Mycelium Artifacts: Exploring Shapeable and Accessible Biofabrication

We present our work with mycelium-the vegetative part of a fungus made up of fine filaments that can be grown on a substrate to take a specific form-as a sustainable and accessible biofabrication material for DIS. Over the course of one year, our interdisciplinary team experimented with growing diverse 3D forms out of mycelium. Drawing on examples from our hands-on work, our DIS demo will present three fabrication possibilities of mycelium 1) disposable low fidelity enclosures for rapid prototypes; 2) mycelium forms sculpted with everyday materials; and 3) physical replicas of 3D models grown out of mycelium. We also describe challenges and workarounds for adopting mycelium into HCI workflows based on the obstacles we encountered.