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In this new Future Materials Encounters, we talk with artist and designers Jessie French and Kate Scardifield about algae and their use in the field or art, design, industry, and academic research. From Jessie’s and Kate’s stories, algae emerge as materials who can shift boundaries between disciplines, bridging different social realms and distant ecosystems. In this episode, you will learn about the embodied knowledges that are developed through a prolonged engagement with algae; about the ethics of scaling up artistic research; about the ways in which algae offer precious insights not only into environmental, but also into the cultural systems in which art and design operate.

Future Materials Encounters are a series of workshops and conversations around the materials of the Future Materials Bank. Each event in the series focuses on a specific material, staging a conversation between the maker and the audience.

The Future Materials Bank is an archive of materials that supports and promotes the transition towards ecologically conscious art and design practices. It is part of Future Materials, an initiative of the Nature Research department at the Jan van Eyck Academie.

www.futurematerialsbank.com

This Future Materials Encounter hosted a talk on fungal mycelium uses in art, design, and architecture, led by Maurizio Montalti, founder of the Amsterdam-based innovation studio Officina Corpuscoli.

Encouraging participants to critically reflect upon material economies within artistic and design practices, Maurizio shared his expertise on the development of new fully circular, biologically based, and environmentally friendly materials he has developed and brought successfully to market, and expanded on symbiotic notions of nature, culture, morphology, and material agency.

Mycelium defines the networked structures of fungi providing symbiotic relationships to plant species through root networks both on large and microscopic scales. When isolated under the correct environmental conditions, mycelium begins to grow, forming natural polymers that bond to a waste, or feed material. Once fused and set, it can become a durable, fire resistant, biodegradable material, adaptable to several applications. The material can proliferate by feeding on decayed organic matter, and current residual waste streams can provide this base material for its growth. Therefore, mycelium can actively participate in circular material economies. Greater still, it epitomises regenerative material processes that can positively encourage inter-species collaboration, leading to more balanced material ecosystems.

Maurizio Montalti is a designer, researcher, educator, and entrepreneur. He is Founder and Creative Director of Amsterdam-based practice Officina Corpuscoli. The studio’s projects mostly stem from critical explorations in regard to contemporary material culture as well as on a continued attempt to decipher the way in which human and non-human come together within the relational complexity of the dynamic ecosystem we all belong to.

The Future Materials Bank is an archive of materials that supports and promotes the transition towards ecologically conscious art and design practices. It is part of Future Materials, an initiative of the Nature Research department at the Jan van Eyck Academie.

In this Future Materials Encounter, Giulia Bellinetti, coordinator of the Jan van Eyck Future Materials programme, talks with material designer Eline ten Busschen and designer, artist, researcher Pei-Ying Lin about wool and new technologies applied to weaving techniques.

They discuss ecologies of materials and complex systems, materials' temperament that emerge during experimentation, A.I. and the blurring of boundaries between natural and digital realms in textile design. 

Eline ten Busschen

is a product designer with a strong interest in exploring waste streams and their surfaces. Eline believes there is an ecology in the way materials are treated and has adopted a holistic approach that think about the whole lifecycle of a material. Her project SURPLUS, on the Future Materials Bank, features non-woven textiles, using discarded wool fibers held together through 3D printing techniques. 

Pei-Ying Lin

is an artist, designer and researcher based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Her main focus is on the combination of science and human society through artistic methods, focus she recently expanded towards the manipulation of the boundaries between invisible/visible, living/non-living and finding ways to build tools and methods that facilitate such explorations. She has won the Honorary Mention in Hybrid Arts Category of Ars Electronica 2015, and was among the first group of Taiwanese artists-in-residence of the program of Accelerate@CERN. She is currently conducting a PhD research at the TU Eindhoven on AI technologies applied to weaving techniques. 

The podcast is part of a miniseries of Future Materials Encounters organized in the context of The Living Archive, the closing exhibition of the InnovatieLab programme, at the Dutch Design Week 2023. 

Visit our website for more information about the Jan van Eyck Academie, our participants, and programme.

Dorieke Schreurs and Jesse Adler, Future Materials Fellows at the Jan van Eyck in 2022/2023, have developed two different but complementary research strands on the future of pigments and colours. Interviewed by Pleun van Dijk, curator of the Future Materials Bank, Dorieke and Jesse share their knowledge on the environmental impact of acrylic pigments, on the challenges of developing sustainable paint alternatives, and on the opportunities emerging from the fungal world. 

