Perforated forms: myco-spacial symbiosis

Gray Snyder – Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design

Collaborators: Eli Underhill-Miller – A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; Iris Arboreal – LSA

Perforated forms: myco-spacial symbiosis (PFMSS) integrates concepts and methods from the fields of mycology, architecture, visual arts, and data visualization. PFMSS encourages viewers to recognize their interconnectedness with non-human organisms and their participation in ecological systems, through the project’s spatial logics, immersive projections, and offered interactivity. Our central material, mycelium, networks information and resources between different species, connecting vast and varied bodies. Mycelium is adaptive, creative and aware, interacting with its host environment as if keeping the health of the greater system in mind. All collaborators will explore the human, fungal, digital as enmeshed extensions of the natural world and are excited to apply knowledge of bio-composite cultivation to future endeavors in our respective disciplines. PFMSS will be exhibited as a live audio-visual installation where viewers will be asked to interact with architectural forms constructed from modular mycelium bricks. An embedded network of sensors will record these engagements as data visualizations, developed in the program Touch designer and projected onto the structures from above. As interactions accumulate, the data-based network will connect the disparate structures to resemble mycorrhizal networks. This reaction will signal our participation in our ongoing systems of connection.