Mushtari

Wearable Microbial Factories

Collaborating on sculptures with 17,532 silk worms, converting shrimp shells and genetically-engineered bacteria into sustainable architecture, addressing the global decline of bees with synthetic apiaries: this is the work of the Mediated Matter research group.

As part of the renowned MIT Media Lab, this group has re-introduced computer science and mother nature. Traditionally, computing has been integrated into screens and devices encased in metal and plastic, (inadvertently) designed to persist in landfills long after their uses have been fulfilled. This has perpetuated an unhealthy relationship between us and the natural world — as human life improves, the environment declines.

Welcome instead to the opposite, “material ecology”. Coined by the founder and director of the Mediated Matter group, Dr. Neri Oxman, this term describes computationally designed, digitally fabricated, and environmentally informed materials, objects, and architecture.

Take for example, their Mushtari project. Yes, it looks like a hybrid between a loin cloth and intestines. It’s also an ingenious 3D-printed wearable, a “microbial factory” housed in an interconnected network of fluidic channels. It’s the first of its kind to implement synthetic biology with 3D printing in this manner.

So, what exactly is it besides something that sounds cool and looks strange? Well, imagine being able to walk around with a beehive and extract honey from it whenever you want. Mushtari is a similar idea, but with microbes (e.g., bacteria, fungi, algae) instead of bees. The network of channels would be filled with these microbes, with some of the little guys converting sunlight into sugar, and others converting that sugar into the “honey”. In this case, the “honey” could be a fuel, food, drug, perfume, maybe even an alcoholic beverage. What Mushtari is capable of is only limited to the microbes inside of it.

Imagine bringing your own pharmacy with you, always stocked with vitamins and antibiotics. Or for a more whimsical example, imagine going to a rave and having a bright blue bioluminescent fanny pack... It’s a statement piece to say the least.

Here’s how it works:

I. Growing Mushtari.

How exactly did they create such an intricate system? Although Dr. Oxman’s team didn’t have millions of years of evolution to design their structure, they did have the next-best thing: a generative growth algorithm.

This technique is capable of emulating organic structures over multiple iterations, resulting in a single channel stretching 58 meters long. They were able to control for overall shape by manipulating the material properties (e.g., relaxation, attraction, and repulsion) as well as channel diameter (from 1 to 25 mm) and transparency. These aren’t merely aesthetic choices, as they will also impact the bacteria that will live inside of these channels. (See this paper for more information on this process.)

II. Printing Mushtari.

Once their design was formalized, the challenge then became implementation.

• How did they achieve such precision? The 3D printer they used was bitmap-based, meaning that it printed out droplets of materials in high resolution (600 dpi in x and 300 dpi in y).
• How did they print optical gradients? They used two types of UV-curable resins, a transparent VeroClear and an opaque VeroRed. These diffuse when printed close together, resulting in a material with intermediate opacity. Highly controlled placement and ratios of these two resin types made these gradients possible.
• How did they create hollow structures? In addition to the two resins, they used a liquid support material to temporarily fill what would eventually become the hollow internal structures. This liquid doesn’t cure under UV light, so it can be removed after the resins have hardened.

III. Augmenting Mushtari.

The “microbial factory” has been built, so now all that’s left is to add the workers. For this they needed two species of bacteria: one that is photosynthetic, converting light into sugar, and one that is heterotrophic, converting that sugar into some desired substance. The photosynthetic bacteria would be housed in transparent regions, while the heterotrophic ones would be in opaque regions.

The final result — the “honey” — could be almost anything. For example, imagine a future version designed for diabetics, which detected high glucose levels and automatically delivered insulin through the user’s skin.

We already have hundreds to thousands of bacterial species living inside of our guts. What’s a couple more in our clothes?

Beyond Mushtari.

Besides glowing loin cloths, what else has the Mediated Matter group designed in terms of wearable technology?

Their Vespers Series III is a beautiful yet alien mask which is in itself an adaptive and responsive interface, capable of responding to environmental cues with intricate colors and designs. The caveat is that you have to be dead to use it.

Death masks are ancient cultural relics which were believed to guard the soul on the way to the afterlife, as well as guide the soul back to its body. By incorporating living microorganisms into a mask designed to cover the dead, the Vespers project is an exploration of the transition between life and death (and vice versa). Similar to Mushtari, it is these microbes which are producing the pigments in the mask.

The technology behind Vespers isn’t just limited to death masks. This integration of microbes with responsive interfaces has many applications, from ad-hoc antibiotic formation based on the wearer’s genetics, to smart packaging that can detect contamination, even to architectural structures that can respond to weather conditions in real-time.

Combining art, ingenuity, and nature, Dr. Neri Oxman and her team at the Mediated Matter group are revolutionary in the truest sense.