Jesse Adler

is a multidisciplinary designer (MA Material Futures, Central Saint Martins), biomolecular scientist (University of Michigan), and founder of the start-up Petri. Jesse works at the intersection of design, science, and sustainable innovation. Her practice is led by her curiosity about the natural world and her passion for planet-centered designs. Jesse’s current research focuses on extracting pigments from fungi and explores their potential to reduce or replace our dependence on colourants from non-renewable resources (such as minerals and fossil fuels) especially in the textile, food, and cosmetic industries. Jesse contributed to the Future Materials Bank with her project Alchemical Mycology. 

Dorieke Schreurs

Doing research, pioneering new approaches, changing mindsets and perspectives is what Dorieke is involved with as an artist, researcher, and educator. She explores different ways to use materials, expanding possibilities and, in the process, creating a foundation for sustainable development in the world of colour and the arts – worlds which strive for synergy with nature and the sciences. The focus on sustainability and cradle-to-cradle processes as an artist, means that her work is becoming more and more intertwined with other disciplines in the creative industry and beyond. The ultimate goal is to be able to contribute to the transition into a more sustainable creative field, in which the use of non-polluting, non- toxic materials made from renewable resources is accessible to anyone. Dorieke contributed to the Future Materials Bank with her project Continuous Color. 

The podcast is part of a miniseries of Future Materials Encounters organized in the context of The Living Archive, the closing exhibition of the ⁠InnovatieLab⁠ programme, at the ⁠Dutch Design Week 2023⁠. 

Visit our ⁠website⁠ for more information about the Jan van Eyck Academie, our participants, and programme.

Is pollution an external evil entity or a product of internalized cultural myths? This is one of the questions Rotterdam-based designer Gaia D’Arrigo poses through the fictional character CiucciaNebbia (literally translated as Fog-sucker). In conversation with Giulia Bellinetti, coordinator of the Future Materials programme, Gaia introduces the mythological figure of the Ciuccianebbia and the homonymous multimedia project. Following the Ciuccianebbia in its multiple manifestations, Gaia and Giulia discuss the potential of material research and multimedia storytelling in exploring the relationship between fiction and the plural realities surrounding consumerism, standardisation, and exhaustion. 
 

Gaia D'Arrigo

is a Rotterdam-based interdisciplinary designer and artist originally from Milan, Italy. In her practice, she combines material research and storytelling to investigate anthropogenic environments, contaminated landscapes, and toxic phenomena. She researches the interaction of the environment, matter, and the human body, as well as cultural phenomena manifesting in the material realm. Her work is channeled through out unconventional material archives, functional art pieces, installations, and performances that challenge the relationship between design fiction and the narratives surrounding consumerism, standards, and exhaustion. Gaia contributed to the Future Materials Bank with her project CiucciaNebbia.

The podcast is part of a miniseries of Future Materials Encounters organized in the context of The Living Archive, the closing exhibition of the ⁠InnovatieLab⁠ programme, at the ⁠Dutch Design Week 2023⁠. 

Visit our ⁠website⁠ for more information about the Jan van Eyck Academie, our participants, and programme.

In this Future Materials Encounter, Pleun van Dijk, curator of the Future Materials Bank, sits in conversation with material designer Sarmite Polakova to talk about PineSkin and PineResin, two circular projects by Studio Sarmite that unveil the potential of two very common byproducts of the timber industry. During the conversation, Sarmite and Pleun reflect on the overlooked potential of discarded materials, and how design can help broader society to understand materials in a better way, rethinking waste as a surplus, and collectively envision sustainable future scenarios.  

Studio Sarmite

is a natural materials design and research studio based in Frankfurt, Germany. Lead by Latvian designer Sarmite Polakova, the studio work focuses on transforming industry waste and various byproducts into new high-quality materials that can be brought back to the market. Polakova combines experimental research with the manipulation of existing designing methods, which leads to a design language tailored specifically for each material. Thus, the design objects become the main carriers of the narrative. Her projects PineResin and PineSkins are part of the Future Materials Bank. 

The podcast is part of a miniseries of Future Materials Encounters organized in the context of The Living Archive, the closing exhibition of the ⁠InnovatieLab⁠ programme, at the ⁠Dutch Design Week 2023⁠. 

Visit our ⁠website⁠ for more information about the Jan van Eyck Academie, our participants, and programme.