Kombucha
In the 21st century, mass production is damaging the planet more than ever. The leather industry is a big part of this damage, that is happening more and more every day. Scientists are working for finding other ways to create the same materials without affecting the planet and nature. Kombucha is one of the new and very important methods that can replace actual leather in the future.
It was not a topic that had information about before this project so it was a whole new experience for me to work no a material like this. That is not fabricated, or collected from nature but something that you grow in your room. It is made with very simple materials that we can find easily.
When the steps on the instructions are followed, it is really easy to grow it. It is only a matter of waiting. After it covers the entire box, I waited more so it would get thicker, however, it grew so much faster than I expected so it got thicker than I wanted. Even though after drying it got thinner, it became less flexible so it started cracking.
Due to the texture, I did not want to manipulate the surface more so I decided that I wanted to use this not only as leather but as fabric. I used the photographs and manipulated them to create a pattern for a regular fabric. The color and the textures looked very interesting and I believe that using this images on a regular fabric can break the bias ideas about this material due to the different texture and smell.
I used Illustrator for the manipulation of the images. I based the design on colors and shapes of the kombucha leather. This pattern can be printed on organic, sustainable fabrics and can be adapted to fashion or decorative fabrics.
This was the pattern that I created the only illustrator when I was thinking about how Kombucha looked in the box.
After this pattern, I started distorting the photos of kombucha. I changed their pattern and pixels to create these images. Using the template and the edited images, I created a pattern that could be adapted to many surfaces such as textiles for clothes, interior design fabrics, wall coverings or wallpapers. I created three versions of the same pattern by changing the line weights.
Using these patterns I created two walls covering, wallpapers that added a new perspective to a simple, empty room. I believe that it was a process that explored kombucha in many different levels and ways.
The text and images are in pdf format in the link: kombucha-ilovepdf-compressed-tcalny
