaking of the world game, it's almost like this term I came across uh Protopia.

Samuel Wines 45:56

Yeah, yeah, that Protopian futures. Yes, yes.

Vasundhara Guar 45:59

I think it's basically you're working towards making it a better place one step at a time versus dreaming up of a utopia, which would be your you know, they're not always good utopias.

Samuel Wines 46:11

No. I mean they they work in theory, but it's like they usually end up being uh like a dictatorship or autocratic kind of like if anyone built one of these cities, again, like Russia, uh uh Jacques Fresco was envisioning, it's like what happens next, like who runs it? How do you govern it? I mean, his approach was actually leveraging AI. Like he was thinking, like, yeah, that would be the sort of governing system, but again, whether it's applicable, can we do that at scale now when we're getting close to it? But yeah, yeah, it's uh it's a fascinating one with the AI stuff, right? Because like I don't know if you've seen the studies that um they get a bunch of AI into a room, like most of them will like pull the trigger on nukes if you have them playing out like a game theoretic like war sort of context. Yeah, but that's a thing. Um his name is Jan Lee Ken. So he he was like leading AI at Meta for a bit. I think he's now doing his own thing, but he was like, How can you have an LLMP agentic if it doesn't actually know the answer to what comes next? Like my action, I'm gonna like I I'm good at the next action. But why am I making that decision if I don't know the outcome to that action? So it was like we if we're going down the path of agenti systems based on LLMs, that's a dangerous path. So that's possibly why maybe it's the AI versus LLM, like if we distinguish the two. Yeah, to your point. If it is just predicting next word outcomes, it's probably not the best. Not the best thing for codes. Correct. Yeah, so that's an interesting space that like I always have in the back of my head, like what's the next thing? Um, you know, the there was a wait but why article, um, Jesus, like 10 years ago that I read, and it was talking about just basic AI to AGI to then ASI. I mean, that'll be an interesting uh pathway that will happen probably in the next like five to ten years. ASI uh like artificial superintelligence. Okay, so because that so that's separate to general. Okay. Yeah. So I would think ASI is like basically the collective species intelligence. Do we have enough compute or energy to make that happen? Not yet. Not unless we do fusion. I don't know. Fusion plus space. I don't see the space thing happening, to be fair. Like, I I love all this sort of shit and I want us to be like multiplanetary. But like, unless we have a breakthrough in our ways of creating and generating energy, I think we're headed for a bit of a simplification to use like Nate Hagen's framing. I feel like you know, probably going past peak oil. I think things are gonna get crazy expensive and hard to do, where stuff like this will actually get a lot more cost competitive if energy prices go up. Yep. So maybe the collapse of current civilization is a good thing for um algae-based biomaterials, but um yeah, I know it's a little bit of a detour from where you might have been going. No, not at all, because if we think about it, I was gonna mention it before, but like the conflict in the Middle East, it's almost like cool, too much reliance on a region for oil does impact the global economy, and now people are being pushed towards more electrification of vehicles, um, power at home. So, yes, at like a smaller, uh less impact method, people are becoming energy reliant, but at a global level, we we move up the cardershev scale in terms of energy production and then utilization of it as well. So, energy probably won't be an issue if we move off petrol, then or slowly move off petrol, the cost of plastics will actually go up. So we need the alternatives. Um, and then yeah, we start to move more towards that extractive process to a biobase growth approach as well. Yeah, I mean, so roofing off what you're talking about is um are you guys familiar with the adaptive cycle? I think we know it, but it's kind of like complex systems theory stuff, but it's like uh if you you need to wait for the right time for a system to be able to intervene. And right now we've got quite a fragile multi, multi-continental, six, six-continent supply chain providing us with everything, it's super fragile. Interesting. Having something like this happen, that means that what was somewhat stable, you know, this petrochemicals-based system is becoming like much more unstable.

