The art of co-existence
The art of co-existence explores the human relationship to all life on earth. We invite artists, designers, scientists and creative thinkers for deep conversations grounded in wonderment. Together we explore what it means to be part of a natural system, and how we can transform our anthropocentric minds to a more symbiotic approach of life on this planet.
The art of co-existence
#8: Mushroom Coatings, Microbial Vending Machines and Some Fermented Passion - Emma van der Leest
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After this conversation, you'll want to zoom in on everything you wear, eat, touch, basically everything you see around you. Emma Van Der Leest is a biodesigner, researcher and teacher with a contagiously enthusiastic mission to rethink materials and to embrace microbial life. 🧫🦠
Through her (art) work she invites us to rethink our relationship to food, materials, all the things we use on a daily basis. We can create all of it with help of biotechnology, making it much healthier and sustainable.
🧪She moves between labs and lecture halls, between fungi and the building industry, between science and storytelling. 🌀She’s the best in connecting the dots and making the microscopic feel familiar through speculative design, but also through actual products.
🐚Emma's souvenir: Stay curious. At the end of each day, reflect on what you learned or what sparked your mind, whether it was a scientist, a book, or a vending machine at the train station.
Visit Emma’s website to follow her work www.emmavanderleest.com
Hosted by: Daphne Frühmann
Editing: Axel Frühmann
Music: Mark Oomen
Instagram: @theartofcoexistence
An Ourcelium Publishers podcast
Or maybe we have a washing machine that is not that we don't fill with a washing detergent but with uh nutrients that feed the bacteria uh of our garments. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is. So this would mean that you're wearing something that is alive if we're talking about garments you're wearing. Yeah. In a world of hyperconnectivity, we seem more disconnected than ever from the living world. A world of natural wonder that has its own systems in place and masters the art of coexistence. We humans have placed ourselves outside this way of living, but it can teach us the biggest lessons and leave us in awe. What happens when we reconnect to the nature from which we arose? Will we think with it and coexist in a symbiotic way? Will we make other decisions? Will it change the way we perceive ourselves? What and who can teach us if we are willing to listen? We invite you to be open and amazed by today's guests as they offer a glimpse into their art of coexistence. Emma van der Leest is my guest today. She is an award-winning biodesigner, researcher, teacher, and author based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. If you take one glimpse on her website, you'll quickly notice that she does a lot. But she likes to call herself also a connector more than anything. Today I'd like to talk about her work as a designer, but also about who and what she connects, and maybe the ever so important question of why she does what she does. Hello, Emma. Do you have a busy week as connector this week?
SPEAKER_00Hi Daphne, thank you for the invite to your beautiful podcast. Um, yes, a busy week, uh, a nice week, uh, varied as always. Yesterday I build up a new exhibition. One of the projects I have the microbial vanning machine that you can also see on my website. Um, I'm building up today. I was at Blue City, and tomorrow I'm in Amsterdam, and the rest of the week I also work on my house, which is a renovation project for the past five years. Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_01So that's a long-term project uh in your personal life going on. Yeah. Um, yeah, so I also mentioned that you do many things, and um, people can also see on your website you offer a lot of services. You call them on your website, that you offer workshops and lectures, you have exhibits and programs, you do research and consultancy, and then of course, there's your your own creative work as biodesigner as well. The exhibition that you started yesterday, the vending machine, under which of those pillars would you say that this one falls?
SPEAKER_00Uh actually, both uh under consultancy and also exhibitions. So uh, this exhibition or this work I'm building up at Windclove Probiotics, which is a probiotics-producing company based in Amsterdam. And uh together with them, I'm developing a platform called Mass Microbes as a Service, where we look into beneficial microbes that are good for both humans but also for the environment.
SPEAKER_01How did you can I just firstly ask, how did you, as a biodesigner, end up working as a consultant for a probiotics company? What what what do they do? What do the what are the probiotics that you work on?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so Winclove is a family company, it's a B Corp, and um I got an invite from the head of R ⁇ D Communications who used to be the old director of Microbia, which is the microbe my museum in Amsterdam, part of Artis, the zoo. And he started working uh for Winclove uh because his background is in biology, and together uh with the Osper, um we're working on a platform that also connects scientific projects or maybe un yet undiscovered undiscovered scientific projects that we can help elevate uh and propel, also with the help of design.
SPEAKER_01But they sell as a company, they sell probiotics, and then this is like an extra service that they offer that they want to do more research.
