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UK Designer Grows Clothes From Bacteria
An anonymous reader writes "Experimental UK designer Suzanne Lee 'grows' clothes from bacteria. She has developed a method for growing clothing from yeast, a pinch of bacteria, and several cups of sweetened green tea. From this microbial soup, fibers begin to sprout and propagate, eventually resulting in thin, wet sheets of bacterial cellulose that can be molded to a dress form. As the sheets dry out, overlapping edges 'felt' together to become fused seams. When all moisture has evaporated, the fibers develop a tight-knit, papyrus-like surface."
It looks like something from Warhammer 40K, or a Hannibal Lector movie.
Aside from the novelty, this is basically just paper clothing. And paper doesn't look nearly as nasty of this stuff does. It's an interesting proof of concept, but doesn't strike me as particularly useful. Like hemp clothing, it will probably appeal to some hippie types who will like to be able to say that their clothes are made from green tea. But beyond that, not particularly useful for anything else.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If the material is hydrated again, will it become a wet sheet again? That would make for some interesting wet T-Shirt contests....
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Now Hollister, Aero, and Abercrombie & Fitch will market the clothing as a "new trend" and sell the shirts for 100$ a pop.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Because in the post-apocalyptic future we may not have anything else to make clothing from.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
.... bacteria? Eeeeewwwwww.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Obviously, fungi-bacteria cellulose clothes is an acquired taste. It grows on you.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
call me when they grow some carbon nanotubes from bacteria.
I have a whole wardrobe under my foreskin.
"I have wiped entire civilizations off of my chest, with a grey gym sock." - Hicks
Especially if it's like papyrus and you substitute water for a pitcher of vinegar.
Revenge at last.... Bacteria have been living in us for millions of years.
Could it make beer as a byproduct?
Better yet, could this be a byproduct of making beer?
If we get to the point where we don't even have paper, I'd say clothing will be the least of our problems.
Personally, all I'll need in the apocalypse are shoulderpads, a mohawk, and a dune-buggy. Shirt and pants are purely optional.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yeah! When you take antibiotics, your clothes disappear!! Perfect for hot women :)
Except that it's not paper, which is usually made from ground-up trees. You guys should think further than clothing. There has been a lot of talk and hype about using bacteria to synthesize useful materials. More than anything else, this little stunt demonstrates that it's slowly getting feasible.
The material in question might find some more useful application than clothing. If not, some other "biotech" material eventually will.
As long as it can be tie dyed, it will have a following among the hippies.
I'm just amazed that it has a pocket!
Hopefully the appearance can be approved over time and people won't protest the low wages in bacteria "sweat shops"... err, "cytoplasm complexes"?
Burning hot seat combined with no pants sounds like a BAD plan. (Unless you are in that sort of thing)
ah yes, optional, until you get your nadgers trapped or you're caught up by the short & curlies...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I can wear this in my meat house. The future is here! and it is hella gross.
An earlier post speculated that this clothing is basically useless except to environmentalist types who brag about how their clothes are ultra-green. Nevermind that the non-existant aesthetic would put off most people you encounter; plus its obvious that wearing papery material means that you cannot stay in the rain for long, have to be careful removing and putting on the garment, and can't count on it lasting for long in the face of ordinary wear and tear. All in all, worse even than the thinnest of thin cotton shirts you get from markets and shops like Primark.
Papyrus, the ancient world's precursor to paper, is as the summary states similar to this stuff. Oh and if you chose to wear papyrus you'd be just as green since it is predominantly the pith from the papyrus plant which isn't remotely threatened as a species. It made its appearance in Egypt over three thousand years back but never saw wide use in clothing due to tried and tested plant fiber proving infinitely better.
Yes!
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My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
So can this be cleaned, like ever? If not, then it would hardly be considered human clothing. Even the ancients rinsed out their loincloths from time to time.
But then again, one could just grow a new shirt when needed....
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
When Summer turns to Autumn, the leaves start falling and the evening nights start to have a little nip in the air, hey presto, a few well-placed sneezes up your arms and your short-sleeved top becomes full-length in the arm department.
Instead of DKNY, show a little biological chic with your NY3 wardrobe.
AT&ROFLMAO
And besides that, it looks like the stuff is not dyed. Without color, I really couldn't call this clothing -- at least not in the modern sense of clothing.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I used to brew Kombucha tea, and this looks exactly like (and probably is) the dried form of the culture that forms on the surface. I used it to write stuff on, feels really like papyrus.
UK Designer Grows Clothes From Bacteria
So what? Bobby Fischer started doing this 20 years ago!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I think that the general sensation of "lack of novelty" derives from the fact that we've been forcing plants to produce cellulose fibers, then processing them into various sorts of sheet material, since sometime before the advent of recorded history. In most of those cases, we've even been using fusion-driven desalination to water the plants...
Actually, the material takes dyes very easily. Suzanne's work is dyed and protected from microbial degradation by Kakishiburi which is aged, fermented juice of green persimmons, and a traditional Japanese process.
All one needs to do is come up with some microorganism that attacks that kind of bacteria and kills it. Just imagine moving around with a spray gun filled with that microorganism and threatening to spray your adversary with it! Think of the possibilities that it provides to muggers!!!