Energy Shocks And System Change Timing

Samuel Wines 50:55

So, like the basin of attraction that brings that together is sort of rising, and like it's has the potential to just like tip out and go somewhere else. So once you enter, and if you look at this as a figure of eight, once you start entering what is the collapse phase, so currently we're in like a bit of a rigid, it's called rigid or conservative phase, where it's like we try and keep things as they are, bureaucracy, lots of bureaucracy. Let's keep it the same, let's just try and keep doing business as usual. You get to a point at which it just collapses because it's like the weight of it falls apart, right? And during that collapse phase, you have a release phase. So things are a bit chaotic, but from that chaos, you know, the seeds of a new future can be planted, and then you can steward that out into a new growth phase. Yeah, interesting. So that that is so when we think of like complexity informed challenge-led innovation, it's like you know, sometimes a great idea is a great idea from the 1920s, right? But it might take a hundred years for that for it to be like take off. Fuck yeah, let's um let's send it, let's make this happen. So, especially with this sort of biomaterials thing, it feels like now you're coming into this at actually perfect time because we're realizing like the veil has been lifted up, you know, it's the apocalypse to use the term properly. Literally, over the last like what, two months, we've seen more bioplastic stuff online. Obviously, now we're like in that algorithm, cool, fantastic. But even just the awareness of microplastics, like I've been talking about this for so long, like just don't have plastic bottles. Maybe if that's the case, yeah. Yeah, um, and then now to see people actually becoming aware of it, where it's oh, drink filtered water because there's yeah, I'm all we've been on that for a while now, yeah. But um, like I would almost rather go thirsty for filtered water tomorrow than drink tap water today. Um I try and explain this to some people, and I get very interesting looks. But but I'm but I'm with you on that. It's like heaven forbid you try and find underwear that don't have plastic in them. Dude, it took me so long to find like like there's a few brands that I've found now that but like everything has synthetic something in it, yeah. It's like it's actually insane when you when you look at like how perverse, like and how diffuse petrochemical plastics are with within everything. Um, but yeah, to your point, there's a lot of stuff coming through the ranks now, and it's really exciting to see more and more potential just awareness, I think is it's a good that's the inflection point. Well, that shifts that window, like we were talking about when you were saying at the very start, it's like more people are aware of it, the the realm of possibility expands, and then suddenly bringing something like this in, people are like actually ready and receptive to it. Correct, yeah. Um, and I really think that we're kind of getting there now with it, which is really exciting. Yeah. So if we like fast forward like 10 to 20 years, um what sort of materials do you think algae has the chance to replace without people even noticing? So so far from what we've seen, um well, if we say microalgae, it's biofuel if a lit a barrel of oil is above 100. Um, there's the fertilizers, the stimulants with that. Um obviously people are focusing on high-quality food as well. So that's where they use spirulina and chlorella. Um and then if we look at macro algae, it's its usage in places that we've already discussed.

Vasundhara Guar 54:33

But what do you think people would be one thing that people would not expect it to be algae?

Samuel Wines 54:38

Yeah, I mean, yarn.

Vasundhara Guar 54:42

Yarn is still there, this algae yarn.

Samuel Wines 54:44

But still, we're talking now about like high quality, mass-produced, you know.

Vasundhara Guar 54:50

Yeah. Imagine. I kind of feel that if we're looking at things and materials, I think the entire dialogue for material design is now how can you grow it versus how can you manufacture it?

Samuel Wines 55:04

This is like the um uh yeah, that's the whole biodesign grown, not made mentality, or like, or things fall together. Like, how do we work with like biology's natural instinct to bring things together?

Vasundhara Guar 55:19

Correct.

Samuel Wines 55:20

Um grown, not made.

Vasundhara Guar 55:22

Yeah, and yeah, I think it it it also dwells deeper into um uh how are you how are humans um looking at materials in terms of what function they wanted to perform? Do you just want it to be a singular function? Or do you want it to be something that um hits you at different levels? You know? Um whether um so I watched this documentary on Netflix. I don't know if you've seen the abstract, The Art of Design.

Samuel Wines 55:54

No, oh is that a mini-series? Yes, yeah, I've seen a few of them episodes. I feel like someone was like, you need to watch this specific one, and I can't remember what it was.

Vasundhara Guar 56:03

I I particularly love the one by Neri Oxman. That was the one that has the idea.