SPEAKER_00Uh that's still in development because uh Vinklove is a company that is researching and producing probiotics. So, in their facility in the office where I also work, we have they have amazing fermentation tanks, they have labs and the offices, and the platform I'm working on with them uh is a new project that we are developing together. And they were inspired by the project, the microbial vending machine that I developed. So they said, Maybe we can, as a kickoff of the projects, we can have your vending machine in our building, which is iconically an FABO snack machine or vending machine that is very well known to Dutch people that usually sell um deep fried snacks in train stations, and next to almost next to the building of uh Vinglove is the FABO headquarters, so the brand that sells the actual vending machines. So that is ironic. But my vending machine is not selling deep fried snacks, but it's selling 21 products that is that are entirely made with biotechnology. So I have four rows uh with algae, bacteria, fungi, and enzymes who are technically not an organism, and it shows how biotech can change our lives and produce every product we use on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_01So if we if we go back a bit, this uh vending machine just to visualize it. I think we're very known for this that it's a hilarious thing that you can take food out of a wall, because that's basically what you do. There's all these tiny windows in the wall, you put a coin in it, and then the windows open all at the same time. Sometimes, if you're very smart, then you can try to have several snacks at the same time, but but mostly you just open the one snack that you want. So that is the vending machine, just to visualize it. And then the the probiotics. Can you maybe explain a little bit what probiotics is or are and what they do? Um, is this something that any one of us can then consume as well? Can you explain that a bit?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we know probiotics as microbes, basically bacteria, that are good for our intestine system. So many of the food products everyone uh consumes on a daily basis, like yogurt, contains probiotics. And our belly, our intestines carry out or carry three kilos of microbes that are uh we also call it the second brain. Uh so we need to take care of our belly and we have to take care of our microbes. And sometimes, due to your maybe diets, these there is no balance in it. So uh, and especially if you are suffering from specific diseases. And Vinclove is producing probiotics for mostly the medical market. Yeah, if you uh become a patient in a hospital and you need extra probiotics to to cure from a specific disease, then it's uh prescribed. The thing I learned from working with Vin Clove is that probiotics are still a little bit notorious sometimes, so they're not really a medicine. You can buy it through their website, but you can never find it in a drugstore. I see. Um, because that is uh a large discussion with the food and beverage authority, let's say. But that's let's not go into that. But I think probiotics, probiotics we eat also uh chicory, for example, contains lots of inulin, which is very good for our health, like raw chicory, yogurts, uh, kombuchas, kayfers. Um, so yeah, it's uh very good to add it to your diet.
SPEAKER_01And and they asked you to support them with visualizing some of the research that they're doing.
SPEAKER_00Well, specifically for a new platform they want to start. And uh, for example, what I also learned is there are a lot of researchers who are working on new types of probiotics, not only for the human, but also, for example, for the for bees. So there is a scientist uh they're now looking into uh to collaborate with who is looking into the microbiome, so actually the composition of microbes in a beehive. Apparently, that is a very unique microbiome. And if we learn more how that microbiome works, we can also help the health of bee and bee colonies, which is also good for our biodiversity in general.
SPEAKER_01And it's very much known that it's uh the health of the bees and the extinction of the bees is a very, very big problem for biodiversity in general.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and also we are looking into maybe starting a residency program where independent scientists or artists or designers, for example, can work internally with the scientists at Win Clove to work on a project about the microbiome because there are also quite a lot of artists who are working around these topics, and also especially the relationships we have with our belly or with our microbes, let's say. But that is due uh in development.
SPEAKER_01So for this specific project, uh you already had a concept which is a vending machine, that is not something that you created especially for them. So maybe you can take us back to when you designed this vending machine. What what were you thinking?
SPEAKER_00What was I thinking? Yeah, so I got uh nominated for a Dutch uh actually a Rotterdam-based prize, the Dolf Henkes prize, back in 2019. Dolph Henges used to be an artist in Rotterdam, and after his death, uh his family put in the money in a fund, and every year they give uh a prize to a young Rotterdam-based artist. So I was nominated and asked to develop a new work, if I wished, uh, for this prize. And um, it was 2019, uh, end of 2019. And what I really felt at that moment is that every time I talk about my work as a designer, working with scientists, uh working in labs, working with fungi or any other type of micro, people are sometimes disgust because if you talk about fungi now, a lot of things in a good way have changed because we know more about fungi, it's more popular. So I felt the urge to create an artwork that one lowers the threshold for anyone to learn about microbes and what they are, and also create a storytelling project that speaks to everyone's minds and not only the people who are interested in the field of biodesign and bioart and science, but also my neighbor from the corner, for example.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and is that is that why you chose a familiar familiar setting like the vending machine? Because a snack to to give it to people as a snack, like to make it very low burn.
SPEAKER_00I think a vending machine is very low-key. So if you have a coin, put it in and you you'll get something out of it. And it's uh it's also like we said, pretty typical Dutch, this type of vending machine. So uh accessibility that was also important to me. So accessibility is super important, and I wanted to show the visitors and the people who look and witness the vending machine, is to show them that every product we use on a daily base can be made with the help of microbes, and uh especially things that we are very familiar with, like food, building materials, but also cosmetics, for example, energy, all the yeah, things we use on a daily basis, we can also create that in a more healthier and sustainable and cleaner way with the help of biotechnology. And that was important to me to show little objects in this vending machine that you can take out, and also the other point I wanted to address with this vending machine is you make it open to a wider audience to work with super interesting microbes and also the independent scientists that don't want to connect, or designers that don't want to connect their name, or who don't have access to university to uh yeah, to educate them about this as well.
