Sensing Matter

A collaboration with bio materials.

Original exhibit June, 2021 at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia — Barcelona, Spain.

Extended exhibit through September 30, 2021 at the IAAC Atelier —Barcelona, Spain.

Material samples on exhibit October 8-10, 2021 at the Maker Faire —Rome, Italy.

This exhibition shows the work done by Jasmine Boerner, Josefina Nano, and Inés Burdiles, in a first-person perspective study of the relation of bio-based materials in relation to the human body, during the 20/21 Master in Design for Emergent Futures, at IAAC, FabLab Bcn and Elisava School of Design. 

Becoming attentive to materiality through sensorial perception, bringing awareness to the permanent presence of artificial materials around us and on us. Biobased degradable materials have revealed the emergence of a nature in their own process of conformation of this new artificiality. 

Naturally shaped by the forces of the environment, such as light, humidity, temperature and gravity, the materials deformed, shrank and grew out of our control. The observation of the evolution of the materials in a longer timescale, has expanded the possibilities of what they can become, and pushed us as designers to question how to work within the confines of this reality rather than replace existing materials with new sustainable ones, conditioning them a priori with existing processes.

For this exhibition we explored inverting the roles of power, between designers and materials, by attempting to submit our bodies to the material’s agency, and in this process recognize them as other significant bodies, subject to possible collaboration and co-creation. Taking form from the shape of our bodies, and drying in an environment defined by the unavoidable force of gravity, the materials lifted, curved and cracked as they dried, making each outcome completely unique by the circumstances and the process by which it was done.

In line with the search for a new sustainable material reality, and considering most of the materials exhibited come from repurposed alimentary surplus, the exhibit structure was done using only leftovers of CNC cuts from the IAAC Atelier and FabLab Barcelona, embracing a Zero Waste strategy of design, working around the possibilities offered by the available surplus of material in the IAAC ecosystem.

Bio plastics supplied for the exhibition were part of a 3 month personal investigation in which I collected local food waste in Barcelona and experimented with creating new compostable materials with it.

Mycelium pieces were a part of a larger project in which I grew and created yoga blocks out of mycelium grown on varying local waste including saw dust from the Fab Lab and Cacao shells from a local chocolate factory Blanxart.