Samuel Wines 56:08

Yeah, I was gonna say that's probably the one you got recommended. Because that was yeah, literally the usage of tech, but the usage of nature to essentially grow structures, that structure. Yeah, again, like prime example of someone who um why you marry billionaires is a is a very useful. No, I'm just gonna I don't even think Bill uh like invested into it. I mean it's all done through MIT, but yeah, I know I know it's it's kind of funny though, because it's kind of cool as well. But it's just nice to see like so that obviously she's been doing this for quite a while, right? So it required lots of money, lots of experience to be able to bring bring that sort of Krebs cycle of creativity to life. But it's exciting now that you know we can be doing this here with little to no like money to be able to prototype and explore things which you know they were doing uh maybe 10 years ago. Yep, yeah. But it's still exciting to be able to bring that here and start making things happen. So I think in terms of unexpected product, it's essentially metal. Metal. Metal. Imagine one day that's a completely different molecular structure.

Vasundhara Guar 57:13

Yeah, but imagine one day you're like, because at the way in which we are like, okay, this is algae, when you look at seaweed, you're like, I wouldn't think of this to become this, you know, with growing technology and our um you know uh expertise on science as it evolves. I think we could definitely turn this at some point into something that's way more rigid. Oh, yeah. Has properties like metal, yeah, and maybe we don't have to go through the entire extraction process anymore.

Samuel Wines 57:45

Like a composite, like so. This reminds me of like if you think of spider silk, like at the at it's like pound for pound stronger than steel, right? It's just how do we scale scale that up to something that's functional at a human, human scale, and I imagine we'd be able to do something similar. Um as a compound material, but it's probably not going. I think they would probably notice it. It yeah, it would be a bit different, but I can see to your point, it probably could replace quite a few things. Yeah, like if we can figure out a way to do like a carbon fiber equivalent using biomaterials. Yeah, yeah um I've said 10 to 20 years, right? 10 to 20 years. So I mean, yeah, 10 to 20, like maybe. Uh the amount of research papers within the seaweed category is increasing by like almost 10% every year. So fuel seems to me to be like. So there's a lot. Fuel obviously can be one, but I think the most unexpected thing would be everyday plastics. Because that's expected. I know it's expected, but it's how do we even think about it? The average person will think about it. Like, so where's that one? Sure. The biofluid, yeah, yeah. Or this one here. Now, I don't think anyone, unless they're informed as to what this is, they might just be like, that's a funky, like that just looks like a A4, like cellophane. Cellophaney cut cellophane actually was cellulose, fun fact. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so this just looks like one of those little envelopes you put a bit of paper in, right? Yeah. So I can imagine this to me is something that people wouldn't even notice that it's been replaced, apart from maybe now you put it in the compost. But that's always the thing with words, right? Because they can think plastic, plastic, plastics, plastic, bioplastics, not necessarily plastic bio-based, from the way it is. We can't use the word plastic. Yeah, you know, don't. I don't want to use it.

Vasundhara Guar 59:39

I don't want to call it a bioplastic.

Samuel Wines 59:41

For sure. It's like we we shouldn't call fission or fusion um nuclear because it's like people have such a bad connotation with it. Yeah. But yeah, it's I I understand it's it's a pain. How do we speak to it? That's why next-gen materials sounds way sexier um or biomaterials. But then even biomaterials has and biodesign in Australian context is much more like like bioreceptive, biocompatible implants.

Vasundhara Guar 1:00:08

So, like, oh yeah, yeah.

Samuel Wines 1:00:10

So when we so that there is like a biodesign class at Melbourne Union, but it is about implants. Yeah. Like if you want to like put a tooth into someone's um uh jaw, it's like, how do you ensure that the body doesn't reject this material? So it's more in that lens, and that's why, like, yeah, words, language, how we talk about things, it does matter. So I can understand the like yeah.

Vasundhara Guar 1:00:34

Um but we'll coin a word for it sooner or later. And I think that also is something that would like coining such terms for um new age materials and extended materials, like you said, or any new theory, I think it greatly also informs uh consumer behavior. And I think that's one of the things that we are banking on, um, looking at all of this through a design perspective. How do we offload the stress of sustainable exhaustion for the consumer?

Samuel Wines 1:01:09

Like sustainability burnout or something where it's like, I just I'm just trying to do my best.

Vasundhara Guar 1:01:14

Yeah, and how do we just make it easy for them to accept it without them having to go through the entire mental gymnastics?

