Mycomaterials with Kim Kedem

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Mycomaterials with Kim Kedem

 

Today we sit down with Kim Kedem of Mixing Bowl Studios to talk about transforming living spaces with mycomaterials. From mycelial lamps and furniture to 3d mushroom printing our future. Tune in and shroom in to this weeks episode.


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TRANSCRIPT

Unknown Speaker 0:11 Alex, welcome. Welcome. You are listening to the mushroom revival podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dorr, and we are absolutely obsessed with the wonderful, wacky, mysterious world of mushrooms and fungi. We bring on guests and experts from all around the globe to geek out with us and go down this mysterious rabbit hole to try to figure out what the heck is going on with these fungal friends of ours. And today, we have Kim to talk about fungal materials and what we can make with mycelium and fungi and so, Kim, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you so much for having me here today. It's very exciting. Been listening to this show for a while. So thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for listening. I appreciate it. And so where are you tuning in from? What do you do? Unknown Speaker 1:02 Yeah, what are you up to? I'm currently living in Beacon, New York, upstate, about an hour and a half from the city. Unknown Speaker 1:10 Before the past eight years, probably I've lived in the city. Just before we moved up here, I was working, actually, as an interior designer. Started my career as interior designer. Studied at in the city at fit, Unknown Speaker 1:26 and when I moved to Beacon, I started my own practice, after working for a couple of really bad hospitality firms, we did really cool spaces, Unknown Speaker 1:38 like the sphere in Las Vegas, hotels cool all around the world, and a lot of restaurants, and it's really picked, you know, my interest in, in the world of of home goods, and Unknown Speaker 1:55 when I was living in the city, Unknown Speaker 1:58 I, you know, I wanted to do Something with my hand, and I just never had space. And so again, when we moved here, I had the space, I had the option, and I just went for it. Unknown Speaker 2:10 That's awesome. Yeah, I have a really good friend that was an artist, Unknown Speaker 2:15 also in Brooklyn, and it's hard, Unknown Speaker 2:19 it's really hard, to find space, to keep up with rent and everything. I mean, it's such a beautiful city filled with so many artists, but, Unknown Speaker 2:29 yeah, definitely can be a struggle sometimes, but also so many beautiful pros with it as well. I mean, so many creative, beautiful, inspirational people in the city, all in this melting pot Unknown Speaker 2:43 that gives rise to, yeah, incredible inspiration for your work. So I'm curious, how did you go from interior design to mushrooms and fungi and working with mycelium? Yeah, you know, I grew up. I actually grew up in Israel and Tel Aviv, and then I moved to Paris, and then I moved to New York, and all of these are tiny places. Unknown Speaker 3:12 Always lived in tiny, you know, I'm sorry, not the city apartments, apartments, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, Oh, I don't know, yeah. I mean, hey, pretty big Unknown Speaker 3:23 compared to Alisa New York, definitely, Tel Aviv is a tiny place totally and, you know, I really wanted to design spaces. I wanted to design places for people to live in that are compact. Unknown Speaker 3:39 And then, when I started doing interior design, I realized that I want to go even smaller than that, and I want to design the furnishing. I want to design the home decor. Unknown Speaker 3:52 And in the city, there any apartment I lived in, there was never ceiling lights. It just doesn't exist in the construction in all departments. Honestly, I love that. I'm not a big fan of big ceiling lights, like I I love lamps and anything that's like low light, like high, like really high, fluorescent lights just kind of break me out. Yeah, they give me a headache. But the thing is that there isn't even an infrastructure to put dependent light just there's no there's no electricity. So I started as already a student to kind of look for options. Found out about plotting lights, nothing that exists in Israel for the very least. And Unknown Speaker 4:38 then when I was looking as a person on a really tight budget, I was looking for, you know, pieces that are nice, that are honest, that are made well, but are also affordable, and I couldn't find them. Unknown Speaker 4:52 And when I was doing part of my interior design school, I was looking for actual. Unknown Speaker 5:00 A good material, made chairs that are compostable. And I came across Ecovative that was back in 2018 2019 somewhere there. And I think they made chairs back in 2015 Unknown Speaker 5:12 they stopped that line. But from there, I just took it and decided, okay, I'll experiment Well, at least graphically and conceptually with ceilings, ceiling treatment, lampshades. And as I was going with my studies, I transferred it into my thesis and created a thing that's called