For this project we were asked to create creative planters out of mycelium for the urban farmers in Facteur Graine. At the beginning we all came up with several ideas, these being:
After going to Facteur Graine and talking to the people who worked there, we decided with them that the coolest, most creative and useful thing would be to create the mycelium cress sandal. For this sandal we decided to make the molds out of alginate which is a substance used to take molds of teeth by dentists.
Taking the molds was quite challenging because the alginate took some time to dry up but they came out quite nicely.
After taking the molds we took the mycelium recipe and started growing the mycelium to put into the molds of the shoes
RECIPE:
MAKING MYCELLIUM:
We followed the recipe to make the mycelium and then we covered the molds with plastic so the mycelium would not grow into the alginate. We also used disinfecting spray to disinfect all the containers and such that could potentially contaminate the mycelium.
We also made the strap of the sandal out of scraps of material we found from the Saturday workshops. We created some flaps to be able to insert cotton and therefore grow crest.
FINAL RESULT:
After all of this was done, we had to let the mycelium grow. It normally takes up to a week. So we left it in the classroom cupboard and waited a whole week.
When we came back after the week, our molds were completely infected and therefore we could not use the mycelium:
We then saw the contamination, we decided to create a prototype of what it could have been but we were not able to create. We took a shoe that Petra did not use anymore and used it as the platform of the sandal, what would have been made out of mycelium.