Samuel Wines 1:01:23

Is this recyclable? Yeah, what does this triangle with a number mean? Such an upstream design issue that it's like if if if we just if everyone who is creating these things comes at it from the framing of how can I ensure that this you know is regenerative as a material, I think, or like whatever I'm doing thinking about end of life. Yeah, you know, so if it's something that's part of the technical the butterfly like double loop diagram of circular economy, so technical nutrients going through a loop, um, you know, and so you you bring them back to like Apple and then they recycle them, yeah. And then that keeps the that in that loop, and then you do the same with biological, right? Um, whilst absolutely acknowledging that there is no such thing as perfectly closed loops. So even if you try and do that with a technical loop, something falls out, stuff's gonna fall out. Yeah, but that that framing I think really helps with like splitting those apart and going, okay, well, we're gonna focus on trying to expand as much as possible, like that bio-based side, whilst acknowledging we're still gonna need the other technical new nutrient loop for like laptops, computers, and this sort of stuff, but progressively moving towards as much as possible being bio-based. Yeah, like I I don't have an issue with the way that we recycle and there's an entire like mini industry that's formed around it. But it's like at some point, where does that stop? Because if it's just oh, we'll band-aid it, you have to then band-aid that and then keep adding band-aids when just kind of like fix it from the source. But what's collective coordination failure, which is like

Algae Potential And False Panaceas

Samuel Wines 1:03:05

most of the problems that we face now in our world, are like we've created these because of our frame through which we're looking at the world. So I feel like, yeah, if we do start questioning this and having designers now thinking from a pluriversal perspective, life-centered design, these are all like great gestures towards making that happen. And it's just about those of us coming through the ranks now like actually making these things happen. Um, which yeah, is exciting to have you here sort of doing that. Um what I'm curious about this one. So, what what do you kind of think is a way that algae is underestimated? And then what is one way that you think it's overestimated in its potential for bringing about a positive change?

Vasundhara Guar 1:04:00

I think the way in which um it would be under overestimated is that it'll solve all our problems. Yeah. It is very diverse and it can be applied in various um platforms. But in order for a system to exist, I think there should be multiple intervention points with different sources. It can't just be one source. Um so I think um, yeah, it won't really solve all our problems. But I think it can get the ball rolling on at least creating a pathway to to getting to certain um plateau points where from where we would require another intervention to think it to the next point.

Samuel Wines 1:04:52

That that makes sense to me, like looking at it through the lenses of like the three horizons of innovation. It's like it's enough, like it might bridge us to get to a certain point, or it might work in this certain context, but you know, it might require a radical retooling of industry, or we might just not be able to treat it as a complete drop-in replacement for plastics. Like um, I think this is the classic issue that happens with anything, is like people like, oh my god, this is the panacea, and you try and apply something to every context without acknowledging that there are certain contexts that it's gonna do. Yeah, but I think on that front, we can probably try to solve it as a collective, which is it is one small component. We still have potato, we still still have starches, we still have mycelium. Like these are other things that potentially, if amalgamated into an alternative solution, could possibly uh aid to that as well.

Vasundhara Guar 1:05:47

Yeah, my coin and the myco.

Samuel Wines 1:05:49

Yeah, we're just acknowledging that there's gonna be a material palette of the future. Like, and maybe it's gonna be a mix of all those that replace petrochemical plastics. It's not just gonna be one, one. one algae to rule them all. Yeah. Um and that also makes more sense from a resilience perspective. You it's good to have multiple feed stocks that are coming in and that you're making products with so that you know every context that you're in or every environment might have different feed stocks.

Vasundhara Guar 1:06:14

So checks out and in terms of underestimated I feel that we haven't yet realized the full potential of micro and macroalgae yet. They are literally more than 2,000 species.

Samuel Wines 1:06:26

Like I think we're underestimating its potential to be a way to solve hunger.

Vasundhara Guar 1:06:33

Yeah.

Samuel Wines 1:06:33

In terms of interesting calorie density, nutrient density like these are things that if we were to say like as part of you know the Sea Commons aspect that we want to do is if we can have all like maybe not all but like coastal communities to be these growing grounds for seaweed and then on land maybe there's the uh microalgae farms that's a way to just be like cheap but great nutrients and effective and effective as well.