my seal room. Basically I conceptualize it. You can grow a whole structure out of mycelium, anywhere from the floors to the walls to the bar to the ceilings, and invade elements in them, like mirrors and tile and whatnot, and it will just emerge together. This concept came from after research and seeing other people's work, so not taking credit for that there Unknown Speaker 6:01 and Unknown Speaker 6:03 only after that I started actually experimenting with mycelium. My frustration was horrible. I tried to make a lamppaste. Didn't realize that it's gonna overgrow. So that was, I think, oyster base, yeah, oyster mushroom based. And all of a sudden, see all those beautiful, you know, fruiting bodies, and, like, it looks beautiful until it doesn't. Unknown Speaker 6:26 And you know, then you need to dehydrate it. So I dehydrated it, and all turns yellow and kind of, like, not pleasing anymore. And spores get everywhere. Yeah, yeah, it looks, it looks really pretty for like, a couple days. So then is disaster, yeah. And, you know, it shrinked way more than it's supposed to be, and I used way more material than I thought I'm gonna need. So, you know, it didn't fill up the whole thing. I made it from bad, just I had bad laying around, so I created the mold for that, which was, again, a bad decision for first project, but I learned from that, you learn, yeah, it's a good decision. Yeah, it's a good decision. In a way, I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. I like to get everything done right in the first place. But you know that life happens. Life finds a way. Unknown Speaker 7:16 Yeah? So long, short story. That's how I got to it, and then I started experimenting with just any kitchen items, like bowls in food storage containers and anything of that sort, to create cool, fun shapes Unknown Speaker 7:35 that are also not using A new material in the process and not creating extra waste, which is that was one of the whole points of starting with mushrooms, I wanted a fully compostable product that is not adding waste to the landfill. How do you do that? You use things that already done it all to the landfill, unfortunately, but at least you're gonna reuse them in a way. Unknown Speaker 8:05 So it all started, I'm I'm so curious on your perspective on this. Unknown Speaker 8:11 I've talked to quite a few mycelium furniture people, and you know, everyone's kind of mission is like fully compostable furniture, like, you know, usable everyday household items and but then there's another crowd of like, the IKEA versus the, Unknown Speaker 8:32 you know, like hand crafted will last for 1000s of years furniture, and their whole thing is, like, IKEA is great if you're only Living in like an apartment, and then you're gonna move in like, a year or something. But it's not well built, it's cheap, but it kind of falls apart. Like, I have a I have some Ikea furniture, and, like, have a drawer right next to my bed, and like, the drawer is just falling apart. And it's like, it was great at first, and it looks cool, and then it's just, you know, it's not functional long term. And so I'm curious, like, what are your thoughts on, Unknown Speaker 9:10 um, making something to last, versus something that kind of deteriorates after very quickly and um, Unknown Speaker 9:20 and I've heard, like, two different perspectives of like, I you know, one artist made mycelium art that you can hang on your wall, but eventually, like, it starts to rot. And his whole thing was like, yeah, that's that's the point, and you shouldn't be attached to objects. And that's more of a natural way in the ecosystem. Like humans create this false sense of reality, of, like, Unknown Speaker 9:45 permanence, when everything is impermanent. So I'm just kind of rambling. I'm not I don't have, like, a succinct answer or a question. But what are your thoughts on on that topic? You know, it's, it's a you. Unknown Speaker 10:00 It's a question. It's almost philosophical question here, where you wonder to yourself, just I'll back back up a little bit. The whole process of making mycelium furniture entails using plastics, entails using non reusable, non reusable things because of the contamination, because a lot of other things we didn't figure out yet how to control with mushrooms, right? I wish I could tell you that I I have this, all of this hemp with spores, and I'm just gonna let it grow, but it has to have a mold or something that will hold it together and grow, and I need to cover it in a tent and have humidity control and the right temperature. So I'm using now electricity or gas to heat up the house, because I live in New York, and today is below zero Fahrenheit. So you know, we have that part of mycelium. Now, Unknown Speaker 10:59 the nice and beautiful thing about it, it is compostable to the point that at least the final product can go back to the landfill. An interior designer that does hospitality, I know that in within 10 years, the same style I just built a hotel for or did a restaurant, it's gonna get tired. It's gonna go back to the landfill right now, right? We have certain things that in residential environment, you