Almost a party favor...

I didn't want to make any fun-guy jokes. This little bugger is a fungus from New Zealand. Ileodictyon cibarium is the name of this amazing growth! It forms this structure formally is reminiscent of coral and a vonoroi script.

I stumbled across this while looking for images for the film I am making.
Think of this being in the "structure catagory/ the scaffolding.


"Fruiting Body: Initially a whitish "egg" up to 7 cm across, attached to white cords; rupturing, with the mature fruiting body emerging as a more or less round, cage-like structure, 5-25 cm across, forming 10-30 polygons; arms about 1 cm in diameter, not thickened at the intersections, white underneath the olive brown spore slime; the egg tissue creating a whitish volva, but the mature structure detaching from it." _Kuo, M. (2008, July). Ileodictyon cibarium. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/ileodictyon_cibarium.html

grow lichen this?

you want to be a super (foods) model?

Here is the most recent processing script so far. We have 3d space. We have movie out put! We have a movable environment. This code is built off of what Valentina Vasi and I presented for Roland Snook's Swarm class last semester. Granted most of the origional code work has to be contributed to Mr. Snooks. He's amazing. This script uses the kVec and kGeom libraries that he and his other partners at Kukkugia developed. I also have to address Mr. Baoquoc Doan (aka mr. WOK) for helping me so far also, especially with the video out put.

I will be posting some of the interview footage soon.

Green walls && growth walls

This is an installation made by Jesse Harlin and the Shadow Observatory. Growth Interactive installation consisted of music generated by user input on two gravis gamepad video game controllers. A large image of CG leaves were projected on the wall that responded to the music created by the user.
I wrote him an email and he got back to me (in only a few hours!) Jesse is currently working on a 14 ft. tall organism that will detect human proximity and motion, temperature and light levels to ascertain an "emotional state" and then communicate that emotional state through 16 speakers over 8 discrete channels. Pretty groovy. He is using arduino and max/msp. He is making a "symbiotic music organism." Very similar to Marcos Novak's Navigable Music but the music its not just the void in the space, it is the thing. (I need to get my installation rolling along.. but thats another story. ) Here is the video footage link he sent me:

Imaging if this also could happen with actually green walls?

le interviews...

Interviews start in a few hours.. the line up is.. well lining up...
First I am presenting them with my thesis....

Here is my thesis statement for what we can go off of....

Current culture is now polluted and propagated with escape routes and throw rugs of green and sustainable design, offering penny pinching game plans to move towards the illusion of tree hugging in Prada. Buildings (dwellings) can not be fully sustainable until they can assimilate and integrate themselves into the contextual biospheres, self utilizing the excess materials through a symbiotic metabolism. Though as every object/particle could be argued as having its own agency and possible realities, their reaction via their observed system has the potential for being dynamic through time and scale. The goal of the matter is to chisel towards and ideally define what is an Inhabitable Organism, and thus developing the model for which it is entitled and can be communicated across the rhizome.

and here are some of the questions:


What does it mean (to you/your practice) to be sustainable?

What do you think the repercussions might be for buildings having metabolisms?

What do you think about the potential for buildings to be Inhabitable Organisms that work in symbiosis with its inhabitants?

What is the potential for self organizing space that has an active reaction to its users?

Interviews will be no more than 10 mins as this final film will be oh .. 10 mins.. I want to see what everyone has to say.. the model is coming along...

Here is a still from one the scripts I am messing with. I am making a composite with another one and getting it to be 3d...I should just use the swarming kokkugia code from last semester but....

How does your home grow...

Just to reiterate how awesome and on point this project is....
Thanks Terreform.
Thanks Mitchell.
and Thanks

Artist Edina Tokodi. Green terrorism! Reminiscent of the Knitta Please...

BOOKCLUB-broods everyWARE

In Octavia Butler's book, Lilith's Brood, (of course in a human led apocalypse) the survivors must "choose" to adapt to their new circumstances and environments and merge with an alien species, the Oankali, or face extinction. As the original title suggests, Xenogenesis is an origin story, about a completely new beginning for humanity in which essentialist conceptions of identity are immediately put into play with alienness. In the last part, the character Jodahs's body drastically responds and adapts to its environments wishes and is no longer be alien to anything. The body can choose to truly inhabit any other body, any environment and therefore is a transformation of the understanding between subject/object. Humans are drawn to its appearance, which morphs to align with their own desires. Ultimately Jodas is the interface where increased chance of survival is coupled with the fulfillment of deep inner desires, as its own body can shift to become whatever another longs for, transcending and commanding categories of definition such as sex, race and form. Humans are given the chance for something they themselves have agency to help define and construct and live symbolically with.

Similarly yet closer to our realms of recognition, in Adam Greenfield's book Everyware, the Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, we are looking for this interface that keeps "face." His book is broken down into 81 thesis(s), one being "Everyware is information processing embedded in the objects and surfaces of everyday life." The point of the Inhabitable Organism is part of this embedded info processing. It is the matter of the data that is rendered visable or just "digetstable" (no pun intended) to its users. An important facet that I would like to exploit out of this is that the Everyware is also the user not just the used, and the "users" are also the used. The dialog between those increases while in flux.