Vasundhara Guar 1:07:03

Yeah which can be used in in areas which are probably poverty poverty stricken or which are going through a nutrient deficit. Especially um I have grown up in Africa. So there is um a lot that I have seen in terms of um availability of resources and how they're being used and um how some things are also it's not that there are no resources, there's this abundant resources. It's about how people are um maybe um you know and how how one community is enabling another community to use it. And um how as we as people that are probably looking at it through trying to um solve community and uh health and social um problems how can we put in this better um how can we add this element of ease for these people and access to to the right of life you know to the right of um um the basic needs of humanity which is food shelter um clean water um Wi-Fi better sanitation you know um and I think with algae it's it's a way we can curb all these um you you can say help raise the social foundations if you look at it through like that donut economics lens.

Samuel Wines 1:08:46

Yeah that makes that makes geez um that makes sense to me um I think to to to that point it's like it's it's a really valuable food source but not just for humans like for microbes in the soil as well amazing but to your point I think what's fascinating about thinking of algae as a food resource is that it's at least if it's in the ocean it's going to be non-competitive with conventional food sources it doesn't require any fertilizers it doesn't require anything because it's in the water it grows both X and Y so it's way faster than like conventional plants grow on land and something we haven't really spoken about but like like the OG carbon sequester correct right yeah so like I mean we had one of the first major extinctions was because of how effective algae was it yeah so the first like proper algal bloom just like decimated massive amounts of life on the planet. And in a way we're actually not seeing that at that scale but in Adelaide they had an algal bloom which is still ongoing even after two years. And that's just killing fish and making it hard for life to exist in that region. But doesn't make it like a villain in a way it actually shows us that hey if controlled you can possibly enable that to just feed to do something else.

Vasundhara Guar 1:10:19

Yeah I mean there are different types of algae as well and there's also the concept of ancient algae and modern algae and the ancient algae being cyanobacteria which caused the entire oxygenation event and then the modern algae which is predominantly the macroalgae that we're working with today and how we're able to leverage those properties.

Samuel Wines 1:10:39

Yeah yeah and they've all got different um ways in which they can be worked with and collaborated with to create a range of different products or provide a range of different ecosystem functions. Correct yeah it's a a slight uh deviation the book Project Hail Mary and now the movie as well it actually uses it actually uses algae as like this thing that is growing on the sun and essentially was destroying the sun but yes the science is obviously a little bit off but something so small can have a massive impact because they obviously eventually you know harvest it grow it within these like controlled environments and then use it to travel to a different solar system so how can we do that with the algae that we have on this planet not for that specific thing who knows again if it's used as a fuel maybe that's one aspect but yeah it's interesting that it was the first thing to grow or the thing that was growing the thing that actually grew yeah yeah I can see the the the cognitive leap that has gone to make that a thing um I mean on the on this topic of um maybe not sci-fi but at least philosophy um what do you think like working with algae has taught you about time like biological time versus

Biological Time And End-Of-Life Rituals

Samuel Wines 1:12:05

industrial time like I know that conventionally nine to five you clock in you get things done you leave and then you leave and it's like the machine maintains or goes on.

Vasundhara Guar 1:12:17

What's it like working with a living system which has its own patterns and rhythms and cycles it's so funny we talked about this last night and how we came across the idea of time um was it was different it was it started off with packaging and it started off with um um me just an example that oh you know there is like what is it that people are now excited by at one point I remember when it came to a product people were really excited about the way it's packaged and then there's the apples unboxing yeah you know so the first yeah if you move from like a Windows PC to an Apple one the first time it's like clean it sounds good the laptop looks good partially charged everything you peel off everything and it's beautiful. And obviously over time you lose that but but that was an experience that was created for the consumer for 30 seconds like they put all that effort into creating that 30 second moment whereby you're like wow you know and I was then thinking about how is it that we are looking at this packaging you know if this is supposed to become a package how do we what what is the the narrative that we want to talk about here and it's mostly about how are we designing this for time because this is something biological this is not something that's very controlled. It is something that has um my imprint on it because say for example while making it you can see Simon's like and you know work somewhere there and at the same time when when this is something that goes into your lampshade for example um within a certain say 10 years you're going to see a difference in the way that it would behave or look or maybe you will come back home one day and find a little curl on you know your your piece of um bioplastic artifact and that's what got me thinking that that is something that is part of the process as well while we're sitting here making it in the wee hours of the night and observing the way it it works.

