Hybrid Matter
Slow Encounters with Mycelium Mind as a part of the “Hybrid Matter” series.
Substrate-site specific living sculptures that address local history, sustainable art practices, concepts of de/industrialization, and additive manufacturing. “Hybrid Matter” encapsulates the idea of an “Intermatter” - consisting of both non-living and living agents and addresses the agency of those entities, sprouting beyond time and scale of human control.
The sculpture is printed using MycoPrinter, an open-source 3D bioprinter that prints mycelium substrate ready for inoculation with various types of fungi thus combining additive manufacturing with fungi biological tissue to create a living sculpture. As such, it aims to bring together engineering, biological sciences, and art under the umbrella of open citizen science. The first site MycoPrinter addressed is Buffalo China Factory. It operated for over 100 years and became one of the largest factories in the world at some point that produced chinaware. It was recently shut down. From the last sale of the Factory Darya purchased chinaware, she 3D scanned it and 3D printed it with MYcoPrinter 2.0 using site-specific substrate from factory clay, coffee grounds from a local coffee shop, and cardboard form delivery boxes. The sculpture was inoculated with Fungi, which successfully colonized the substrate. As a part of the traveling series of “Hybrid Matter” sculptures, MycoPrinter 2.0 will contribute to the creation of substrate-site specific living sculptures that will aid in the creation of a new type of matter, “Intermatter” - consisting of both non-living and living agents. MycoPrinter 2.0 was built using open-source designs and then calibrated to a specific substrate that was created at Coalesce Biological lab based on Darya’s research on fungi, fluid mechanics, biomaterials, 3dbioprinitng. Due to the COVID-19, the project has been postponed to be presented on-site until late October.
Darya Warner
Born 1981, Ukraine
Born in Ukraine, Darya immigrated to the USA in 2001 to pursue arts. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2014 with a focus on Bioart and got her Masters at University at Buffalo in conjunction with Coalesce Biological Lab in 2020. Her works span across various disciplines and address Climate Change, Biophilia Hypothesis, sustainable art practices, and notions of art as a biological medium. Darya is a co-founder and Director of Operations at CAYO Residency, an Art and Science residency based in the Bahamas focused on bridging biological research and art.
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