might want to have something that lasts forever. And disclosure, I'm also a woodworker. I do woodworking, so I build things that last. I do ceramics, so I built things that would last glazing. You know, these things don't go bad, just as they came. Unknown Speaker 11:45 So there's this one part of me that I want this really great things, and you can't make everything out of mycelium. You can make a desk out of mycelium today that would, you know, be the most functional. And I have a kid I know that he's going to try to eat it, Unknown Speaker 12:01 you know, he's biting everything. I can't just have anything laying around the house. Is mycelium. Unknown Speaker 12:10 So sort of to this approach is, yes, there is place in this world for things that will last forever or last as long as possible, but we want to try and make them as sustainable as possible, if it's from a fallen tree, or if it's from bamboo, or, you know, whatever is the most renewable resource, something that is made locally, something that we did not now brought from Asia to America because the loan travel, Unknown Speaker 12:37 and so with mycelium, it's locally grown. And that bring me to another point, is that I'm now doing my master's degree in fabrication Unknown Speaker 12:49 in SUNY New Paltz, and we're working on building a treaty printer that is accessible. And what I mean by accessible is that not only people that are Unknown Speaker 13:03 manufacturing geeks can operate. And right now, you know what we have in the market is Wasp and Wasp and Wasp for any printer for clay that is actually working, and they develop their own material for my for mycelium printing. Unknown Speaker 13:19 There is Penn State that is doing incredible work right now on robotic arm that I've been looking into their, you know, whole research. And so what I'm trying to do is a small scale, something for a home product, something that I can send it to France and Italy and China, and I don't know Tel Aviv, and send my file, and they will mix up their mycelium and just print it and grow it on site, right? So the same concept of 3d printing that you streamline the manufacturing I want. I really want to do it with my sim. I have no idea if it will work. No clue. Unknown Speaker 13:58 Yeah. I, um, I, I know of a couple people doing, you know, mycelial 3d printing. I don't know how functional it is yet, right? Like any technology you know, you're bringing up, like, hey, where we're at with growing mushrooms and mycelium, we use a lot of plastic right now. Unknown Speaker 14:18 I think there are ways to grow that we can use less or use not single use plastic and just use the same things over and over again. There's a lot of single use plastic and growing fungi. Unknown Speaker 14:37 But with any industry like solar panels, you know? I mean, they're still not perfect, right now, and there's a lot of materials in them that are really toxic, and especially when they first came out, and they were not very efficient in converting energy, they weren't really sustainable, right? But it was like the if we put enough mindset. Unknown Speaker 15:00 To it and and if we Unknown Speaker 15:03 problem solve it enough, it will be extremely sustainable in the future. It's just working out those kinks in the beginning. Unknown Speaker 15:11 And so I think 3d printing is a brilliant idea. Unknown Speaker 15:16 And I'm also curious, like when you were designing an entire room and from floor to ceiling. Unknown Speaker 15:23 Did you have like, a particular piece of furniture or something that just stuck out and you're like that? I love that. I just want to keep, like, lamp shades or chairs or whatever it was that you're like. I would love to just focus on that or or maybe not. I don't know, Unknown Speaker 15:42 yeah. I think, I think I wanted to focus on all of it, yeah, really. But I decided that after that experience, there were a couple of elements in that room that stood out to me, which was the staircase for one, which is, you know, you when you study interior design, there's a whole course about designing staircases, um, Unknown Speaker 16:07 to make them beautiful, to make them, you know, to make it into a feature. And when I was designing that staircase, it would grow out of mycelium. And the afterthought was, how the hell do you build that? What do you do to make that happen? And I got super nerdy about it and started, you know, sketching it didn't end up in my thesis, but I have a lot of afterthought on it. And when I realized that it's not feasible today to build it, because, especially not in the East Coast, if it's not summer, because that's something that would need to be dehydrated in the sun, unless you have a chill and the size of staircase, Unknown Speaker 16:47 right? Unknown Speaker 16:49 And so then I went to lampshades I would make Lights Out of, literally everything. I love lighting. I don't understand why I didn't know to study lighting design, didn't occur to me at the time that it's even a thing, until I started working at dye crave. We had a in house lighting team that I adored, Unknown Speaker 17:12 and tried to learn as much as I could