Samuel Wines 1:14:37

It's very um it's cathartic firstly but it also it's reminiscent of just being like this is what pre maybe industrialization or even just progress look like patients. Just knowing that you it's kind of the unknown other than the research papers that we're looking into and you know maybe in terms of say the growth of a seaweed or even a microalgae it's you just have to wait and where like people are so addicted to like instant gratification that they'll then just you know discharge being like this is too slow in the modern day and age. I think it's embracing the slowness accepting that it is natural and then being like cool how can I apply that how can I leverage it yeah I think is one key thing.

Vasundhara Guar 1:15:30

It takes patience it takes um I I think it's something that's also um not uniform you know biology has its own way of working maybe one part of it it dries faster than the other part maybe one part has um is exposed to something like mold.

Samuel Wines 1:15:48

Yeah one of the and and one of the lays we did grew some mold but that's natural.

Vasundhara Guar 1:15:53

Yeah and um I think just looking at it in terms of time it is it is how we want to put in the the aspect of time maybe we want it to be something that um stays with the person and then eventually the person knows what to do with it in the end. So it's about boxing it up rather than unboxing it.

Samuel Wines 1:16:13

You know how are you going to put it back that becomes the I think the yeah I was saying that the invert um is like yeah there was the boxing of a laptop and the unboxing and then the there's there would be like maybe someone's first time there's like a burial process. Like rip it up put it on the ground how do you yeah go through that ritual of and you know that's a fun letting it go. Yeah letting go and thinking about that I mean so much of our culture avoids and denies the existence of death or or the end and it's it's shipped off to a place where we just hide it. When it comes to like waste and this sort of stuff and it's exciting to think that you could potentially witness this like decompose and nourish your soil at home which you then can go and plant potatoes or something like that. But then just being more in tune with the rhythms and cycles of nature I think from my perspective it just feels so much more human so much more like life centric. I think the yeah the equivalent is like the adult phrase uh the phrase of watching grass grow. It's like well this is literally watching grass grow and just have to accept it. But that like being comfortable with the unknown or whatever will emerge will emerge like it's a very different mindset to as I said before like the okay well we it has to be perfect. It has to be precise and I can imagine that's gonna be a massive thing when you're looking at dealing with customers and trying to provide this as a product the explanation around well this is going to have imperfections and that's like it's perfectly imperfect.

Vasundhara Guar 1:17:56

Yeah you know and in a way yeah that's it's gonna be so much about like for you guys is how do you position that how do you explain these things to people and how does that become something to be celebrated like the obstacle is the way if that's the way it performs how does that become I think performative correct and also in um product design I think one of the things that uh we're moving from is having this completely polished product to a more purpose driven product which is not just utilitarian but also uh raw you know so you're able to um like I said earlier feel it in different um aspects of your life psychologically um some of these

Values, Skill Gaps And Learning Fast

Vasundhara Guar 1:18:40

will make you feel more calm because of say the natural colours that's using you know even the textures yes yeah you have a little bit of air you have a little bit of um water that you can you know you know that there is water at play you have all these elements that um will bring you closer to nature and that's an alternate trend to what is happening with AI you know it's like people are are consuming tech and they want that break and then they'll come to this you know so that's um I mean in an ideal world yeah that's I was gonna say that's very idealistic um but I'm so into that and you know on that on that topic like idealism versus realism yeah right like this is such an issue that we have um as people trying to bring things into the to the real world um you have this great vision of something what what ways have you had to come face to face with idealism versus realism and have you managed to find a way to to reconcile that tension or is it still something like you're saying before you know it would be great if we could do X but we ended up in materials because it's gonna take 15 years for that to change or we want to do this stuff in culture but you know maybe we're not there yet like it's yeah I think for us is the like balancing our skill sets and just being like well we're not scientists so we were so idealistic that it is going to work out and it's gonna be perfect and then just coming back and be like oh man we're gonna like we gotta like smack our heads together to try to work this out.

