The first step on this journey, from an artistic practice point of view, was to learn how to cultivate the mycelium. They make it look very easy on the internet. This is a lie. What is easy, is growing mold.
Although I trained as a scientist, I hadn’t done much in the way of culturing micro-organisms myself, and I didn’t have a lab bench set up anywhere, so it was all a bit ad hoc. There were plenty of mold fails, precious little mycelial growth and a lot of questioning my life choices.
In the early stages I learned that you really do need a reliable sterilisation system (a pressure cooker is good) and a heat source to keep your mycelium at a cosy 25 degrees celcius. I also learned new ways to cook mushrooms, and that spore prints are beautiful! So it wasn’t all bad.
It’s taken me from September 2025 till mid January 2026 to produce anything that looks even remotely like a mycelium composite piece. In this case a set of 3 approximately 1cm x 2cm x 8cm bricks. They haven’t colonised as well as I would have liked and they’re nowhere near the ‘as strong as concrete’ that I’ve read they should be.
Me & My Microbes 