from them, Unknown Speaker 17:15 and so when I started making the lamp shades, I wanted to make something different. Now I know that are more artists doing the same thing that I'm doing, the dome lamp shades the Unknown Speaker 17:27 but I wanted to start doing something different. Had to start with a dome because, you know, see how it works, how much shrinkage there is, learn the process. And then I started making my florist lampshades, which were really great success. They were sold out in beacon in one of the stores. And now I'm selling in a new store at SIBO in Beacon, and she has my florist pendants. And so, you know, people really like them because they have texture, they have play of light. There is, you know, they can do a lot of things. And the other thing with lampshades, especially, Unknown Speaker 18:07 is that you can work only on a lampshade, and you can add it to any pendant light or ceiling light flush mount that already exists. It just, you know, it just screw it and with a little attack, right, right? You don't need to buy or invest or really, you know, go through the whole process of buying something new again. Unknown Speaker 18:33 So I've seen like, two main kind of categories of micro materials, one which grows with the substrate, and then one without substrate. So kind of Unknown Speaker 18:46 like, what e COVID, and, yeah, the air mycelium. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So that's just like pure mycelium. And I've seen two sheets of it, and, like, really thin sheets, and it looks like it's beautiful for a lamp shade, like light can pass through it, right? Unknown Speaker 19:03 But I've seen this, you know, with growing around, like wood chips or hemp or something like that. One is really crumbly. I feel like it breaks apart really easily. Unknown Speaker 19:16 It's like Styrofoam, you know what I mean? It breaks breaks apart in little bits. And because it has chunks in it and things like that, Unknown Speaker 19:24 I feel like one would be hard to cut very thin into a light shade, and then two light to pass through it. It might have like, kind of a cool if you can pull it off, like a cool, speckled light pattern, or maybe if you want more diffused lighting, or something like that. But Unknown Speaker 19:41 yeah, have you tried both? Are you? I haven't done air Massillon, per se yet. I think to say for, you know, an innovative developed this whole process, and they have a warehouse, you know, they have a whole factory, and the right conditions to grow, the right air. Unknown Speaker 20:00 Mycelium, which I believe they're also making them my bacon from that, right? Yeah, it's the same material. Basically, you can eat it, or you can use it as a mattress, Unknown Speaker 20:11 one for the mattress. And I think it's brilliant. I think it's a brilliant idea. I'm, I'm using their material currently to make my lamp shades, and, you know, on the side, I'm working on the material and the paste Unknown Speaker 20:26 for the 3d printer, which that's most likely will not be able to grow air mycelium. That's a whole so to say that basically the whole point is that you might, you have some sort of substrate, and not really a substrate, more of, you know, the medium and the mycelium will grow above the medium in certain conditions. Unknown Speaker 20:47 So no, I did not try to do it yet. But some of my lamp shades, I try, I let them grow overgrow the mycelium. Unknown Speaker 20:56 One of my vases, it's really squishy inside because of all of the humidity, so we created that basically air mycelium. But it's not enough to harvest right, to sheet it down. Um, something I would try to use is to get my hands on mycelium. Letter Right, right, exactly. Unknown Speaker 21:21 Yeah, the reishi, my selling letter. Unknown Speaker 21:26 I have three really quick things, a size that I don't want to forget, but there's this I'll send it after. But there's this YouTuber that I just found that lives in Tokyo, and he interviews people, and Unknown Speaker 21:41 his main focus is, is interviewing people who live in, like, really, really tiny apartments, like micro apartments, and how they do it. Unknown Speaker 21:50 And Unknown Speaker 21:52 it was just really viewed. I just like went on a spree of watching all these videos, and it was cool, like the way they had to move furniture around, like you would have, like a ladder into, like a really small loft, but they would have, like, tucked the ladder away because it would get in the way if it was always there. So when you were talking about the staircases, that just came to mind, but, but everything in their apartment was, like, hand picked things that they loved, Unknown Speaker 22:21 only the essentials. You know, very minimalist. And I just like imagining, um, Unknown Speaker 22:27 you know, mycelial materials doing really well in, like, minimalist, beautiful, small apartments, like micro apartments that you're talking about in the beginning, um, because they're like, handpicked, you can only have so many things in there, so you might as well have things that are really unique and really cool, and Unknown Speaker 22:45 so that