Samuel Wines 1:20:16

That's really it. I mean obviously there's more to it but um yeah this is a field that you we need the best minds to be in because if people have the capabilities but then they say go and work in finance it's like okay you know you just make number go up like where's the you make humanity go up in this progressive way. Well it depends on this goes back to like your fundamental perspectives on value right so correct in some weird wonderful maybe not wonderful wacky wild way um there is a whole host of humanity that think that value is purely financial or monetary uh which I just it blows my mind that that's even a thing right like rather than acknowledging the good the true the beautiful all these things that actually make life worth living which are all predominantly immaterial and can't be bought or purchased to an extent um so yeah I'm curious thinking about that sort of like how do we shape and change value whether or not like working with algae has shaped or changed your values I think it definitely has um it has reinforced yeah the value that we um we learned about early on I think I think it's we're so lucky we came from like really family oriented families. Yes. So that's one thing. And then the education that I guess we've got to have as well some life experiences just well our mothers have always been like oh don't waste your food or you know don't um why are you putting this and that then you should go in the right place or this is something that you can easily put out in the garden you know so you're don't get McDonald's here I'll make you dinner.

Vasundhara Guar 1:22:08

Yeah and um uh I think those value systems really create a sense of thinking whereby you're not really you're thinking about what you're getting you're not getting it very easily either because um my family has been strict about their health our health so it's not that okay you are just gonna get whatever you want you have to work to you know achieve what you want to achieve and here it is more like um we know that uh this is bad for us so how do we again take what is left over and make something good of it and that's where I started because predominantly in in my master's thesis I looked at the invasive species and the first set of samples was made from Andaria and um that also formed biocombozites and that was very interesting because I was like oh after studying the ecosystem um in my sustainability systems class I realized um Andaria I mean it was it came to my knowledge that Andaria is the pest which is taking over the you know the entire native kelp yeah for those that for those that don't know um that's wakame so like um Japanese sea weed pro primarily um no competition it doesn't have any competition locally or so it kind of just absolutely thrives in this context correct and it's gone ahead and um changed the um the entire temperature of the bay as well which is wild yeah and it was funny it was basically one of the days where I had to go get samples and Simon came along with me and while we were on the beach just trying to get whatever we can there was this woman that comes out of the beach in a full wetsuit wetsuit with like um handfuls of seaweed and I'm like oh my god um is that you know do you think she has working and then Simon's like yeah go talk to her there's only one way to find out like go which was actually good because we then learned that there's obviously like we know of Henry but there are divers who will just instead of off a boat will just like go out and grab the Andaria that's right right near the the waterline yeah um just to try to stop it from like proliferating even further.

Samuel Wines 1:24:33

And these are just people doing this off like these are this is just the community going out so you can also see how like you know there could be the cultivation of like a network or a a community of folks who do this and then you know that can then be utilized as a feedstock for you guys. So there is this way to create like a really interesting ecosystem um that is you know providing like ecological restoration on one end uh and then on the other end can be turned into a product which can also replace something that is toxic. Yeah. So it's just like a perfect little loop to thoroughly enjoy. Yeah our goal is like take out onaria put in a clinia radiator or um I guess in Henry's case he's like take out onaria take out sea urchins. Yeah it's like fucking pesky things. Yeah um

Melbourne Design Week And Closing Invite

Samuel Wines 1:25:20

which is so good to to see at large and that's what we all need to try to do. Yeah love it. Is there any sort of things that you want to mention at the end I know we've got the Melbourne week um thing coming up in how it's 15th of May so two and a bit weeks three weeks ish.

Vasundhara Guar 1:25:41

Three weeks I think what's interesting with the Melbourne Design Week it gives us this platform to um to basically view how people interact with the material how perceptive they are to it how curious they would be about it and I think that curiosity index um is what will lead to further um you know making of the product because at one point I do want to ask them what do you want to see this in you know how would you like to interact with this material and um yeah I feel that's where we will get a lot of points and data sets on um how it behaves environmentally as well in an open setting.

