FUNGICAL LANGUAGE
INSTALLATION 2024
LA MECA, Frac NoA, Bordeaux, France
Fungical Language speculates on the hypothesis that the mycelium communicates the limits of language in humans and non-humans. In a society where we are beginning to understand the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, we need to look more closely than ever at "plant neurobiology". Through electronics and sensors, frequencies will be transformed into "human" words or phrases that can be seen on a monitor
Fungical Language is a device that evokes the aesthetics of biomedia and Influenced by Urbonas Studio's Mushroom Power Plat (2019) or Marti Howse's Radio Mycelium (2021) the organism as presentation. My piece presents a fungi ( Omphalotus Nidformis ) connected to electrodes that are in turn connected to hardware. Inspired by Andrew Adamatzky's article, this combination allows words or phrases to appear on a screen1.
In short, the installation proposes a way of looking at things in which the electrical vibrations of fungi can be translated into human semiotics. Subjectively, the work encourages us to take account of environmental disturbances: the presence of visitors, heat and light. The program was developed using machine learning software. Depending on electrical variations, the program will display appropriate phrases.
Fungical Language speculates on the form of a biotope in which organics and technology draw a system. In a society where we are beginning to understand the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, we need more than ever to look at
But how many people know that oil, coal, gas and all those things we call “non-renewable energy resources” are nothing more than solar energy absorbed by plants millions of years ago? How many people know that the active ingredients in our medicines are largely of plant origin? Or that wood, thanks to its astonishing characteristics, is still the most widely used building material in many parts of the world? Our lives, like those of every other animal on this planet, depend on the plant world.3
The piece does not present plants as such. Mycelium has the particularity of reinterrogating our modes of relationship and our perception of what the Internet is. If we don't believe that organisms are mere ornaments, their dismountable construction is a typical example of modernity: of a collaborative architecture distributed in different ways with a strong resistance to problems.
Speculated fungi alphabet. generated by artificial intelligence ©ARMET
We've just realized that the use of artificial intelligence has an impact on the ecosystem: the presence of carbon, which implies warming. And if we use mycelium in conjunction with artificial intelligence, could there be a more virtuous system?
code using. Reproduced with permission. ©ARMET
For my installation, I also drew inspiration from Alexander Von Humboldt's essays 4. Computer graphics or data visualization, formerly known as complex data mapping, will be seen in parallel with mycorrhizal communication. The map created by machine learning is a singular proposal of what a map is with the help of artificial intelligence. We need to investigate into how we should present biological data and show the link between mycelium, energy and the ecology of organisms.
- Adamatzky, Adam (2022). "Language of fungi derived from their electrical spiking activity" Royal Society open sciencehttps://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.211926
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_cognition
- Mancuso, Stefano (2019). The future is vegetal. Prologue - Albin Michel
- Von Humboldt, Alexander (1805).Essai sur la géographie des plantes