just came to mind. And then you gave your woodworking experience. And one of his videos, he commissioned a table with this master Japanese woodworker that you know. The whole video is him making this table from scratch, from the beginning, and it's really beautiful video. I'll send it to you. And then the third thing you said about the dehydrator, I just went down a rabbit hole about this. And Unknown Speaker 23:17 when we used to grow Cordyceps, we were going down this rabbit hole as well. When you look, you know, like a regular dehydrator, it's like stacks of circles and there's a hot fan in the bottom. I mean, all it is is blowing hot air with a fan. Unknown Speaker 23:33 So I've seen it in Thailand. I've seen it in a couple places, and then there's this place up north that I'll keep anonymous, but Unknown Speaker 23:41 they basically just have a giant room with racks, and they blow, they have a bunch of fans blowing hot air, and it's basically a giant dehydrator in a room Unknown Speaker 23:53 that's cool. And the thinking is like, yeah, you just take one of those small, you know, like circular stock dehydrator, and you just blow it up into a room like all it is is blowing hot air with a fan. Unknown Speaker 24:06 So ideally, you could have, like a just makeshift the room with the stairs. And it is possible, you know, I was thinking about it before, and we actually experimented it in at home. My husband is a chemical engineer, oh, cool, who also deals with mushrooms. He makes mushroom chocolates. Oh, hell yeah, cool. Yeah, not psychedelics, Unknown Speaker 24:30 but yeah, he helps me, you know where to grow. We have a home lab in our attic right now. Sweet. So, before my son came along less than a year ago, Unknown Speaker 24:43 we turned the room I'm sitting in into a drawing room, and started, you know, playing with humidity, and starting playing with the fans and the hot and cold. And we did find, like, a fine medium there. But again, you need to have a full room for that, yeah, but I. Unknown Speaker 25:00 Idea with, you know, I need to look into that. We need to talk about it more later. It's hard with kids to find extra space, yeah, as you can see behind me, the the room is his room at this point. It looks nice. It looks beautiful, yeah, a little hanging bear. But, I mean, it looks clean, yeah, yeah, good job. Unknown Speaker 25:20 I know how it goes with tiny kids. You clean, and then you turn around and it is immediately a mess. So good job. Yeah, I don't want to know what's gonna happen when I come to go downstairs today after this call. Of course, yeah, of course, of course. But yeah, I love it. And I'm also, I'm obsessed with tiny homes, with tiny home videos on YouTube. Yeah, I sit for hours and just watch Okay, then I'll send you the channel. It's really good. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but I've been obsessed with this channel. It's really, really good. Unknown Speaker 25:53 So going back to the 3d printer, have you experimented with that? You said that you're working on a more accessible version. How is that going? So, yeah, right now, when backwards, I started my grad student school six months ago in September, and when I started, I met one of the associate professors in the Ceramics Department, out of all places, Brian shebez and I probably butchered his name, Unknown Speaker 26:31 and he developed a Delta printer, like a DIY style treaty printer for clay. And so we started experimenting with his plane printer to start adjusting the nozzle, start adjusting the build plate, all those things to see where we might find problems printing mycelium, one of the biggest things is about, how do you prevent contamination, right? Unknown Speaker 27:04 I think one of the, again, another thing that incubator did really well, they breeded, I guess, or breeded, or found a really good Reishi source that really competes well with a lot of other Unknown Speaker 27:18 molds once it's growing in the right conditions, if it doesn't grow in the right conditions, you're it's a bit finicky. I tried to grow in 82 Fahrenheit. I think it actually turned out really well. Like, super cool stuff came out of it, but definitely not something I probably would try to sell. Um, oh yeah. I just, I just taught a course in upstate New York, and we did Petri plates, and for whatever reason, the parafilm didn't come in the shipping box, and so we used, I think, scotch tape. And I was like, Look, this is most definitely going to contaminate, but look at it as, like, a beautiful, you know, mural of colors. And like, sometimes bacteria and mold are really beautiful to look at, if you get out of your mind of like, ew, like this, right, right, yeah. Thing is, it's, it's less of the ewe, it's more of, is it safe to breed now? Oh, definitely, yeah, for Unknown Speaker 28:15 sure. No clue. I I'm a designer, first and foremost, not a scientist. I mean, anything that produces spores you probably shouldn't be huffing, for sure. Yeah, yeah, um, but kind of, going back to the printer, I guess the thing that we found that was we need to figure out if to inoculate before or after the print. If we