‘MAKING OF’
A Note on Seaweed
Seaweed Development
The following material gatherings and experiments were done, however never quite successfully refined. Seaweed is the base for a significant amount of bio-materials that avoid synthetic polymers, such as the Agar Agar based bio-material seal mentioned in Embellishments. Although seaweed already exists in this form, its a level of separation from the process which I thought would be beneficial to eliminate in order for researchers to better understand the material origins. Although these tests technically ‘failed’, the findings discovered during the process are a gateway to another avenue of research to be continued at a later date, by whomever may feel inclined.
For this collection procedure, I went to the Cornwall coastline and collected an eclectic range of seaweed variants with the aim to transform them into my own adaptable vegan plastic replacement / to be able to extract a non-synthetic polymer with them using processes deployed in Japan for extracting starch.
This is what I tried:
Seaweed Bioplastic
ONE
Collect.
TWO
Wash in sea upon collection.
THREE
Wash again, thoroughly.
FOUR
And again.
FIVE
Place in a bucket, submerged in clean water.
SIX
Leave for 24 hours.
SEVEN
Seaweed will regenerate the gum like water that acts as a natural binder.
EIGHT
Blend seaweed fibre, in this gum like water until the pieces have all disintegrated.
NINE
Allow this mixture to sit for 24 hours, leave within a closed container. The weight of the seaweed fibre and gum water will sink all useful material to the bottom of your container and separate the excess water to the top later.
TEN
Come back to your container and carefully and slowly interact with the mixture, leaving it as settled as possible while you extract the bottom layers of fibre and gum.
ELEVEN
Pour into a contained flat, non-stick surface.
Although I thought that the gum like material produced by cultivating raw seaweed would act as a natural binder, its combination with embedded water moisture eliminates this potential.
This does produce a formed material, however the shape distortion from extreme loss of moisture makes it a much less applicable material. It is also brittle in nature, and retains a rigid form instead of having a flexible plasticity as I thought it might have.
This material does not benefit from being combined with sawdust, stinging nettle fibres or marble dust as its high moisture quantities and significant reduction tendencies in dehydration just compromise the structural integrity supposed to be provided by other ingredient.
Dehydrated Seaweed Fibre Development
ONE
Collect.
TWO
Wash in sea upon collection.
THREE
Wash again, thoroughly.
FIVE
Place in a bucket, submerged in clean water.
SIX
Leave for 24 hours. Although we will not be using the gum water as a binder in this process, this stage allows for a deep cleaning of the seaweed.
SEVEN
Separate and comb through seaweed.
EIGHT
Place in individual strands on your dehydrator trays.
NINE
Allow to dehydrate for 12 hours minimum.
You will be left with brittle, non-pourous, hard forms with high plasticity. When ground down they do not develop a more purposeful form.