Material Rituals
Material Rituals is a speculative design provocation that questions ways in which we humans can respectfully approach interspecies collaboration in the context of kombucha leather, a bioassembled material produced by bacterial cellulose. A bioassembled material is a macroscale structure that has been directly grown by a living organism, such as mycelium or bacteria, with emphasis placed on the material consisting of the whole living organism itself rather than parts of organisms used as ingredients. This term only gained a firm definition in the design and materials communities within the past few years, and so, this new materiality proposes new ways of interacting with the world. In lieu of extracting precious resources, industrially heating, beating, and treating materials, and shipping them across continents to be sold in big-box stores, we can grow living materials in our homes with local ingredients and very little technology or money involved. These vernacular and low-tech approaches to creating and working with materials go against traditional industrial practices. The act of growing a living material to form an object we might use on a daily basis cultivates a new relation to the materiality of the quotidian.
Though these organisms are small, they create macro impact through more than their materiality. The budding culture behind this living material transmits itself through sharing and resonates through community. People typically receive their first SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) mother from a friend or acquaintance in immediate physical proximity. Within this locality, tendrils of collaboration, support, resource, and knowledge sharing cultivate to connect individuals and form communities. With this interspecies collaboration, the human macro mirrors the bacterial micro. Not only do these marvelous organisms offer promising positive environmental impacts as a material, but they also offer positive social impacts with the active creation of regenerative tradition and culture within autonomous communities at local and global scales. The moment to shift perceptions on what a material is, who makes it, and how we treat it is now and with this living material. 
Through ongoing collaborative practice with kombucha, Material Rituals culminates into an essay, a guide from a fictional community that collaborates with kombucha, a guided meditation video, an interactive sound installation and song, and a kombucha tea ceremony with kombucha teacup artifacts. While seeking to address the issues of today’s materials through interspecies collaboration, this research simultaneously suggests that collaborative practice with the nonhuman necessitates acts of care for all organisms involved in the creation of new regenerative futures. Material Rituals navigates the way interspecies collaboration may entail ritual as an active coindividuation, enacting the belief that the nonhuman possesses agency beyond the human and it explores these concepts in the context of creating ritual with the living material, kombucha leather. Relating care to ritual, this body of work offers meditation and ceremony as acts of ritualistic care that may be incorporated into interspecies collaboration as pathways toward conscious coindividuation with the “other.”
Material Rituals is an evolving exploration arising from the master’s thesis project of Joanne Jones under the supervision of Nadja Gaudillière for a Master of Science in Nature Inspired Design at ENCSI - Les Ateliers. 

• Access to full thesis content​​​​​​