From water into wine into...dresses?

It was while he was working at a friend's vineyard that Gary Cass first saw what bacteria do to wine. Cass, a scientific technician at the University of Western Australia's Institute of Agriculture, discovered a vat of alcoholic cider covered with a slimy film, a sign its valuable contents had become contaminated with Acetobacter."This is your Wine-maker's worst nightmare," says Cass. The bacterium had converted the alcohol into vinegar, making the contents decidedly undrinkable.

Cass dutifully climbed into the enormous container and began pulling out the slimy skin, composed of a cellulose by-product which accumulated as the bacteria acidified the wine. It had an almost fleshy quality to it, like an organ or muscle. "I remember thinking, this is amazing stuff," he says.That thought stayed in the back of Cass's mind until the middle of last year, when he began considering a project he might work on through SymbioticA, the university's art and science collaborative research laboratory.He talked about it with Donna Franklin, a contemporary artist also working at SymbioticA, who explores the conceptual ideas around garments and performance. The two of them, scientist and artist, began considering using the cellulose mats as a kind of fabric."Cotton is plant-based cellulose after all, and this stuff is just bacterial-based cellulose," Cass explains. Before long they had rigged up their own system for cultivating the Acetobacter, using a small shallow vat they could fill with 500 ml of red wine. The resulting sheets of fermented fabric, semi-transparent with streaks of deep red, looked a lot like flayed or badly scarred skin. The two collaborators, together with colleague Alan Mullett, began draping the stuff in overlapping sheets over shop mannequins and found that it moulded beautifully, creating a fitted dress that snugly matched the shape of the model. However, as the material dried it became hard and brittle. Getting it off the mannequin was impossible.

Using the kind of ingenuity for which artists and scientists are renowned, the team turned their attention to another kind of life-size mannequin, one that could be deflated once the fabric had dried - inflatable dolls (you may have heard of them). "You should've seen the disbelief on the face of the person in the shop when I said it was for scientific experimentation," Cass laughs.In any case, the technical breakthrough worked, and the project, dubbed Micro'be', took off. The collaborators took photographs of the garments on live models -- who dressed while the "clothes" were wet and supple -- put out a press release and made plans to exhibit the dresses across Australia. "We're putting it out there as a provocative art project," says Franklin. "Conceptually, I'm interested in the relationship between body and cloth and what happens when you make the fabric part of something living."

The models reported that the fabric, while it was damp, felt "very natural, almost like a second skin," she says, although there were some upturned noses about its distinctive smell. "There's almost a kind of morning-after-the-night-before smell, a kind of stale alcohol aroma," adds Cass. "People either love it or hate it."The collaborators have been surprised by the level of media attention they've garnered, which has included the BBC, ABC, CNN and Sky News, not to mention Iceland Air's in-flight magazine, which is featuring the project in an upcoming issue. "To me that's just tremendous," says Cass.Some of the reports have focused on whether the fabric can be turned into a commercial success. So far, the world's fashion houses have not been beating a path to their door, says Franklin, adding that's not the aim. "It's about exploring the evolution of garments and the relationship between human evolution and the cultural significance of garments." For Cass, another fascination is the idea that the bacteria "weave" the fabric.Still, the project is progressing. On the day I speak to her, Franklin is working on ways to use tanning chemicals to soften the material when it's dry, which might make it more versatile. Cass is also thinking about other possibilities, perhaps using artificial colors to dye the fabric, or using white wine or beer as the raw material. "We didn't plan on this being so big," he says. "It just kinda happened, and we're running with it."Stephen Pincock mail@the-scientist.comImages: Micro'be' garments on live models, courtesy of the Micro'be' project.Links within this articleX. Bosch, "Genetic secrets of good wine," The Scientist, May 7, 2004. http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22159/SymbioticA http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/Micro 'be' http://www.bioalloy.org/projects/micro-be.html "Australian scientists dress women in wine," CBC news, March 15, 2007. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/15/tech-wine.html K. Thomas, "Beer, and the biochemists behind it," The Scientist, March 2, 2007. http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/52923