do it after the print. How do you and I think that's my Sarah, the material that Wasp developed, the guys that made the really expensive 3d printers, yeah, they injected, they inject the spores or the medium, into the mice, into the structure after The print. What I haven't seen is, how does it spread evenly and well, yeah, kind of finicky, in my opinion. A word for what I'm doing, which is a small business operation I don't have the time and energy to deal with, you know, Unknown Speaker 29:17 with the what is the material that is being printed out. I believe they're using pulp, like paper, pulp with glycerine and and probably like gelatin or something, you know, a binder, yeah, um. And does that need to be printed like in a sterile so that will need to be printed in a sterile, completely environment better to have it sterile, sterile, in my opinion, so you don't have more things to do afterwards. But you could potentially Unknown Speaker 29:51 put it in a sterilize it somehow afterwards. Unknown Speaker 29:56 And the other option is to do it beforehand, right? Make the match. Unknown Speaker 30:00 Sure had the spores, you know, let it do its thing Unknown Speaker 30:06 and print it. Now, what I'm trying to do with the current printer that that Brian built is, how do I shorten this the time span that the material pass it through? Unknown Speaker 30:18 So it goes in a tube and then those sorry, it goes in a big tube to a small tube, to a nozzle the prints. How do I make that the shortest distance possible, right? How do I make sure that all the parts are basically sealed from inside in a way that it's not going to go into cracks? Just my problem would be, is it goes in a crack, and then I have contamination because they couldn't clean it afterwards. Probably the first print would be fantastic. Second maybe, okay, third one, I'm not so sure. Unknown Speaker 30:54 I never used a 3d printer, so I'm trying to imagine it. But my imagination is very limited. I've seen, like, videos and things like that, but only plastics. So, right? I'm guessing it's a lot bigger if you're printing this. Or is it the same size? It's that it's it could be the same size, right? Now, we're building the same size as a, you know? I think it's 24 by 24 Unknown Speaker 31:18 ish, okay, yeah, not. I've seen, like, videos on online of, like, have you seen the houses that they're ly printing? Oh, yeah, I know. I'm saying this is fine and this is okay. Like, spoiler alert, but I think this is kind of our what would we want to get to? You know, in a way, we want to be able to build that large scale mycelium. So we'll get there, I guess, at some point. Unknown Speaker 31:49 Yeah, so right now, you know, it's a prototype. It's something that we want to start small that's also the right size for lampshades and home goods. Unknown Speaker 31:58 You can also print them in, let's say three, four parts, right? Oh, they're the easiest together, yeah, yeah. And you don't, you just print them, you let them grow a little bit, put them together, let them grow into each other, which, that's already something I'm doing currently with my vases, you know, I, I brought them in Unknown Speaker 32:21 cones, I guess, little, little domes kind of thing. And once they're out, I fuse them together and restructure it around with and I wrote them actually in class. Unknown Speaker 32:34 So, you know, it's I'm trying to, again, limit the amount of plastic I use, and now that I'm doing more treaty printing, I'm printing with PLA that is recyclable. Unknown Speaker 32:48 I still have my reserves, as usual about recyclability of everything, but at least this recyclable, it can go back to filament. So it's recycled into filament, into filament, into filament. So that's a nice way to again, reach that make really custom, beautiful work, and that's something that allows me to make really cool shapes and customize in a very short time span. Unknown Speaker 33:14 Are the usual filament of 3d printers. Are those forever recyclable. Can you just, like, melt it down and you do it at home? Or it's like, no, Unknown Speaker 33:26 you send it back to the Okay, yeah. I think we, we are starting to do it in New Paltz right now in our department, um, we are actually looking into starting to recycle our own filament, but basically, you send back to the company. There's another company today that started, that I saw I got started, obviously, on Instagram, Unknown Speaker 33:48 of all places, and it's a whole machine to recycle your. PLA, cool. I, it's very cool. I, I, I hope it works. It's very expensive. I bet, you know, for small creator, you think, Oh, I'm gonna spend money on this. It better well, you know, save me a lot of money down the line. Unknown Speaker 34:11 Yeah, I'm, I'm thinking, like, more, Unknown Speaker 34:15 you know, like Gen space, or like these community kind of lab spaces that can be a hub for that, where you can buy, like a bigger machine. I watched, I was on the plane many, many years ago, and I watched a documentary. I think it was Jackie Chan, who was, who is doing it, or kind of the lead, maybe he was a lead investor. Unknown Speaker 34:36 