On 5 December 2010, I visited a Busan seaweed farmer as part of a joint research project with designer Julia Lohmann, aiming to develop seaweed as a design material. Julia began the project during her 3-month stay at the S-AIR artist in residence centre in Sapporo, Japan, in 2007, and continued it as a design research fellow at the Stanley Picker Gallery of Kingston University. She is now extending both her research and design work with seaweed as part of her practice-based PhD studentship at the Royal College of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum in London. I am very grateful to the British Council Korea for making this research trip possible.