When we were doing the class session, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to make until I looked up some more examples of Scoby Leather goods. Something I noticed was that the thinnest sheets were decently shiny/see through. Nothing where you could realistically discern anything through the object, but could diffuse light. I thought that it would be an interesting material to make some sort of bounce card or diffuse box to be used on a film set. It wouldn't be super clean, but could reflect the light in nice ways.
I had one of the younger SCOBY that was quite firm and fleshy, so I decided to blend it into something I could smooth out. I also wanted it to be somewhat inflexible when it was done, so I used a wire frame to see if that would change the structure at all. Once I had that done, it was time to let it dry.
My backyard is cold, wet, and not super exposed to the sun at this point of the year. So, after 5 days of drying, it is still super wet and squishy.
For this assignment I came up with 2 projects. The first was more practical than anything else. I think its is important to experiment with this kind of resource now. So, I thought it could be a good idea to try replacing the leather on some of the cars of Metro North with SCOBY leather. This is just a nice way to brainstorm new bio resources for human use.
The second Idea is more artistic. While we were playing with this stuff in class, we got the microscope from the ER and looked at the SCOBY. It has a really interesting structure that I bet evolves over time. Since a thin piece of SCOBY can kind of diffuse light, I thought it could be cool to use a microscope camera to project the camera feed through a sculpture. From what I recall, there wasn't a lot of movement in the SCOBY itself, but it is likely to change over time. So, you leave this running and you will get a natural and evolving light fixture.