My Role
My duties involved growing the mycelium and rapid prototyping different products with mycelium, under the direction of GSR Eldy Lazaro. Eldy's work also greatly focused on teaching designers on how to use mycelium, from growing to construction. The other part of my duties involved designing infographics in the form of posters and animations. Additionally, I photographed and filmed the use of the mycelium.
team
1 design intern, 1 design master student, 1 PI
Date
2019
tools
Mycelium, Laser cutter, 3D printer, Canon camera, Photoshop, Illustrator, After-effects
Background
From the Summer of 2019 to the Winter of 2020, I was an intern at the Interactive Organisms Lab at UC Davis, run by Dr. Katia Vega. I was supporting graduate student researcher Eldy Lazaro's work. Eldy's research focused on learning and experimenting with the physical extents of mycelium and which scenarios it could be used to replace common materials that designers use. Learning this is important as mycelium is 100% naturally biodegradable and is a sustainable material to produce.
This is a short video that I made of the work that we did that summer.
Above from left to right: lamp, business card, hanging lamp, a sign attached to a motor, a micro controller case, a candle stick, a informational microcontroller case, and an infographic on laser cutting mycelium.
These are some of the products that I produced. I designed them and then fabricated them (also some of these are made from mycelium that I grew myself).
This is a poster I designed explaining the growing process. It was shown at the UBICOMP 2019 conference.