But I think they were going to, like Mongolia or something. But they were, they were taking this, this shipping container, to this, like, super remote village up in the mountains and snow and ice. And they were trying to, like, stress test it. They're like, Hey, let's go to the most remote, super cold place that we can and see if this shipping container will work. And. Unknown Speaker 35:00 Side. On like, one end, you could just throw, uh, plastic in and it would, like, grind it up and then melt it down. And then on the other end would be a 3d printer and have like, all the molds ready to go for any tool, like a shovel or whatever, um, Unknown Speaker 35:19 and it works, yeah, it was, like, it's crazy. Unknown Speaker 35:23 I think I need to go back to see Jackie Chan or something. Unknown Speaker 35:27 I think I'm pretty sure it was Jackie Chan, but I could be wrong, but I'm pretty positive if I it was so many years ago, but if I, if I find it, I'll send it to you as well. That's the kid or do it was so many years ago, and, right, yeah, it's like, it's one of those things that I'm thinking always about. And segue, when I started interior design, and I started being interested in, you know, tiny spaces and all, I actually at the bottom line, I came to New York to be a set designer, Unknown Speaker 36:01 and you're still kind of doing it, sort of Yeah, you know, I was, I came with a thought of, I'm going to be a set designer. I want to work in Broadway. Unknown Speaker 36:11 And I started studying. I decided to go study at fit, because they had a course for set design, which, when I started the degree, they canceled that course, oh, wow, yeah. I mean, then I fell in love with interior design. The rest is history. Unknown Speaker 36:27 But it's funny, because, you know, when you see movies and you see shows, you think they're so advanced, they thought about everything already, and now we're just Ryan in the real world to catch up with them. You know, futuristic movies, we try to catch up with a future that's was in the past. Unknown Speaker 36:47 Yeah, I know I'm rumbling now, but it's Unknown Speaker 36:50 Yeah, and, you know, and even, like, you know, present, there's a lot of TED Talks and inspirational videos that you see now. Um, people are really good at influencing and you know, this is really prevalent in the mushroom space as well. Of like, Hey, I came up with this crazy idea and blah, blah, blah, and maybe they showed like, a proof of concept, or like, a bench scale, maybe. But then it takes like, 10 years for people to actually do it, you know, or never, you know, because it's like they're just doing it for the cameras, and not, it doesn't actually work, but they make it a really good story. And it's a really good storytelling Unknown Speaker 37:30 that happens all the time in any industry. So it's, it's both of us trying to catch up to, like 1980s sci fi, and then also today, just really good storytelling of, you know what? What's on paper, it's a lot harder to do it in real life, always. And, you know, I, I think that one, one thing I wish in the mushroom world would be that we were better storytellers. Yeah, on imra, it's important because, you know, I part of the research I'm doing about mycelium, and Unknown Speaker 38:04 everything that I can find is from 2015 2018 and that's about where it stops. Unknown Speaker 38:11 Where are all those crazy creators that I know that are out there that are doing crazy things and awesome, myself included, sometimes I don't film myself. I say, Oh, I'm gonna do that in marketing and yada yada yada. And then I made the thing. I'm like, Damn it, Unknown Speaker 38:30 man, Alex, I forgot. I forgot to, you know, to film my partner is also Alex. So, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, right on. I forgot again to take photos and to film the process. Yeah, most, I mean, most artists, it's like, they're, yeah, they're just like, I'm doing my work, you know, or, yeah, I mean different, different strokes for different folks. And that's why there's, like, whole marketing team in companies. It's like, there's, that's their whole job, and then there's, you know, creators and yeah, it sounds like you need a marketer, yeah, so follow you around with a camera. Yeah. If anyone is listening here as an upstate New York and feels like coming over with a camera, let me know. Because, yeah, that'd be fun to use the help. So for people wanting to do what you do, and maybe study design. Maybe are young and entering university or college or something like that, and Unknown Speaker 39:29 maybe listening to this podcast or like I want to make my Silhouette lamp shades or design mushroom furniture or whatever. What advice would you give them if they're just getting into this field. I have, I have two, two way answer to this one first, embrace your failures, because working with Mycelium is a big ass failure when they start. Yeah, true. I mean, even when you're still doing it, I have to always count for double the material that I'm using because of two. Unknown Speaker 40:00 Intimidation, because I forgot the bed for too long and it overdrew, you