Displaying Fungal ‘Music’ through a real-time sound and Light Installations
Mushrooms emit a specific kind of electronic activity that has been researched into and found to contain around 50 “words”. This boils down to these words not being words exactly, but patterns of activity which can be perceived as communication, similar research has been conducted into trees and yield similar results.
One possible avenue we could look down is the production of “mushroom music” for an installation. Multiple artists have ventured into this in recent years and find interesting results. The Idea of experiencing audio and visual feedback originating live from mushrooms is interesting enough, but the idea doesn’t go much “deeper”.
Our plan then is to create an installation that uses sound transferred from the electrical signals of a cluster of fungi to create a sonic space, with a light setup that reflects the different frequencies given out in a visually interesting way.
The Installation could be simply passive, participants could walk in and through the room and simply enjoy the experience. Alternatively we have the option to have the participants interact with the mushrooms and see the change of the electronic signals live in the form of sonic and visual output.
“evidence has been obtained that indeed fungi respond to mechanical, chemical and optical stimulation by changing the pattern of its electric activity and, in many cases, modifying characteristics of their spike trains.” [1]
Adamatzky, Andrew. “Language of Fungi Derived from Their Electrical Spiking Activity.” Royal Society Open Science 9, no. 4 (April 2022). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.211926.
