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Brooklyn-based artist and designer Ali Schachtschneider is charting the frontier of fresh paradigms for fashion production, working at the bioengineering co-op, Genspace, to re-conceptualize the ways we think about clothes. Here in the laboratory, she's playing with groundbreaking formulas for building new materials, everything from fabrics to dyes, framing her research as a catalyst to wean the global clothing market off its dependence upon already-depleted ecosystems.

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TALENT
Follow Ali Schachtschneider on Instagram: https://instagram.com/ali_schacht

Follow Courtney Yates on Instagram: https://instagram.com/courtsyy
Transcript
00:01It's 2043 and your clothing is alive.
00:08The material is an alternative cloth.
00:13The material can be used to adorn the body.
00:17The material can intimately form to the wearer, unlike other forms of traditional clothing.
00:26Bacteria respond to your body, reacting to heat and sweat while clothing you.
00:33Symbiosis.
00:36Symbiosis.
00:43Artist Ali Schnackschneider explores alternative uses for grown biological materials
00:50through imagining future applications of biotechnology from speculative scenarios to actual materials.
00:58But why?
01:00The environmental cost of clothing production is staggering.
01:04It takes 1,800 gallons of water to grow cotton for one pair of jeans
01:09and 2,900 gallons to produce one finished, dyed pair.
01:1426 million tons of textile waste is generated every year in China alone.
01:21Exploring sustainable alternatives is not a utopian dream, but a necessity.
01:29The symbiotic culture of microbes fermented over time can produce sheets of material, bacterial cellulose.
01:39and 2,900 gallons of water.
01:40Mycelium, the vegetable body of fungi, is grown to form shoes.
01:47These materials are all around us, full of potential.
01:53Organisms could become part of the cloth that we wear,
01:57moving away from a cycle of waste, the degradation of our resources and the environment.
02:04Hands-on research and speculation leads to solutions.
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