MYCOMYTHOLOGIES
PATTERNINGBiotechnological installation
Sound & Software design
Collaboration with Sasa Spacal
Production and support: Zone2Source, Projekt Atol, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Toby Kiers Laboratory a Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, PIF Camp
Support: Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana
Programming, mapping: Matic Potočnik
Microbiology, technical support: Mirjan Švagelj
Sincere thanks: Toby Kiers, Loreto Oyarte Galvez, Malin Klein
Photographs: Marthe Vos, Saša Spačal
2021
Prototype draft for acquiring permit from World Networks Entanglement:
“Infrastructural node in the World Networks Entanglement provides an epigenetic environment for mushroom Hericium erinaceus. As an offering human healer patternist Hericium donated her blood, sweat and tears to braid contamination, dosing it slowly into a fungal environment. Not to shock, but nurture, negotiate and form xeno-patterns in the central pattern of the Entanglement Flow. Contamination always alludes control and so does the node in question, however there is a wish to include and collaborate. A wish was built in the node to produce cartographies of contamination collaboration with the integrated mapping device: collecting micrographs of contamination, charting maps and building ever evolving and transforming Atlas of Collaborative Contamination. All this to outline relations, to allow the stories of multiplicities to emerge, to develop caring methods of connecting and entangling, to finally be able to navigate patterns of intra- and interspecies complexities. ”
Once the draft was scribbled Hericium started to wonder how we will ever learn to be many and diverse. Who knows. For her it was time to start prototyping the machine for cartographies of fungi-human ecologies. Permit or no permit, she sensed in the Flow that the world had a need.
MycoMythologies:Patterning is an installation which captures growing fungal landscape which is contaminated by the human microbiom – bacteria, fungi and archea derived from the blood, sweat and tears of the artist – with a microscope and analyzed by computer vision, rendered on three screens where they are mapped, sonified and collected into a database. The installation questions if we can see ourselves as entangled rather than sovereign, reflecting on contamination as productive exchange between different life forms.
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MycoMythologies series expresses deep admiration for the wisdom, work and legacy of Lion’s Mane Hericium erinaceus, Octavia E. Butler, Oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus and Ursula K. Le Guin.
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BALLONTASTIC
FICTIONComposition & Sound Design
Collaboration with Jeroen van den Dungen
video by Tebbernekkel
Written & directed by Blue Ter Burg
Shot by Willem van der Eerden
Produced by Quintin Baker
TAF x REEBOK
HOLIDAY CAMPAIGNComposition & Sound Design
Collaboration with Jeroen van den Dungen
video by Hittegolf Media
THE EGG
WORLD POPULATION SCULPTURESoftware design
The Egg is a project by Marco Barotti
Co-produced by Tokyo Biennale, Dystopie Festival and Bildstörung Festival,
assistant: Alex Blondeau
text: Anna Anderegg
Supported by: Cycling ‘74 and Worldometer
Special thanks to Marco Canevacci, Yena Young, Stefan Dietzelt, Carsten Reith & Daniel Brunet
CURRENT WORLD POPULATION
Ten thousand years ago, there were 1 million people living on the planet, fifty years ago there were 3 billion of us and, by the end of this century, we are estimated to reach a population of 10 billion people! We have modified almost every part of our planet and, as we continue to grow, our need for vital resources increases exponentially. We human beings are the main force behind every global problem we face.
Marco Barotti’s new work is a kinetic sound sculpture resembling an egg. The cycle of life, reflected in the shape of the sculpture with neither beginning nor end, symbolizes fertility and reproduction - and thus questions the impact of overpopulation. Driven by real-time data generated by the Worldometer, the sculpture constantly changes its shape.
The data produced by the Worldometer counter recording births and deaths is converted into bass frequencies. These frequencies are pitched below what is audibly perceptible by human beings, infrasound. They are too low to be heard but powerful enough to drive the subwoofer to produce movements, air pressure and sound vibrations to interact with the flexible membrane of the structure. This creates unpredictable patterns that continuously reshape the sculpture. The EGG is made out of natural rubber, a high-tech latex material produced from tree bark.
MYCOMYTHOLOGIES
RUPTUREBiotechnological installation
Sound & Software design
Collaboration with Sasa Spacal
Production and support: ACE Kibla, Projekt Atol, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Toby Kiers Laboratory a Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, PIF Camp
Support: Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Maribor
Programming, computer vision: Matic Potočnik
Microbiology, technical support: Mirjan Švagelj
Video Footage: Tilen Sepič
Mycelium micrographs, technical support: Toby Kiers Laboratory [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam]
Kindly lent voices: Polona Torkar, Verena Friedrich, Regine Rapp, Susana Gómez Larrañaga, Hiroaki Fujiwara, Jooyoung Oh, Pim Boreel, Saša Spačal, Hiroaki Fujiwara, Anneta Mona Chisa, Monica Clare Mills, Vivian Xu, Dmitry Morozov
Sincere thanks: Toby Kiers, Loreto Oyarte Galvez, Malin Klein
Photographs: Janez Klenovšek
2020
MycoMythological machines were assembled to tap into the underground flow while the nutrients poured out of it, along with the numerous stories. No matter where the flow was sampled, there the stories were, flowing out of the mycelium network together with the much needed nutrients. There were many whispers, among which some stories seemed the same as they trickled out of the hyphae in chunks and pieces. They were almost like a repetitive mantra that loops and loops even though they were never completely the same. There were always glitches and differences as if they had been assembled again and again like some sort of a distant memory of the murmuring machine.
THE MYTH OF RUPTURE
The microscopic node in the World Networks Entanglement freshly programmed with the Fungal Network Traits Protocol* experienced a peculiar overflow of sonic data. The sound in the laboratory filled the space with one single sentence computed by the Entanglement and repeatedly uttered by the machine. As more and more data poured into the machine, the more intense and distinct the voices became:
»We can’t return to normal because the normal that we had was precisely the problem.«
The feeling was that of an emergency; numerous languages and voices were finally detected circulating in the Flow. From the depths of the previously mute and unheard underground, the machine clearly conveyed messages that their world was broken. The rupture was clearly deep and entangled as it spanned several planes that had kept the voices invisible and quiet for too long.
The conclusion was that the machine got overloaded while computing the immensity of the breach across the feedback looping entanglements of the planetary networks. In order for the World Networks Entanglement to compute itself again with the included newly detected voices, it was necessary to implement The Word for World Is Flow Protocol, which allowed for the permeability of categories such as human, gender, nature, individual, history, culture, society. Serious work needs to be done.
*The Fungal Network Traits Protocol of unevenly distributed particles was developed in collaboration with fungal agents, which performed their decision-making processes. The dataset of decisions was then fed into the protocol, which became known as the Protocol of the Forgotten.
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MycoMythologies is a series of ontogenetic mythological stories, video essays and machines conceived by Saša Spačal. The series researches the multilayered question of how mushrooms can help humans think about the possibilities of entangled life in capitalist ruins. As a speculative artistic research, MycoMythologies thinks not only about how fungal underground networks can inform humans, but also about how technologies tend to define the teachings that humans receive. The first myth of the series, The Myth of Rupture, premiered in October 2020 in KID Kibla in Maribor, Slovenia.
