This week we got to see people’s projects come to fruition and work on the completion of our own projects. On Tuesday we got to see the final projects of those who made projects relating to food. It was very exciting to get to taste people’s creations and learn about the cultural and scientific information behind it. Enjoying food together always seems like the fastest way to unite a group of people so it was nice to book-end our class with that. I also got to bring in my kombucha for people to try which was very exciting. Fermenting it was like carefully taking care of a child so it was both nerve wracking and exciting letting others see what I had made. 

enjoying food during Tuesday's class

    This week I did a lot of final work in drying out my SCOBY and preparing it to install into my window frame. I had to dry out all of the SCOBY I had grown into sheets that could be cut up. This took a couple of days and it was interesting to see how it shrunk as it lost liquid. Pieces that I had grown for weeks ended up being paper thin by the time they had dried out. My process for constructing the window one they had dried consisted of me cutting the SCOBY into triangles and sticking it between the frames. In the end I think it produced a very visually striking result and I am very happy with the prototype. I think If I did it again I would grow the SCOBY for longer in order to achieve more vibrant and opaque window panes. I have been stuck in my room so I have not gotten the chance to photograph the window much, but I am eager to get it into more environments and see what attitudes it expresses in different spaces. 

drying out my SCOBY

back of my window with triangles of scoby cut out

completed window (additional photos at end of blog)

    I sadly couldn’t come to class on Thursday because I got Covid. I was very eager to see the final results of everyone’s project but I was ill. It reminded me, however, of one of the first subjects we learned about in the class which was microscopy. This was the first time I got Covid so it hit me pretty hard and I was reminded of the existence and impact that the unseen things around us have. A virus particle is so small it needs to be imaged with an electron microscope to be seen and yet it can take over the body and make it ill. In recent weeks we had been looking at more macro scale microscopy with the 4k microscope in class but I am reminded of the deeper realm of detail that exists in the world through its impact on my body this week.