While discussing this book for the class I have with Benjamin Bratton, I realized what is necessary for the InhabOrg to actually work::RIGIDITY! Aka conflict is structure. (Bits vrs atoms or bits and atoms ) This new form of building/growing can not exist as a democratic system. So thus it has to have the scaffolding to grow and and repeal against. The interface of the the Inhaborg has to to be embedded and interlaced with other interfaces... it is not just fungus growing on a wall, it is fungus growing on a lattice structure with a copper battery and led and sensors that then shift and shock the new "skin/muscle" to react to what it senses (people/animals/things/environment/etc)

response and alterations...

Current status of the thesis presentation:
I have the packaging sequence story boarded out. I have employed a friend of mine to help visualize that part. I am currently PHYSICALLY growing fungus (not the lichen that I would like but we are starting with some mushroom action. ) I am currently scheduling interviews with people who are working on the lines of this idea. I will post the questions soon. I am almost done with the processing script that will be used to help visualize the growth of this thing.

I sent my thesis statement to Pia Ednie-Brown, a professor at the SIAL.
In her response she pinpointed out somethings.

What does it mean for environments to "assimilate and integrate themselves into the contextual biospheres, self utilizing the excess materials through an auto- metabolism."?

To my own criticism of my statement, I do believe that most systems and environment already integrate themselves into the existing context, eventually if not immediately but their relation and integration is not communicated and understood but the users all the time. Overall, I guess this statement of them assimilating and integrating is pushing towards a stimulus with a "positive" outcome that would not have a terribly foreign and dramatic effect on its surroundings. The self utilizing statement runs along the lines of Waste=Food, a concept pushed by William McDonough and Partners, a prevalent designer in the world of green design. (In their Cradle to Cradle Design, they have a term called BIOLOGICAL METABOLISM. "the natural processes of ecosystems are a biological metabolism, making safe and healthy use of materials in cycles of abundance.") One could say we are trying to do that here.

Pia also brought up what the thesis statement lags in in how this model or desire to design to define what an 'Inhabitable Organism" is (or, could be), isn't just a one shot procedure but could be easier of I gradually defined what the value or goals of such a thing is. This way the model is more of what it become or could become.

Also she brought up the point that buildings become "part of ourselves as organisms, like new limbs, skins etc as we inhabit them – ie they are organisms to the extent that they are part
of living ecologies. If you are (as the sentence above suggests) seeking a building that is autonomously an organism (to the degree that living creatures are autonomous) then I imagine we could not rely on them in the same way as we do our rather solid conventional dwellings. But could they offer the world something else, and what would this be?"

Good question! (It's funny that Pia refers to the building being an extension of ourselves much like a limb and etc due to it was the extension of ourselves that brought me to architecture as a scaler jump from fashion initially. just a side note) I think its more to make the building autonomous away from a larger support grid. (of the grid .. etc. ) But supporting it with the inhabitants. So you could come home and feed your house sort to speak. You could power your house potentially with a urine battery. Or compost pile. Imagine, you might be able to "power" your house with the ants you could attract from the food left out.

The human interaction and relationship with the new structure is very important and is going to be addressed when this movie is finished. Tali and Peter from Imaginary Forces came in yesterday and talked to us about their work and projects, specifically the Experience Design. The presentation reminded that thats was what it was about in the end. What is the experience of the Inhabitable Organism? How can that be communicated? How can people understand that its ok to want and grow one of these things?

breeding spaces

A biological life support system (BLSS) can, by exploiting photosynthetic and microbiological sequences, close the circuit of metabolism and energy processes and thus from a self-contained cycle between producer, consumer and composer.

Zbigniew Oksiuta

im sticking with you, cus im made out of glue...

While studying bacteria to understand the basics of how cells work, microbiologist and geneticist Yves Brun, Ph.D., of Indiana University in Bloomington found a natural form of "superglue" in the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus. This glue consists of a sugary substance that does not dissolve in water. The bacteria uses the substance to attach to water pipes and rocks in freshwater streams. Brun performed a test to investigate the bacteria's strength. He allowed the bacteria to attach to a tiny glass tube, then measured the force required to rip them off, using a special microscope equipped with a probe.

Brun's findings reveal that the bacterial glue is several times stronger than commercial dental adhesive or even superglue, with an adhesive force of nearly 5 tons per square inch. This makes it the strongest biological adhesive ever measured. Brun's studies suggest that the glue works in water and can attach to just about any type of surface. These characteristics make the substance an ideal candidate for a surgical adhesive, says Brun, who is now working to understand more about the properties of the natural glue.

installation progressions....

yikes. So here is a combination of what is going to be going on ....
Here is a mechanical dry erase board project that I found that is VERY VERY similar to my project. The guy who made it, Romado12187 has been a big help so far. Mine will just spray glue versus ink. As to spray the glue... I am going to make it as a tangent to this project. This whole thing has made me a bit nervous. I really hope I can pull this off. I also need to buy a blower...

el thesis statement...

Current culture is now polluted and propagated with escape routes and throw rugs of green and sustainable design, offering penny pinching game plans to move towards the illusion of tree hugging in Prada. Buildings (dwellings) can not be fully sustainable until they can assimilate and integrate themselves into the contextual biospheres, self utilizing the excess materials through an auto-metabolism. Though as every object/particle could be argued as having its own agency and possible realities, their reaction via their observed system has the potential for being dynamic through time and scale. The goal of the matter is to chisel towards and ideally define what is an Inhabitable Organism, and thus developing the model for which it is entitled and can be communicated across the rhizome.