Materials:

Recycled pulp paper, pandan pulp paper, plants, dirt, moss, agar agar bioplastic coloured with pandan, butterfly pea and spirulina

I've developed a bit of an obsession with puddles over the last year or so, mostly in mapping them in my neighborhood. I love going for a walk after a storm and seeing what puddles have grown, whether they’re in the same spots as before, what kind of debris is inside of them. When I come across a puddle I take a photo and a six second video. I archive them in a folder, refer back to them and have been trying to figure out further ways to use this information.

I have been working in papermaking for a while now, and I’ve been extremely bioplastic-curious which meant Dinacon was a perfect place to see how I could bring them together. Going into this I was fantasizing about blending the materials in different ways, but didn’t really know what my plan was.

In Les, puddles are not very common. The most frequent ones I saw were below air conditioning units. These little spots would be bursts of lush greens, small green sprigs and soft moss growing all around them.

Through some process of elimination I decided to make recycled paper, banana tree bark paper and pandan paper. 

Recycled paper is the easiest way to do it, so I wanted to have it on hand if needed. I have made banana tree bark paper before but I never know what a space will be like so I didn’t want to rely on that, which was good because I had some trouble getting the fiber broken down this time. Maybe the 20$ blender wasn’t the best idea for pulping fibers.  

Then pandan. One of the most common plants used across the community from ceremony to food is pandan leaf. I loved seeing its colour pop up in canang sari and little rolled crêpes filled with coconut and brown sugar for dessert, plus I did want to find ways to make a naturally green pigmented paper. The fiber was relatively fit for use after 5 hours of boiling from semi dry leaves and pulped in the blender well enough but I was concerned about using it without a stabilizer so I combined it with some recycled pulp to be safe.

I was also extremely lucky to cross paths with Arya N who brought mulberry tree bark and his own meters of finished barkcloth. Through his workshop I made a little piece of mulberry barkcloth, and I also bought a meter for use. 

Generally I did my best to shape the pulled paper in puddle-like ways during the pull and couching process. In many of the sheets I included plants that grow by the most common puddles in Les. Once the recycled and pandan sheets were all pulled I moved on to the bioplastic portion. It was my first time working with this material and thankfully I got an excellent lesson from Camila and Olivia during their workshop. This led to the first version of a puddle paper, just some circles of bioplastic over the holes I put in the barkcloth.

Bioplastic is tricky in the tropics, especially because there’s an extremely limited window before it starts molding. This was the final step before going out for Open Day so I did it the night before with the use of the kitchen thanks to Made. 

There were a few ways I approached this portion, I had some writing on one sheet, a drawing of the pond on another and then the sheets with plant inclusions. At first I was just pouring the bioplastic over the sheets to create very slick, shiny surfaces on top but it felt too clean. By leaving the bioplastic to firm up for a little bit off-heat I could make chunky piles of it that dried in vaguely unnerving, slimy shapes.

I especially like how they all look clustered together, close and overlapping in the sun.

Thanks to lee, alex b, libi, arya, made, pipin, anna, olivia & camila for helping out, sourcing materials, teaching me things and keeping me company.