Samuel Wines 1:26:29

And our biggest yeah our biggest problem is that it's at pavilion which is open and there's a little body of water not a massive issue there but like what happens if it rains what happens if it's too windy like there are all these micro factors that are going to occur because it's like what the start of winter in May I don't even know my cycles anymore but um but it's exciting like how how will this at its like current level interact in that environment and how are people going to react to that is also what I want to call a part of the part of the learning journey. Correct yeah um cool is there anything strange beautiful wonderful that you've come across recently or discovered recently that you'd like to talk to for me it was the the amount of research going into seaweed um I guess oh there was one other one I said yesterday you go and I'll remember.

Vasundhara Guar 1:27:33

Okay. Um yeah I think for me it's um the alternating the alternate trends the parallel trends of technology and and biology I'd love to see how um people are looking at on one side we have AI with billions and billions going into it and the other side we have biology based um it will be the new frontier for sure.

Samuel Wines 1:27:58

And then it'll be how do you use one to inform The other, yeah. But biology as a technology is a fascinating concept. Yeah. Did you get back to it? Well, um the only one that popped into my head was like, I guess these the trailblazers, the ones that are going above and beyond now, and then how how receptive people are becoming to these alternative things, like the way that you live your life, what you eat, what you wear as well. Um, I think, yeah, like I said earlier, in the last couple of months, the amount of awareness around microplastics, PFAs, it's people are now like, holy shit, like yes, something is branded really well, but it is so bad for the human system. So I think the eventual adoption of more human-centric systems, clothing, food, the way that we function uh in society is really exciting. So I'm all for that. Nice. And then lastly, if algae could speak, what would it say to us?

Vasundhara Guar 1:29:05

Yeah.

Samuel Wines 1:29:07

Micro algae would be like, I need sunlight. And then okay, okay, okay, time for bed. Like turn off the light. Um macro algae was just like, just let me give me some space.

Vasundhara Guar 1:29:30

I really want to see how we can.

Samuel Wines 1:29:34

I really want to see how we can Yeah, I mean it's not alive, but it's just been interesting on our on our part to just be like it's there, it's wet, it dries, y it gets re-wet. It's like in three-body problem when when they when they dehydrate and then they rehydrate, it's basically that. It's this thing that's so versatile and unique that it has many, many use cases. So explore me, touch me, feel me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I meant to that. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, I think so. Cool, awesome. Well, thanks so much for carving out some space and time for it. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us, man.

Vasundhara Guar 1:30:23

It's so exciting.

Samuel Wines 1:30:24

Well, just side note, when are you gonna have an AI version to just be able to distill all the knowledge in your brain that you've learned over the last uh 10-15 years? Oh, yeah, I don't know.

Vasundhara Guar 1:30:36

You are an awesome.

Samuel Wines 1:30:37

Oh my god, there's so much. I'm just like new thing here and there. Like uh look, it's probably part of I mean, I would love to teach this sort of stuff. Like for me, like I've I I come from a long lineage of people who are good at telling other people things. Okay. Um, so I feel like there's probably just some innate stuff there. But yeah, I thoroughly like I never had anyone to explore this stuff with. It was all sort of somewhat self-learnt and everyone was overseas, so I just get really excited when it's other people doing it. So that's kind of the the raison d'etre behind what we're doing with Colabs. Yep. It was just kind of just an excuse for me to try and bring together people who are doing this awesome stuff and find a way to be able to hopefully support and create more ventures or or enable and give people more agency to be the change in the world. So yeah, thank you for applying to the impact program. Yeah, Aurice, thanks for having us. Sweet, yeah. No worries. Awesome. Thank you. Come to Melbourne Design Week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the plug? Hang on. You spend so much effort trying to make this Siri drawings. Pretty shit, I'm asking. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm not the designer. Yeah, I just speak to computers.

Vasundhara Guar 1:32:02

Nice.

Samuel Wines 1:32:03

All right, we're done. Thanks, Sam. Thanks. All right, made it to the end again. Congratulations. Go you. I uh I'm very grateful for you. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening to the conversation. If anything here sparked interest or curiosity, or maybe even if things didn't, reach out, drop us a line. We love hearing from folks in the ecosystem and trying to co-design this content as well as events, series, workshops, all that sort of stuff to be able to meet the needs of folks in Melbourne that are trying to explore pathways towards a more resilient and regenerative future. So if you have any ideas, drop us a line. That's what we're here for to help you bring those ideas to life. Thank you and catch you next time.