Buffalo Bill is the first thought that came to mind when i saw the pics of the shirt
IT'S PEOPLE!!
Oh, wait, what? It's made out of cows? Oh, that's cool, never mind...
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Because you definitely waste leather on a seat cover during the end-times. It'll be old t-shirts, which don't get nearly as hot. I, for one, welcome the pants and shirtless future (unhealthy fatties won't survive, so no worries about that particular visage).
'Except that it's not paper, which is usually made from ground-up trees.'
Usually, but not always. Enjoy:
http://www.elephantdungpaper.com/process.html
Obviously a little dye would make that garment look better. But this is a mind blowing breakthrough in a way. If fabric can be grown it might even be possible to grow cement saturated fabric that could form structures such as homes when soaked with water. Although this work is in its infancy I expect that it will branch out and become an important breakthrough in our society. It is a bit like making the first car. The very first cars were sort of useless but the concept was the beginning of a world wide change in the way people live.
What would be interesting is if the bacteria can become dormant instead of dying. Then if you get a rip or tear on the clothes you apply some nutrients to the rip and in 24 hours it regrows and fixes itself. Though i'm thinking that's quite a ways away, it would be really neat instead of throwing away clothes like we do now. That or clothes that can grow/shrink with you, or clothes that shed like skin always new.
Then maybe it can be used as paper. There are all kinds of ecological reasons to pursue 'grown' textiles.
Well, it's not clear from any of the website what the material's properties are like. Just because it's matted cellulose doesn't mean it necessarily has a stiff paper-like constitution.
Unfortunately the website isn't very helpful saying what the properties are now, and what they think they can get them to be.
(BTW, in countries with a hemp fiber industry that actually has gotten to the point of doing steam explosion and cottonization, hemp fabric and blends are not just an enviro-chic product. Much of the stuff sold here in the U.S. is behind the curve.)
Someone had to do it.
But is it edible? One can see uses for that, ranging from being shipwrecked on a desert island, to late on a hot date....
mark
I'm just amazed that it has a pocket!
Erm... that's an orifice...do not put your hand in... oh, it seems to like it. Never mind!
,
I, for one, welcome the pants and shirtless future (unhealthy fatties won't survive, so no worries about that particular visage).
Just sunburnt wangs, that sounds like fun.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
make Nitrocellulose clothing! Perfect clothing for girls featuring instant-undressing, just grab a lighter or move under the sun and watch your clothes disappear while you blink your eyes.
It's a bacteria, takes 20 secs to procreate. A few years of selection, and these will grow into costumes, complete with shoes and ascots. Clothing industry will be driven out of business, and will sue the bacteria for copying their clothes...
Hemp clothing is for more than just "hippies" (whoever they are). Hemp is a great fiber for textiles, which is why it was used for centuries/millennia. Synthetic fiber corps like Dupont helped create marijuana prohibition because hemp was too competitive with their new products.
Maybe only "hippies" know about that, but the fabric is for everyone. You can't smoke it.
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make install -not war
nadgers
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
That depends on how much engineering knowledge they possess. They can be kept in the shade, or undeground with thousands of pigs providing power for the last remaining vestiges of the old civilizations.
Who runs Barter Town bitch? That's right.... I run Barter Town.
Now get me my ham sandwich.
Under my design, cellulose is not grown using bacteria, but rather using
plants, such as flax, from which a puffy cotton can be collected.
These fibers can be pulled and spun together to make threads,
using a process that I call, for lack of a better word, spinning.
This thread being thus procured is ready for another process
which I call weaving, on a device called a loom, which creates
a criss-cross grid of threads to form fabric. Fabric can be cut
and assembled together using sewing to make garments.
It's quite far fetched compared to the bacteria, but shows a lot
of promise.
Sounds slimy to me.
alright then, sometimes grass and other plants too
Then we will walk in the nude!
I hear it will be quite hot anyway.
In the right climate, clothes are a pointless socially conditioned habit anyway. :) :D)
(At least the women around you have to believe that.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Tanning is a wonderful process you know.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
What the hell is a nadger trap?
I've been doing the reverse for years.
Get back to me when they come up with something that doesn't look like it was peeled off of Shakespeare's corpse.
So if they make underwear out of this stuff and it is still contaminated with yeast in large quantities does anybody else see this being a bad thing?
Unless you own stock in Monistat or cranberry juice companies...
but you can make excellent ropes for drums with it
Disgusting... plain disgusting Looks like Alien skin http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/
- This can't be... - Be what? Be real?
Tanning is a wonderful process you know.
Yes, albinos will also go extinct at that point.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
(Unless you are in that sort of thing)
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
sudo ergo sum
Like hemp clothing
Hemp has been one of the most important textile products in history. When the current prohibition dies down it will once again become more ubiquitous than cotton.
it will probably appeal to some hippie types.
Those darn hippies and their designer fashions!
not particularly useful for anything else
Harnessing bacteria for physical work is very important as it holds possible solutions to many problems including energy, food, and innumerable structural designs like water filters, hip joints, and spacecraft.