Bande à part (Vladislava Dzhulya, Olga Mitskevich)
GryboPhone
Interactive installation (sonification of bioelectrical signals, Pleurotus ostreatus, Arduino)
2025
The installation is made up of two components: a fish tank containing a mushroom farm and an interactive phone. The mushrooms are trapped in a see-through fish-tank prison, acting as symbolic “prisoners” of the process of cultivation — the production of food by humans for nutritional and medicinal purposes. The interactive phone enables you to hear the bioelectrical activity of the mushrooms, transformed into musical compositions. Visitors can ask the mushrooms how it feels to live in this “prison of cultivation” and hear their “replies” in the context of a musical dialogue.
The project aims to investigate the bioelectrical activity of mushrooms. Bioelectrical activity is a type of internal signalling system used as a mode of interaction. It is typically found in animals, but is also present in some species of mushrooms. Mushrooms exchange information through electrical impulses, but humans are not able to access this language directly. Although mushrooms, including the oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) used in this exhibit, are usually seen by humans only as a source of food and as a medicinal ingredient, they are live organisms capable of their own form of “communication”.
GryboPhone attempts to breach this perceptual barrier and create another way for humans to communicate with nature through music. By turning the mushrooms’ bioelectrical signals into sounds, the installation invites us to contemplate on the implicit complexity and significance of fungi in our ecosystems. The project challenges our existing attitudes to nature, calling on us to stop seeing nature as a mere passive object for our consumption, and instead to view it as an active participant in life and dialogue.
GryboPhone
Interactive installation (sonification of bioelectrical signals, Pleurotus ostreatus, Arduino)
2025
The installation is made up of two components: a fish tank containing a mushroom farm and an interactive phone. The mushrooms are trapped in a see-through fish-tank prison, acting as symbolic “prisoners” of the process of cultivation — the production of food by humans for nutritional and medicinal purposes. The interactive phone enables you to hear the bioelectrical activity of the mushrooms, transformed into musical compositions. Visitors can ask the mushrooms how it feels to live in this “prison of cultivation” and hear their “replies” in the context of a musical dialogue.
The project aims to investigate the bioelectrical activity of mushrooms. Bioelectrical activity is a type of internal signalling system used as a mode of interaction. It is typically found in animals, but is also present in some species of mushrooms. Mushrooms exchange information through electrical impulses, but humans are not able to access this language directly. Although mushrooms, including the oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) used in this exhibit, are usually seen by humans only as a source of food and as a medicinal ingredient, they are live organisms capable of their own form of “communication”.
GryboPhone attempts to breach this perceptual barrier and create another way for humans to communicate with nature through music. By turning the mushrooms’ bioelectrical signals into sounds, the installation invites us to contemplate on the implicit complexity and significance of fungi in our ecosystems. The project challenges our existing attitudes to nature, calling on us to stop seeing nature as a mere passive object for our consumption, and instead to view it as an active participant in life and dialogue.