SPEAKER_01I think this is a topic that we discuss here often as well, is that the uh the art world or the design world can actually help to translate what is happening in science and to bring it to to people in a more accessible way, like you say, and to um and also to connect to the emotion so that people engage with it in a different way and that it's not just scientific facts. So it sounds like that is something that you're also trying to do.
SPEAKER_00And also uh when I had the first exhibition with the microbial vending machine, it was also designed as a snack bar. So I had a menu with all the microbes that are so you saw other products, the microbes, and I also made explanation from every product like you see in the supermarkets, educate them a little bit more about what superpowers these microbes have. I always feel the urge to educate people also a little bit or to to make them as enthusiastic as me about one specific type of fungi that is super cool.
SPEAKER_01You are from origin a product designer, is that correct? Yes. How do you then get from designing product to being fascinated about biodesign, biotechnology, working with science? What was your what was your path in that direction specifically?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, to go back to my childhood. I grew up uh in a very nice and green area in this in the center of the Netherlands at the Velue. I always walked a lot with my parents in the forest. We had dogs, so there was always a kind of fascination, and I always like to be outside. That is maybe sounds a little bit corny, but I think it's also the base, and it is important, I think, or for me where I grew up. And um, before I studied in art school, I did a vocational school in interior design.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh, because I always have a fascination for interiors and objects, and and I love beautiful things as well. Uh, but I then decided to go to the art academy to study product design because I was fed up with maquettes to build maquettes and stuff like that. Okay. But I always had a material fascination. And I must say, the time uh when I went to art school, sustainability and green design or eco-design was a fairly new concept. So my whole fascination for the field of biodesign started in the museum in Rotterdam at the Boiemans van Boning Museum, where I saw uh the beautiful jacket from Suzanne Lee, who is a pioneer in biodesign and biofabrication. And eventually I became her intern back in 2014 in London. That changed my whole perception. And your professional direction with it. True, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we had to pick an object from the specific exhibition in the Boiemans Museum. Also, Iris van Herpen, the fashion designer, graduated that year, so she also had a beautiful dress there that is, of course, entirely bio-inspired.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But then this jacket from Suzanne Lee that is made out of the purest form of cellulose, nanocellulose, spun by bacteria and yeast in a fermentation process. Very complicated. Yeah, it was the fact that a material is spun by bacteria and yeast in a fermentation process sparked my mind because I knew fermentation from a beer, you know. Yeah, exactly. That's all you know. But the fact that you can grow garments in vats of liquids and you can wear them, and it's an actual material that you can sew and dye as you normal textiles, that that blew my mind. And I thought if there is one road I want to or one direction I want to go into as a designer, then this is this is the way.
SPEAKER_01Why why do you think it is that we are so uncomfortable with the with or we were uncomfortable with biomaterials, especially to wear them as garments, for example? Why has that not been a more generalized way? Is it because it's made from bacteria? Is there still something that we find that icky, or what is your experience?
SPEAKER_00But if you think about the fact if we know more about with what kind of heavy chemicals our normal gar or most people's garments uh are made from or made with, that's even more shocking than a microbe. In the past fifty or maybe hundred years, chemistry gave us a lot, like cheap, accessible uh products amongst fashion. Also, industrialization and scaling of products in general has made us separate from crafts and the knowledge of making or weaving textiles as we did in the past. Also, in the Netherlands, we had a flourishing textile industry in Enschede that is entirely gone because we can now produce uh very cheap in Asia. And what I see now is that luckily it is slowly coming back. So crafts in general, we welcome more and more, especially in these times.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And also with attention, more attention for the process. So it might take a bit more patience, but then if it's natural materials, yeah, yeah, it's a very different way of working, I assume.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00One of the most frequently asked questions people have, if I talk, for example, about the jacket of Suzanne or any other hundred percent bio-based or compostable materials that oh, I can't wash it. But then I said, Yeah, but maybe you wear it ten times and you bury it in your garden, or there's a special special collection point in cities where we can compost our garments and we're growing new ones. Or maybe we have a washing machine that is not that we don't fill with a a washing detergent, but with uh nutrients that feed the bacteria uh of our garments. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01That's very specific. That I like. So this would mean that you're wearing something that is alive if we're talking about garments.
SPEAKER_00You're wearing yeah, and uh one of the the other great examples is that um there are also designers working on pigments or dyes, textile dyes that are made from fungi. Quite a lot of pretty cool colors from red to yellow to purple, same with bacteria, by the way. But yes, they fade because the mordants we use for chemical textile dyes are super heavy chemicals. So with natural dyes, the the mordants uh so that fixates the color on a fabric that is also pretty complex to still develop 100% biobased. But in my opinion, I buy a white linen or cotton suit that I maybe wear a couple of times, then I want to wash it so the color fades, and maybe it's red, but then next time I can dye it in uh in a green in a new colour, in a new color.