know, all this kind of stuff. It's a living material. So embrace that it's not gonna go the way you wanted it to go, Unknown Speaker 40:12 um, and you'll be fine. Unknown Speaker 40:15 Make sure you don't cry about it. If you cry, Unknown Speaker 40:18 remember, remember, Unknown Speaker 40:21 um, other thing is, go to your community. There is everywhere and everywhere. Mushroom lovers communities, especially today, they're much more available than before. Join a community. Talk to people. Everyone loves helping. Mushrooms are such such a world, that people are open to talk about it for the most part, Unknown Speaker 40:47 and you're less likely to get a no than any other industry. And I think it's a fantastic thing, because we're not competing here. We're working together. We're still very young and very small in their accomplishments, that are a space for everyone, at least in my opinion, Unknown Speaker 41:08 yeah, it's such a small, unique community, Unknown Speaker 41:12 and everyone generally seems to be helpful to each other. And, you know, there's always a few bad apples everywhere, but generally, for the most part, I think I feel like 95% Unknown Speaker 41:24 people are stoked to help you out, and just want more people to get into mushrooms. And, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think the other thing is embrace learning. There is great online resources that cost very little pay for them. I think the ladies at fund all matter. They have this, oh yeah, they're great. Yeah, they're my friends. They're awesome. Course, I learned a lot from it. So big credit here. Unknown Speaker 41:53 I before actually listening to their course I started. I'm doing any person workshops, and I take a very, you know, I don't really take much for them, mostly to cover materials, Unknown Speaker 42:07 because I really love teaching, Unknown Speaker 42:10 but that's kind of part of the business that I'm doing. I'm teaching upstate design with mycelium. If you're up here, give me a call, you know. Unknown Speaker 42:21 And I think that's part of kind of giving back to the community that helped these resources exist. We are here to help, and I myself have a lot to learn. Unknown Speaker 42:34 I can tell you that much, but I think I'm at a place where I'm happy to and able to help others with their journey Unknown Speaker 42:45 into mycelium. Unknown Speaker 42:47 Knowledge is nothing unless shared. So, yeah, thanks. Thanks for your work, and thanks for sharing with with the people. And where can people follow you and your work? Yeah, so you didn't find me on Instagram, mixing ball studio and my website or light mixing ball studio.com Unknown Speaker 43:07 I'm not great with social media, so if you want to see more, want to hear more, just shoot me a message. I'm always happy to talk. I'm also going to be in mushroom festival in Brooklyn by Brooklyn mushrooms on March 1, I'm going to have an awesome booth with 15 other vendors there. There's going to be crazy fun workshops, cocktails, just a full day of mushrooms of all kinds, edibles and Unknown Speaker 43:40 my furniture, and, you know, any other memorabilia of mushrooms. It's fun. Hell yeah, cool. If you're in Brooklyn or New York, head over so many mushroom events popping up in the last few years. It's crazy. I can't even keep track of them, and I'm I love it. I if you're interested in making a mushroom event. Do it? More people getting into mushrooms at Fauci the better. More minds coming together to making the world a better place and coming up with cool innovations. I think that's really, really awesome, and it's just like a little family. So, you know, you can, you can find your little freaks and get together and geek out about mushrooms. Unknown Speaker 44:22 Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful world. Thank you Kim for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you Alex, and thank you everyone for tuning in and shrooming in for another episode of the mushroom revival podcast. Couldn't do it without you. If you love the show, you want to support, we don't have a Patreon or any way that you can directly financially support the show, but we do have a mother brand, mushroom revival, and we have a whole line of organic functional mushroom supplements, from capsules to tinctures to powders and gummies. And if you are interested, we have a. Unknown Speaker 45:00 A VIP coupon code just for listeners of the podcast, and it is pod treat for a surprise discount code if you don't want to spend any money, we have a giveaway going on where we pick one winner once a month and send them a box of mushroom goodies. And we also have a whole line of free mushroom resources on our website as well, from blog posts to free ebooks that you can download to all of our podcasts with show notes are on there as well. And my newest book as well, the little book of mushrooms, is on there as well. You can also find it in most bookstores across the country in the US and with that, thank you much love and may the spores be with you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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