Scaling Up | Kate Reed | Industrial Design | 2021

Recap: I am an Artist in Residence at BosLab, in Cambridge, MA, researching new ways to use bacteria to dye textiles. I have successfully dyed textiles the color purple using Violacein.

Through my research, I have been growing vats of Violacein dyes and then refrigerating them until ready to use. I have found that the fresher dyes create the boldest colors, and the longer a dye sits, the more dull gray the colors become. Having said that, I love the range of colors the Violacein creates. I have created my darkest hues by growing up a vat of Violacein, and centrifuging it down to a concentrate. Using this concentrate, I have been able to control the fabric to dye ratio, allowing me to get very dark purple shades. This has worked amazingly well for small scale dye jobs.

I have spent the past month trying to scale up my work to be able to dye batches of textiles by the yard. This has turned out to be quite difficult because it means I need a lot of dye, and I have found that the more dye that I use, the smellier the project gets. I am working with synthetic e.coli, which unfortunately, smells like e.coli. Yesterday, I opened a dye bath that had been dying for 5 days and the smell was so putrid that it made my eyes water – no one ever talks about the smell of science. Generally though, the smell is only temporary, and once the bacteria is killed the smell mostly goes away.

I have been dying a series of scarves using the Violacein and the size of the scarves has made it difficult to dye consistently. As result, I have re-dyed the same scarf multiple times to create darker colors. This has created beautiful results, with nice variation in the purples from different bacteria dye batches. Because each dye bath is alive, the dye can grow in the most beautiful patterns and places. Each textile becomes a conversation between living and fossilized bacteria.

I went with Boslab to share our research and lab at a maker festival in Cambridge, MA. We brought a strawberry DNA activity to do with the kids there. It was very fun to share my research with the community, inspiring the next generation of biologists and designers. It was reaffirming for our future to see that all kids have an interest and an eagerness to play, experiment, and learn. But, somehow, as these kids grow up, they are herded into respective fields, and magically, the field of science becomes filled mostly with men. It made me proud to be a woman in science and role model for the next generation of young girls.

Design can empower communities. Responsible design can eradicate social problems. Biodesign has the power to shift this dichotomy and offer our planet time to rest and heal. As designers we need to keep thinking towards this future of products that help our bodies and our planet. But right now, the industry has not innovated as quickly and does not have the infrastructure to support living products. But this infrastructure will catch up to our living futures, it just needs the next generation of designers that believe in the balance between living futures, form, and function.

This summer at Boslab has given me the skills and tools to design living systems that put our planet and its ecology first. I will be forever grateful for my time here and the wonderful community I met. This summer project has unfolded at the perfect time in my life and leaves me inspired to continue my deep dive into the field of biodesign. 

Growing Patterns | Kate Reed | Industrial Design | 2021

Recap: I am an Artist in Residence at BosLab, in Cambridge, MA, researching new ways to use bacteria to dye textiles. I have successfully dyed textiles purple using Violacein.

I am fascinated with the patterns of the bacteria. Left to grow naturally, bacteria grows in beautiful fuzzy colonies, creating spotted winding paths that vein out at the edges. The patterns are so beautiful. I would love to be able to create textiles with such whimsical and natural forms.

For my first attempt to grow bacterial patterns on textiles, I placed the fabric swatches on an agar plate to grow bacteria, and I streaked the bacteria onto the textile. While I couldn’t see the bacteria from the streak, I knew that I had just placed hundreds of bacteria on the textile that would grow to be very purple. I put the plate in the incubator to grow for a few days. When I came back, the entire textile was a very deep purple. This, unfortunately, was not what I was hoping for. But I was able to get a lot more variation in the textile color and intensity, which was still exciting.

When I repeated the experiment, I noticed that the bacteria wouldn’t grow on parts of the textiles that weren’t touching the agar plate. This made sense, because the bacteria off the agar wouldn’t get the nutrients from the agar. This was a very interesting find as it allowed me to create some patterns and textures within the textile. I started to experiment with this more. I scrunched up the textiles and placed them in a plate. Again, the bacteria only grew where it touched the plate, creating the most beautiful random geometric patterns on the textile.

In my quest to create patterns, I also tried some Shibori dyeing techniques. This is a traditional Japanese technique involving methodically folding textiles into bundles to create even and consistent patterns. After I folded the bundles, I added them to the bacteria dyes, put them on heat. When I came back a few days later, the Shibori dyeing technique had worked wonderfully, creating the most beautiful square patterns.