SPEAKER_01So I think that's also our perception of um what we're so used to. And maybe not being too attached to your suit being white or red and being very okay with it to being a different color another time. So the the whole concept maybe of wanting to own something or um yeah, getting too attached to it is maybe also something we need to change, or that's maybe something you're challenging with these ideas, at least. Yeah. Okay, that's very interesting. I I do realize like garments is not something that you are working on right now, but I think it was a very nice uh nice explanation of what living materials can uh can produce. Um, you're yourself working on uh on a design project still, which is uh uh a big one, I think, for you, funky. It's a super coating, so in that sense it does relate to garments in a way, I guess. Um and funky is not it's not funky as in F-U-N-K-Y, but it's made of fungi, so it's spelled F-U-N-G-K-E-E. So there's a fun wordplay, but it also says something about what the the basis of the material is. Um, do you wanna do you wanna share maybe first your fascination with fungi and then also how you came to wanting to make a supercoating? Why yeah again the why question? The why question, true.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I think fungi, and I think a lot of listeners of your podcast are also big fungi fans. I think to me, fungi are for many industries very, very interesting. First of all, of course, medicine from for a long time, as long as civilization exists, especially in Asia, we discovered the superpowers of fungi for medical purposes as well as for food, but they can also produce leather-like materials, insulation materials, alternatives for styrofoam, ladders, um you name it. So I think there are many interesting ways of using fungi or mycelium, so the root-like network that is underground. I have worked with mycelium for quite some years until the moment I felt the urge to to work on a coating, which is definitely not a sexy uh project if you are a designer.
SPEAKER_01What is this urge then? Why do you did it come from something in your in your personal life that you thought I'm missing a coating? And it's Or the coatings that exist are too chemical?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that and also during my internship with Suzanne, uh, when she was working with Nanocelado, she also told me like it's a beautiful material, but if we want to make it more sustainable over the long run, we need to protect it. Uh, UV is something that uh degradates our every material, even our skin, you know, our skin tans with UV light. So we need to protect it from UV, from um uh from water, etc. And coatings, glue, and binders are the most complex to have 100% bio-based. Right. So uh, and also in my work and in my practice, I met lots of material innovators who struggle with the fact that they have a beautiful material that you can scale and that uh have has interest from the building industry or the fashion industry or the interior industry, but they all require a high-performance material. So protection in many forms is uh required. And what I often heard is that, for example, investors told them you can code it with a PVC, so with a plastic, it's transparent, you don't see it, and we can scale it, we can easily sell it to a shoe brand, for example, and that's it. But then a hundred percent beautiful biobased material is not 100% biobase anymore if you code it. And this was a story that really resonated with me. That I that I thought, why the hell is there no solution for that yet? Yeah. Probably the DSMs uh and oxygenable bells uh on this world have them somewhere on a shelf. I I can't imagine that they don't have, but it's not on the market yet. So I thought maybe that's a project or something I have to dive into. And of course, I don't expect that me as a single designer can solve this whole issue, but I can maybe try and do an attack. Never say never. Like you have to you have to keep ambitious, yeah. Yeah, so I signed up for the Bio Art and Design Award, uh, which is an international award that's taking place in the Netherlands. It was started by Mu Hybrid Art House in Eindhoven, uh, that was hosting the whole process. And the Bio Art and Design Award, hopefully it's coming back, was designed for designers and artists who were keen to work with a scientific institute on a project. So you can uh hand in a project proposal uh to the website. You had a list of participating institutes from the Netherlands, universities. So I signed up with an ID for a coating. Back then it was I wasn't still sure if I wanted to go into the fungal route or the plant route. Uh because plants also have yeah, protecting films, let's say. Well, long story short, I got through the rounds. I got I was there was a matchmaking session where I met two scientists from the Rothbard University in Nijmegen. Basically, they were medical mycologists, so scientists that are looking into fungal diseases in patients, so not really the applied fungal um field, let's say, but they were interested. They told me that fungi are not really popular in science because, for example, due to diseases like the big plague that is caused by a bacteria, there is way more interest in working with bacteria than fungi. So they said uh we are glad to have a designer who sees the value of fungi. I see. Part of that price, because we eventually applied together, we won one of the three prizes of 25,000 euros, which is not a lot in in the field of science, but we started a three-month trajectory and we had to end with an exhibition at Mu that was there for at least half a year. It was a great adventure, and I'm still collaborating with one of the scientists, by the way.
SPEAKER_01Because you were you were then exhibiting, but how far in the process were you? Was there already something that you could show, or was it just a concept that you're then presenting? Which stage are we in right now?
SPEAKER_00The stage I am right now that I started again. But back then um we had some interesting fungi, but three months is way too short, especially for everyone that listens that have been have worked with microbes. Yeah, it goes slow. It's biology. So, what I decided then, okay, how do I make uh this into an appeal this research, super complex technical research, into an appealing exhibition? Well, that was a kind of design shop where I showed people that we can grow garments in vats of liquid, we can dye it, we can protect it with a coating. There are even yeasts that produce a beautiful kind of bouquet, like flowery smell. Uh, we can all create it. And I had three shells filled with bottles with a funky supercoating logo. So we designed also a brand for it that made a lot of people believe that it actually existed. That it already was a thing, right? I see. And I think that is again the power of design. I always like a little bit of humor, the same with the microbial vending machine. I like a little bit of humor and yeah, to speculate a little bit. Uh so that really helped.
