Dynamic Sculpture Fungi

[Biosynthetique]

Im looking to build a dynamic living sculpture that can be shaped over time - where pieces can be added and removed. I'd like to use fungal mycelium for this and propose inoculating a tower of substrate (autoclaved ag-waste) that has chunks of mycelium mixed in. When the substrate is fully colonised, new agwaste chunks can be "bolted on" using a wire insert that connects the tower with the new piece.

The biggest issues I have foreseen are:

1) What fungal species to use? Ive looked into Ecovative Design's technique which is largely a trade secret. Their patents suggest the use of white-rot polyphores like Pycnoporus cinnabarinus. Any suggestions on different species to trial? Im going to try a bunch of different mycelium on a small scale first.

2) How to maintain mycelium dominance over bacterial infection/colonisation? Short of treating the entire substrate with antibiotics to prevent bacterial colonisation of raw substrate I dont see an easy way around this - sterile environment could of course work, but this would be difficult in the hackspace. There is the secondary issue of preventing bacterial infection once the mycelium has colonised the substrate. This I feel could be solved with transgenic mycelium that express various antibiotics, but I have no experience working on such complex fungi, only yeast. Any pointers?

[Dakota Hamill]

I'd recommend oyster mushrooms, which is what I thought ecovative used initially.  It's an extremely aggressive grower and will out-compete most everything else.  Steam sterilization with an autoclave or large pressure cooker works great for spawn bags, but if you want to do really large scale stuff, I'd recommend straw pasteurization with a 50 gallon drum.  Oysters are also great because they aren't picky when it comes to substrate usually, they'll grow on wet cardboard, newspaper, coffee grounds...you'd have a tough time getting a shitake to spawn on that.

I've been reading up on straw pasteurization with hydrated lime but have yet to find the low magnesium kind which many people swear is important.  Iv'e tried wood ash (sort of half-assed) with poor results.  Trichoderma or whatever else was on the straw took over every single bag, except the bags with oyster mushroom spawn in them.   The oyster spawn crushed them.  

If you want to be able to sculpt things, I'd think about a mixture of media, with straw, paper, sawdust, etc that you can form into bricks or shapes that will hold once it's colonized.  

As for a brick once it's colonized, I know people that use a 0.1 % hydrogen peroxide solution in water for misting.  The thought is, it'll kill any bacteria or young fungal cultures on the outside of the spawn brick, but won't do enough damage to the mycelia that's already taken it over.

Timing is important if you want to keep it going, because once a fully colonized brick is exposed to oxygen and moisture it will probably pin and grow mushrooms, which I suppose could give the sculpture a really cool look as different pieces are pinning at different times.

You can control the pinning with CO2, moisture, light, and temperature.  I would completely forget about using boatloads of antibiotics or some transgenic mycelia, nature has already given most fungi pretty good defense mechanisms against bacteria.

 shroomery.org is THE go to place for all things fungi.  There are plenty of great threads there on edible mushrooms, not just the psilocibes.  

I have cultures of white oyster, elm oyster, pink oyster, golden oyster, blue oyster, and king oyster you're welcome to a petri dish of

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[Mike Horwath]

Have you seen the fungi sculptures and furniture by Philip Ross?  He mostly works with Reishi mushroom.  As i understand it is slower and more difficult to grow than oysters but more woody and "permanent".  Eric Klarenbeek's oyster mushroom chair is also cool.

Check out "Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms" by Paul Stamets, kind of mushroom growers bible.  There was a copy at my city library that I found fascinating.  Haven't grown any mushrooms yet though, my fungi cultivation has been limited to yeast (beer!)

Dakota...any chance I could take you up on that offer to share petri culture of oysters?   :)

Mike

[Dakota Hamill]

Yeah let me replate them on PDA this week and make sure they're contaminant free, message me in 3 days if I don't get back to you

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[Nathan McCorkle]

On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 9:33 AM, Dakota Hamill <dko...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah let me replate them on PDA this week and make sure they're contaminant
> free, message me in 3 days if I don't get back to you

These are /quite/ easy to isolate at home, using a few cents worth of
mushroom tissue from your local grocery store's bulk section.

Grab a scalpel/straight-razor, some alcohol, few jars of sterile
water, and a flame source. dunk the mushroom in alcohol/bleach... then
rinse several times with sterile water (pour water over mushroom chunk
so it falls into a waster jar), then like you're a lumberjack milling
a nice board from a tree... cut faces on the tissue (CLEANING the
blade with alcohol and a flame ON EACH CUT). Remember that any surface
contaminants will drag with the blade during each cut, after you've
squared up the faces, take another layer or two off (again with a
clean blade each time) then just plop a layer/chunk down onto PDA and
you should be good-to-go.

[Mike Horwath]

Awesome Dakota, thanks!  I'll message to see if I can pay shipping or send you something to trade.

Nice technique Nathan, good to know!  Unfortunately there is a limited selection of fresh mushrooms here (usually just button, portabello, and shitake).  I'm not sure any of these get me excited enough to try, also not quite as easy to grow at home.

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 3:08 PM, Mike Horwath <mike...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Awesome Dakota, thanks! I'll message to see if I can pay shipping or send
> you something to trade.
>
> Nice technique Nathan, good to know! Unfortunately there is a limited
> selection of fresh mushrooms here (usually just button, portabello, and
> shitake). I'm not sure any of these get me excited enough to try, also not
> quite as easy to grow at home.

I was in a similar situation during the Christmas holidays when I
demonstrated PDA formulation and sterile technique to some friends...
button mushrooms from the store had to suffice that day as the oysters
were soggy/slimy (clearly not very good). The button took over the PDA
surface, and has been fighting against some black contamination... but
I think it's winning, as there's what looks like a primordia slowly
forming on the agar surface over the past few weeks. The conditions
aren't optimal, but I half-expect to get a fruitbody from this petri
(canning jar actually)! I'll post a pic if something pops up!

[John MacBride]

Getting in late here, but still, this sounds like a great project. I've been thinking of something similar, trying it out with Evocative's GIY material, though I'm also stuck with how to prep a bulk substrate (without steam or a 55 gal drum) and then inoculate it so it grows quickly.
I've heard of substrate being prepared by simply soaking it all in water (to kill the aerobic bacteria) then drying it out (to kill the anaerobic bacteria) which I'll probably try.

As for the fruiting, I've had some success just keeping a transparent lid right at the surface level of my inoculated substrate. My reishi just spread out under it and never fruited (after several months).

@Nathan thanks for the simple transfer tek, can't wait to try it out.