Violacein | Kate Reed | Industrial Design | 2021

Recap: I am Artist in Residence at BosLab, in Cambridge, MA, researching new ways to use bacteria to dye textiles. So far, I have been successful in growing beautiful shades of pink dyes using magenta synthetic e.coli, but unsuccessful in maintaining the colors through the bacteria killing process. I have been researching other types of bacteria for textile dyeing.

In my research, I came across the bacteria Violacein. Violacein creates a variety of colors ranging between deep purple and light gray. It is a bacteria that can be found naturally in puddles all over the world. After talking to some of my advisors, we found a source for Violacein and I was able to start working with it at BosLab.

To dye with the Violacein, I followed the same bacteria dying process as I had used before. I grew up a vat of the dye in LB Broth, added textiles to the dye bath, put the dye bath on heat and came back a few days later to the most beautiful rich blue and purple hues.

The Violacein dyed the textiles beautifully. It really seemed to fuse to the textile fibers, which was unlike anything I had experienced with bacteria in the past. Even better, I was able to kill the bacteria with the autoclave and the color stayed true. I have officially dyed my first textiles using Violacein!

Once I knew the Violacein could dye the textiles, I spent the next few weeks trying different dying techniques and starting to understand the intricacies of the textile bacteria dying process. I was able to create many beautiful tie dye effects and consistent dye swatches. While I am happy about my ability to dye the textiles, I am now hoping to find a way to dye the textiles allowing each bacteria to grow in its own natural patterns, which are very beautiful.

Sterile, Kate Reed, Industrial Design, 2021

The textile dying process is one of the most polluting processes in the world. Chemical dyes are used until the color is no longer consistent, then the liquid chemical dye is thrown away, with little regard to where it goes and the harm that it creates. It is an unsustainable and toxic process. Due to high demand and fast fashion, little is being done to disrupt this harmful cycle.

We have a plague on our society of consumer capitalism, with predictable and obedient consumers. Fast fashion is a product of this plague, where clothing is meant to only last for one season and then expire as the trend expires. This has created an uncontrollable amount of textile waste. In 2014, the United States alone produced 32.44 Billion pounds of textile waste.

As the Artist in Residence at BosLab, a community built molecular biology lab in Cambridge, MA, I have the unique opportunity to disrupt this fast fashion cycle through novel bacteria dyes. Bacteria dyes use significantly less water than traditional dying methods, and the biproduct of the dye is ecological, as opposed to foreign chemicals from traditional dying methods.  

I began my journey with safety training and learning the concept of sterile from a biologist’s perspective. Sterile is very different than being clean. We exist in a world surrounded by microbes, they are on our bodies, on surfaces, in the ground and in the air. To create a sterile environment means to rid that environment of all the microbes. This is commonly done with heat, UV light, rubbing alcohol, and bleach. Creating a sterile space is quite straight forward, but keeping a space sterile is much more difficult. If you reach your hand over your work surface, you have contaminated it. If you touch the outside of a bottle or container with your hands, you are contaminated. As result, I find myself spraying my gloved hands down with ethanol every 30 seconds or so in the lab.

This need to keep my workspace sterile shines a light on the cleanliness of my everyday COVID lifestyle habits. I am aware of how many microbes are living all over everything in my home, my car, and my food. I am also more aware of how strong my body is as it co-exists with microbes. But I would not want to be living in a glass bubble – microbes are good.

In my first attempt to dye textiles with bacteria, I used a magenta synthetic e.coli. I took a single e.coli colony and grew it up in a vat of LB broth which provides the food for the bacteria to grow.  Then I added textiles to the dye bath, then put the dye bath on heat. A week later I came back to find beautiful pink textiles. It was so exciting to see the dye work on the textiles, but this was only half of the challenge. Next, I had to figure out how to kill the bacteria while keeping the color, because you can’t have active bacteria living and growing on your clothing. Killing the bacteria turned out to be the most difficult part of the project. I experimented with ethanol, vinegar, UV light and an autoclave. Heating the bacteria in the autoclave was the only method that worked to kill this specific type of bacteria. Unfortunately, killing the bacteria by autoclave also meant killing the color as well. My autoclaved samples looked almost completely washed out, devoid of color.

Back to the drawing board. I need to fine a different type of bacteria for textile dyeing.