SPEAKER_01Well, and again, it makes sense because then people can actually imagine using it and having that in their hands, and then yeah, if you make it more tangible, visible, and tangible, then it becomes more real. So your speculation becomes their speculation as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And um after that, Corona came. So the whole project, because the idea was after the price to continue with the researchers of the hospital, but yeah, everything stopped. Well, the world stopped turning. Last year I decided to pick up the research again because I must say it is not an easy project. The science is difficult. Um, you're on a market with big players, um, but there's a large demand for it. So I did some markets um validation, and there is a large demand for it. So, together now with Nick Van Bieso, who is a biotechnologist and one of the tenants of Blue City Lab here in Rotterdam, I work with him on the revised idea of the funky supercoating. I see. And that started last year, June. We got two successful subsidies. We are together now. He's a scientist, I'm the designer, but I'm also in a lab because I love working in the lab and I love to understand how it works.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was just going to ask because you have to know a lot about science yourself as well. You're you're, I understand you always work with scientists, so you're never the specialist. Um but have you learned a lot in the process? You you talk like a scientist sometimes, sometimes already. Uh is this something that you that you also study for? Is this just learning by doing?
SPEAKER_00Learning by doing, because I'm terrible in mathematics. I always have been as a child. Um, but I still I really do believe if you have an ambition to learn, you can master a science. And uh sometimes the scientist Nick has the urge to uh explain me how mathematics work, and then you listen to him and you're like, Yeah, it's very sweet that you try, but it's just not gonna know it's it's working, but it takes some time. But I really find it important, especially because sometimes you read uh or see on websites work of designers that are just talking a little bit about it, about my theme or about fungi. But to me, it it feels very important to know the nitty-gritty of things because if we so the ambition with the funky supercoating is to really develop it and then eventually maybe sell the IP to a company that can then produce it on a larger scale. So it is something that I find important to entirely understand in order to both explain maybe investors in the future, but also other designers or other scientists the importance of this research.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And then the say if you can upscale it and someone someone buys the IP from you so that they can actually produce it, then the idea is that it can be used in any industry. Are you very critical in that it can only be used then for bio-based products?
SPEAKER_00Well, ideally, um, for people who like camping or hiking, uh, you probably protect your tent or sometimes your shoes with a spray. Ideally, it it becomes something that can protect a lot of materials. I must say I have a lot of interest from the building industry, but for uh for now we're focusing on flexible biomaterials, and of course, biomaterials is a big scope, but also biofabricated materials because even materials that are made with mycelium, mycelium, mycelium leathers or packaging still need protection because it really depends with what kind of mushroom you're working with, and uh what we often see with coatings or sprays uh that materials become really brittle or stiff. So uh there is a larger demand from the yeah, flexible biomaterials market than from the stiff materials, I say. But we have now four partners that are uh delivering materials to us to test on and to see how it works and operates. Because also the application of a coating, so our our ambition is to make a transparent coating that includes the metabolites, so that are the little components in mushrooms that produce these this this layer, basically, this hydrophobic layer, and that is something we still need to design and that that will take at least a year.
SPEAKER_01And then this this layer is mostly to be uh water repellent and to uh protect it from daily wear and tear of a material.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and um make sure that the material is still compostable at the end of life.
SPEAKER_01Okay, how do you see the the next year going? What are the next steps?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the next steps are um so what we have done is we had I think at late at least we grow different type 80 different types of fungal species in the lab. Uh so that's like a lot. It sounds a lot. It was a big zoo, let's say. Uh that is something we call bioprospecting. So we are looking at interesting mushrooms species that and and its mycelium that are interesting for their properties. So there is quite some uh literature around online about this topic that they call hydrophobins, so that is a specific metabolite. Uh, but we're not per se interested in hydrophobins, but more the the little change that produ chains in the DNA that produce this. It's a kind of a matchmaking that we're doing. And uh from that selection of AT, we now have 12 types of species that we grow both uh we grow both the the fungi itself, so the fruiting bodies, and also aerial mycelium, so little sheets of um mycelium on a liquid culture, so a liquid uh nutrients in the lab. Meaning they they grow in a different way than the others grow, so they have a different grow basically in the in a in a square container on a liquid, and then we add the culture to it, and they grow little mats, little sheets on top. That is the process we're gonna compare with, and the next stage is to basically it sounds very easy, but it's not uh is to evaporate uh these fungal superpowers from every species, and that is something we have to do uh in another lab. So you're evaporating the fungal power. Why why is that necessary? So for everyone that knows mycelium is white, and we don't want to have a white coating, but we would like to understand what types of superpower specific mushrooms have that make materials water repellent. There are, of course, lots of fungal species around, so we already made a selection out of the 80 back to 12.
