The Biomaterials AR Chandelier (2024) explores how biomaterials and augmented reality art can impact sustainability and the circular economy in the wine industry. Dumitriu has created an intricate hand-made chandelier installation using wine waste, specifically biotextiles made using spolied wine and feccia (final grape pressing) kombucha SCOBY (symbiotic cultures of yeast and bacteria), and bio-plastics and bio-composites from wine waste (grape marc and vine clippings) – all from scratch.
The biomaterials have been cast into forms inspired by photogrammetry scans from the winery of project partners Marco Felluga in Italy.
The chandelier triggers a generative augmented reality app #artandwineAR that gives every user a unique experience. It is accompanied by a sonification of fermentation data produced by IoT corks in barrels at the Marco Felluga winery. The IoT corks have been created by collaborating technology company BUBAMARA-V from Serbia. The AR app development was undertaken by Alex May. Dumitriu has also produced an open source wine waste biomaterials recipe book. The project has been created as part of the EU STARTS Better Factory: Internet of Art and Wine (IoWA) Project.
BioMaterials from Wine Waste
Recipes for creating biomaterials (bio-plastics and bio-composites) from wine waste have been released in an open source booklet “How to Create Biomaterials from Wine Waste” to enable other artists and designers to work with these materials. Recipes can also be found on GitHub.
Anna Dumitriu is also able to offer biomaterials workshops where participants can experiment with the possibilities of working with wine waste materials to create their own unique biomaterials.
The video below shows taste of some of the biomaterials, bioplastics and biocomposites that Anna Dumitriu has experimented with during her EU Better Factory Project with the IoWA KTE.
Dumitriu is additionally collaborating with materials scientist Gary Cass to explore bio-cellulose foam materials.
Augmented Reality Artwork
The story of the wine circular economy in the wine industry is explored through augmented reality artwork in the form of an e-label artwork triggered from a wine label. The video below shows Anna Dumitriu’s Augmented Reality (AR) App prototype, created in collaboration with Alex May. The AR artwork is generative so every user will experience a unique artwork.
Media
An interview with the Better Factory: Internet of Art and Wine (IoWA) team by Charlotte Tucker from Better Factory was published in July 2023. Read it here.
Inspiration
Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 951813.
