Mumbai Diaries - a chance encounter with composting worms via an art exhibition

4th October 2024

Nine Fish Art Gallery, Mumbai

We happened to walk into this gallery as a rendezvous point to meet Sekar's cousin Viji more than anything else.  Sometimes I am moved by art and sometimes astounded, and of course quite often indifferent as well.  The evening brought all 3 emotions.

There were two exhibitions - one by a set of nine woman artists under the theme of Symbols of Care and Nurturing, and another called Factory 5.0 by architect Aditya Mandlik.  

I was moved by the insect-centred art of Nisha Dhinwa, Shalini Dutt's warm tapestry art, and the drama of Shayonti Salvi's ceramics.  They had a connection to the natural world that worked for me.  I did not personally connect with the other artists in this collection

And then we moved into another space, all dark and spotlit.  And this is what the write-up at the entrance said:

"FACTORY 5.0

This Pavilion envisions a future where design transcends human-centered thinking, fostering deeper collaboration with nature. Composed of 546 digitally manufactured wooden elements, 210 Styrofoam plates, and 10,400 non-human collaborators- enclosed in transparent acrylic containers - the installation challenges contemporary urban environments. 

Styrofoam represents matter once believed impossible to decompose - plastic. Through this collaborates with nature, the Pavilion demonstrates how decomposition itself can become an act of creating architecture. 

At the heart of the exhibition is the "Factory" concept, illustrating how creation can flourish through the cooperation of human innovation and natural systems. The installation embodies co-creation, where diverse approaches converge to reshape the future of our habitats. This living structure engages visitors in a dynamic experience where their movements influence light, subsequently affecting the worms' activity, thus fostering a dialogue between nature and design, continuously reshaping itself. 

As the Pavilion undergoes a curated aging process, the plates gradually develop openings, orchestrating a dynamic interplay of light and shadow. At the conclusion of the exhibition, these plates will be frozen as 'objects of memory; capturing the essence of time and space. Factory 5.0 redefines creation as a collaborative process, inviting reflection on the post-anthropocentric future, where human and non-human collaborators begin to coexist towards a symbiotic future."

Yes - 210 Styrofoam plates encased in acrylic.
And 10,400 "superworms" - Zophobas morio larvae of (what I later discovered) the Darkling Beetle!  
Busy chomping through the styrofoam in any which way they pleased.

Here are a couple of videos from the astounding installation, with the architect Aditya Mandlik explaining to us bemused lot including cousin Viji.

So of course, I was intrigued, and also a doubting "flowergirl" and therefore I had to put google search to full use.

I came across a  2015 Stanford Study quoted in an article The Science behind Composting Styrofoam.  

Article in The Guardian from June 2022 - Foaming at the mouth: the superworms making a meal of polystyrene waste

Donna Lu

For three weeks, researchers at the University of Queensland fed superworms a polystyrene foam commonly used in building insulation.

The larvae that snacked on plastic were able to complete their life cycle, becoming pupae and then adult beetles. However, they gained less weight than superworms that were fed a bran diet, and had less healthy gut microbiomes.

Dr Chris Rinke of the University of Queensland, a co-author of the study, said within 24 hours, the superworms started “attacking the polystyrene and eating their way into it”.

“Within 48 hours … the faeces they produce turn from their usual brown – when they eat bran – to white.”

Rinke said the superworms first mechanically shredded the polystyrene foam, and microbes in their gut contained enzymes capable of breaking down polystyrene chains into styrene molecules.

The New York Times also reported on this study at the same time, and it made cynical me wonder if the Styrofoam lobby was at work at that point in time, trying to stave off the PS Foam ban that was upcoming in Australia. 

How Superworms Make Styrofoam Into a Healthy Meal

When the time came for the insects to metamorphose into beetles, those that ate bran completed the transition successfully nearly 93 percent of the time; those that had starved mustered only 10 percent. Strikingly, 66.7 percent of the polystyrene-eating larvae that were given the chance to pupate were successful. They managed to get enough energy from the notoriously indigestible substance to transform.

“Polystyrene is definitely a poor diet,” Dr. Rinke said. But “the worms can survive it — they don’t look sick or anything.”

The researchers sequenced all the DNA they could extract from the guts of the larvae. They were less interested in which specific microbes were present than in what enzymes were being made as the microbes worked to break down polystyrene. They pinpointed a handful of likely candidates — all types of enzymes known for their slicing-and-dicing abilities — that were possibly shearing polystyrene down into smaller pieces.

“The next step will be to express those enzymes in the lab and experimentally verify that they are doing what we think they are,” Dr. Rinke said.

So that's what Mr Mandlik is trying to do - get the superworms to eat the styrofoam and create spaces. 

The lab experiments are trying to isolate the enzymes and maybe solve our landfill problems in the future...but this architecture thing is a bit weird for me, ethically - keeping larvae from pupating and feeding them rubbish styrofoam does not sound like co-creation to me, more like another means of putting the non-human world to work in unhealthy conditions.  

So yes, it is a factory, with super worm slaves.  Let us not say "cooperation" and "co-creation", please.  The worms have to be kept together and their pupation hindered, for us to have our styrofoam chomped and processed.  

The Wiki page on Zophobas morio  is being spare with the truth when it says "Zophobas morio larvae fed a polystyrene diet were more active and managed to gain a slight amount of weight compared to the same type of larvae on a starvation diet" - 

Yeah right, eating plastic is better than starving.  The Chennai street cows would agree.