SPEAKER_01And this uh again, because you were talking about evaporating, and it needs what what is it then that you're trying to evaporate?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's the yeah, this metabolites basically, this molecule that we need to capture by a specific process, but that is something super technical and still in development.
SPEAKER_01It sounds very technical, and you do sound like a scientist. And I'm also now thinking of of some of the the photos that you sometimes see of you online, it is you in a lab code as well. Like there is a lot of it, a lot of it is just or just is uh it's very much still science. So yeah, it's really funny to hear you now talk about something so scientific, but then still saying that you're not the scientist yourself. To me, that is that is quite funny. I would never claim that. But you don't you do know already above average um about the scientific side of what you're doing, but to make sense, like you're saying, it's it's under it's important to understand the whole process if you need to uh design for it as well. So I understand. Um I wanted to ask you do you want to share something else about the supercoating? Well, follow us online. Okay, perfect. Yeah, because I wanted I wanted to go to uh a slightly different topic, which is something I mentioned in my introduction, is that you see yourself as as a connector. And I yeah, I wanted to to hear from you what makes you a connector, and what is it that you're trying to connect? How do you see your role in this in this world of biodesign or of making an impact?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think if I go back to my studies, which is almost 15 years ago when I started in art school, I really had a difficult time, especially during my graduation, about the shifting role of the designer if you start to collaborate with science. And I really felt at that time, 2014, there was a new movement starting in the Netherlands that already started in the US. Uh, so the biodesign movement that basically already started in the 90s, but that's another story. After my returning back from London for my internship, I really saw a bright future. This is not speculation, like we we can produce products, uh materials, fabrics, everything 100% biobase, but we need a platform for it.
SPEAKER_01And I think when you say we we can produce it, I think the difference here is that with biomaterial, what you can actually do is you can grow it. So um instead of f finding resources that uh that we're exhausting, like oil, for example, one that we all know very well, there is going to be an end at uh how much oil there there is. Uh, but if you can grow a material, you can continuously grow it and you can keep using it, and then the idea is as well that it will be biodegradable, so it can return to the soil or to somewhere else where it came from. Just wanted to reiterate that uh that I think that's an important word that you mentioned earlier, that this is something that's a material or resource that you can resource that you grow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and especially a lot of microbes love waste streams, so we can also grow um we can use waste streams to feed microbes in order to produce materials. So the closed loop system is also important, also with the coating to see how we can produce it also in a clean tech way. No, but going back to my graduation project, I didn't really have any teacher back then who was really believing in this field, but I thought I've seen it from close by. So I'm gonna do my graduation project. It was called Form Follows Organism, the biological computer, and it was about an organism that is basically a super smart org uh algorithm we can use in design. And I was really convinced that we as designers we can collaborate and learn from algorithms from nature. That is not a new concept.
SPEAKER_01Can you help help me? How does uh how does a slime mode stand for algorithm?
SPEAKER_00You know the zeros and ones from a computer system algorithm, and this specific slime mode that you can see with the naked eye is a yellow blob. That's also how they call it. But these are all single-celled organisms that collaborate with each other as one organism, but they can't speak. So uh they have to navigate, and the superpower, let's say, of this slime mod is that you can connect food points in the most efficient way in nature. And that is also something that we can mimic in a petri dish. And that was inspired by a Japanese professor who optimized the Tokyo Real Network with the help of this slime mod. Also, computer systems in many cases are inspired on biological systems. Also, the Fibonacci sequence is also a natural phenomenon that's used in design, you know?
SPEAKER_01I think this real this real network is maybe a nice one because I've I I know this one as well. But to maybe try and explain how you visualize this, so this uh this researcher puts in a few points on a map, let's let's put it that way, and then he puts the blob in, and then the blob basically finds the most efficient way of going from one point to the other.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the food in this case is oat oatflakes, so it likes oat flakes, and um so Tokyo was a big oat flake, and all the suburbs around Tokyo also had oat flakes on it. So he put a petri dish over a map that fished it. Uh of course a slime mod can't see if there is a if there if you if it needs to build a bridge over a river, for example. But uh the interesting thing is that um the cells collaborate and they explore, and once they have found the most ideal route to avoid point, the other veins, because it really looks like veins, they disappear, and then you see one strong vein. I see, and uh so you you you should look it up if you don't know it, it's it's fascinating, and you can even do it in your own kitchen. This is an invitation, I think. This is an invitation. Also, my uh graduation work was published as a book. You're you as a connector. I really struggled, I almost didn't pass because they were really discussing if my work, my graduation work was worth a product design diploma, because product design back then was more about 3D objects, right? Like lamps, tables, chairs. Luckily, a lot of things have changed in a good way. But I was convinced that a methodology is also a product. I became a teacher as well because I thought I every student that wants to go into this field of buy design, I want to help out because I never I really wished them uh not the teachers that don't believe in this. And no, it's not a trend, it's the way to go. There is no other route than this route. I was also invited to make an exhibition uh for the Floriade in the Netherlands. Uh, that was a collaboration between William Myers, who wrote the book Bio Design and Next Nature, which was also a great project because I had the a chance to invite the best designers from the Netherlands who work also on amazing projects. And um, that feels so rich to be connected to to the people who have the same vision and same ambition as you. So if I can put them on a stage or collaborate with them, I would love to do it. So connecting through exhibitions, but also uh via podcast or in the research that I'm doing for other people. I always try to include as many people from my network as I can because yeah, it's important.
