Mandy:
I already did some test with glycerol to make the mycelium flexible but it become a pancake with flat hyfes. Do you have any idea which products i can use to make it flexible without losing the fluffiness?
Maurizio:
Concerning your question it is rather difficult to give a straight forward answer.
Having the "cat picture" you sent me, as a reference, make me think it’s quite hard to achieve anything like that, though that is never to be said, as any achievement derives from a deep and patient process of experimentation and testing.
I personally did not explore this issue yet in my research, particularly given the fact that I think that such "macro-fluffiness” is:
- hard to achieve, as hyphae generally do not grow that long
- hard to maintain, as the growth of the organism and of the resulting material need to be eventually stopped (dried) and this inevitably affects the qualities of the volumetric fluffy texture.
Moreover, any post-treatment (like glycerol) will flatten the material.
In my process in fact I do consider aesthetics, but I assess them as a consequence of a process where the primary goal is to be found into the properties of the material.
So, I’m sorry to say I would not be able to conceive an immediate solution for what you’re envisioning, though this might emerge from a research process, where the ambition would be to literally freeze the existing texture by also de-activating the organism biologically.
I would suggest you to keep trying researching empirical methods and I will surely keep you posted in case something would emerge from my side.