SPEAKER_01I actually thought of it maybe in a slightly different way, even if I was looking at all the things that you're doing. It's if you look at the services that you offer that we spoke about in the in the beginning of this conversation, is that you are also a researcher for organizations. Uh, sometimes you give advice, you work together with scientists, uh, but then you also work with artists and designers. So there's a lot of different types of uh of people and sectors, I think, that you collaborate with, and then you are basically a little bit in the middle to then see what what can we do together and how can we make this into something that is actually making an impact or that is something tangible to push it a bit further.
SPEAKER_00No, definitely, and um I think especially in the building industry and building materials, there's a lot of attention now in the Netherlands, but we also need the bright minds and um creative minds in companies uh to help to create impact. So, what I also see in the past years is that also some of my old classmates ended up in in big consultancy firms as a designer because they need the creative mindset and the rethinking of systems, and I think that's something that we as creative we can definitely do to help and shape and redesign currency systems.
SPEAKER_01I I wanted to bridge to another project that you're working on because I think you're very passionate about it, and this is um something you've been invited to do for a Next Nature museum. And I want to give a bit of attention to that if you if you want to share something about it. So you were invited um to have a is it a permanent installation in the museum? Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So uh Uh Next Nature is an organization that took over the amazing Evluon building in Eindhoven that was built in the 60s. It's a spaceship Earth, as they call it. It has a UFO shape. It's amazing. And uh Next Nature is an organization that thinks about next futures, and they do that also with the network fellows, as they call them, with different backgrounds. So from science to philosophers to artists to designers. And for their new museum, which they are developing in this spaceship, they asked me if I wanted to create a permanent artwork, which is of course an amazing opportunity. And um, so I had an idea, and that is called the living room.
SPEAKER_01And then living is is meant to be read in a double way, of course, because it will be alive as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's uh actually well a living concept uh in collaboration with Nextasia, and it will be a functional house, a living room uh that integrates nature in our daily lives. And of course, everyone, I think, well, most of the people have a plant or maybe a path in home that we take care of and we nurture it. If we look at the interior objects that we have in our homes, like our chairs, tables, lamps, etc., don't really have a relationship with them. And I I felt the same with the microbial vending machine, like we have a lot of materials and processes that can create a hundred percent uh bi-based worlds, including our homes. So my ambition is with the living room is to create this one-to-one approximately I think 60 square meter house uh with the rooms we all know of, like the kitchen, but maybe the kitchen is not a place where we cook food, but where we process waste streams and feed it to our lamp that therefore generates energy. Can you say that again?
SPEAKER_01Because I think you shouldn't go too too fast.
SPEAKER_02Okay, good.
SPEAKER_01So you grow things in the kitchen and then uh, or no, there's waste streams in the kitchen, and then you can feed them to your lamp. Like we need to pause there for a minute.
SPEAKER_00What could that look like? Yeah. Yeah, so we have a living room and kitchen, or sometimes it's combined, and we have a bathroom and we have a bedroom. In the concept of the living room, everything is alive. So the kitchen is maybe not only the place where we cook, process our waste streams that we produce for this living room. I'm also collaborating with uh approximately 10 Dutch pie designers that are working with me to develop objects in the living room. Let's say is a lamp that you can feed with waste streams and therefore produces light. So there are specific microbes I can't I can't explain too much right now to spoil it.
SPEAKER_01So it's not like you're feeding the lamp, so the lamp continues to grow, but to actually have the lamp functioning as a lamp, uh, you're using a certain stream. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and actually the whole the idea for the living room started by walking through an IKEA. When you walk to IKEA, of course, you have the showroom, you have all these uh demi or mini houses that they of course show there, and then if you decided to buy something, you go to the the storage and then you can take it from the shelf. And I thought, what if we can buy a chair that is grown by a specific bone structure, for example, that you can buy in miniature, let's say 10 centimeters high in a mini incubator? You buy it, you take it home, and you grow it. And after a year it's maybe 50 centimeters high, and you can use it for your child, but the chair is growing with you, or maybe the couch is growing with you. So, what if you feed your couch and then becomes a tree-seater after a couple of years? So it's really about reciprocal relationships we have with objects where for a plant or a pet we take care of, but not for our home objects.
SPEAKER_01And then also understanding what it needs to grow, so that it needs attention and it needs care if you want it to grow, if you don't give it attention. I think this is even an IKEA phrase that nothing grows without attention or something like that.
SPEAKER_00No, that's that's um that's true. And actually, the wish is that the visitors of the next nature museum will also become caretakers of the objects. So there is a wish and desire we're still uh that's still in development to monitor the objects that are some of them are alive to see how people treat them. So if your couch would be from alive moss and mycelium, would you sit on it or would you hug it maybe? So, what kind of relationships do we build up with our objects? Uh so there's also this perspective that uh scientists are interested in, especially in the field of by design. Um, can what can we learn? Can we monitor how organisms are doing? Interesting.
SPEAKER_01And also, but also then our social behavior towards it is going to be important, right? Because yeah, what what does it take for us to be okay with sitting or hugging mycelium?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, no, for sure. And also, yeah, I talked about a couch, but also a dinner set, lamps. Uh, but we also think about the functions in in a house. So I was talking about the garden and I was talking about the little shed because not everyone has a shed, but sometimes people have a shed where you fix I also have a shed where I fix things. But what will the shed of the future will look like if our house is 100% bio-based? So we're also rethinking the the functions of the rooms in the living room.
SPEAKER_01This so this is also rethinking, rethinking a system in a way, our living system. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the house will also grow because uh what I also see now with the microbial vending machine is that after six years, some of the objects in the vending machine are a little bit outdated. So the living room will also be designed that maybe in three to five years, some objects will buy the grade and will make room for new objects. So the idea is also to design a kind of map on the floor, like a dollhouse. You know, if you fold out a dollhouse, you see a kind of floor map where oh, this is where the couch needs to be, this is where the bed needs to be. It's also kind of designed like um a dollhouse that can grow, but then uh on a one-to-one scale.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. I can't wait to see it, but I think we have to wait a little while, right? This is not until 2027, I believe. Or yeah, next year, uh quarter three. Okay, so that'll be a very busy year for you to make this happen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm actually working on it for one and a half years already. So a big a big review then. Yeah, it's uh I'm I'm very much looking forward to it, and I'm I'm really excited again in my collection role, is that I can work with amazing designers and people in the Netherlands who uh are in many cases the designing something very new that is of course uh that fits in their practice because there the objects that they design will of course be their property. Um so that is also an interesting exercise for the museum. Like if you usually a museum acquires a piece space for it and then it's owned by the museum. But how does it work if something is alive and needs to be maintained over uh over the course of several years? So that's also an interesting thought and exercise experiment for the museum.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and parts of it might degrade, they might disappear. So you invest in something that is going to be gone at some point, and you're challenging so many people here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's really a a huge passion project, and really grateful for the um for this opportunity.
SPEAKER_01So I I want to ask you, because this is something we always do at the end of our episode, is that we ask our guests to give us a souvenir from this conversation. So this this can be either a book that you've read or a designer we should look into, but it could also be something we do. Uh is there something that you do in your daily life that you wish for us to do or to take with us?
SPEAKER_00Never lose your curiosity, I think. Curiosity is a kind of exercise I do every day, is at the end of the day I think about what I've done. Like a little meditation, maybe, uh, but also what I've learned. And it's not always about learning something new, but maybe a person who told you something that sparked your mind. And I've read in a research about Alzheimer's, actually, the Alzheimer disease is that it's good, especially for women, to be aware of new things you've learned. But besides that research, I always think uh it's sometimes very grateful. I'm very grateful for a scientist who told me something new, even though it's mathematics. Or uh I learn about uh that eating chicory is super good for our health. So I want to challenge everyone who's listening to think about what they've learned or inspired, or yeah, got how they got inspired every day in their lives, because I really think that if you are inspired, you want to research it or learn more about it, and that's also good for our mental health. It doesn't have to be scientific though. Sometimes I walk through the park or I'm in Blue City and I see something and that sparks my mind, and then I think, oh, I want to learn more about it. And also with this vending machine that started also at the train station, passing a vending machine where you think, hmm, this might be interesting.
SPEAKER_01It's curiosity and and inspiration, I hear, for you to do a new thing, maybe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that could be something very small. Like sometimes I think about if I didn't visit this Boiemann's museum back in 2010 with this exhibition, how would my practice look like? Places I visit, the people I meet, the things I read sometimes. That gives us direction in our practices in our lives. So be open for it.
SPEAKER_01Wonderful. I think that's a beautiful souvenir. Thank you so much for sharing all this. Uh, again, there is there's so much more that you do, but I recommend that people go to your website and follow you on all your endeavors and all your your personal projects, but also the projects that you do with and for others. Thank you so much for for sharing everything.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, Daphne. I'm grateful to learn the person behind this great podcast and to be part of it. So uh thank you so much for for doing this work, and um, I'm looking forward to the next episodes as well. Me too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you for listening to The Art of Coexistence, a podcast produced by our selected publishers, editing by Oxfam, music by Mark Omen, and hosted by me, Dr. Fruman. Find us on your favorite podcast app and give us a follow, like, subscribe, and or share, and we'll see you again soon.