MYCOSPHERAL

INSPIRATION

FIRST APPROACH

Try to grow mycelium in fed by cardboard in a plastic container. There are many tutorials in Internet and many DIY videos and posts about how to grow mushrooms. Some useful likes were:

My first attempts were not successful and mycelium did not grow. Shiitake mushrooms were used.

EXPERIMENT / IDEA

The goal was to take some data from mycelium through Martin's Howse circuit for plants and mushroom amplification.

The idea was to let mycelium grow between the wires and colonize them so then we could get data out of them and translated into signs identified by humans, either sound or light.

SECOND APPROACH

Since I wasn't able to grow mycelium with cardboard and mushrooms, I took some of it that was available in the Bauhaus BioLab. It had been fed with wood so two ways of growing mycelium were implemented: Feed it with cardboard and with wood.

Mycelium was successfully grown. The idea worked as expected for Mycelium did grow around the metal cables introduced to it in the cardboard. In some pictures it can be appreciated how the lines of the metal wires are marked by mycelium.

The next step to do was to build Martin's Howse plant sensing circuit. The circuit was changed a little bit and the AD620 amplifier chip was exchanged for LM386L amplifier chip but they work very similar.

This circuit uses the living organism connected to it as a sensor, when you touch a plant or a mushroom there is some exchange of energy happening between the human being and the organism. It is hard to actually touch mycelium at the stage that it is. As a first step for getting to know this organism I am more interested in getting the pure signals of mycelium with no human interaction to then take it a step further and find an interspecies communication.

THIRD APPROACH

The signals that I got from mycelium were constant, no real interaction was created between the human being and the organism. The signals do not change that much. The next step is to find a way of influencing this organism.

Mycelium connects and communicates their whole. Natural information is transferred through mycelium it is a network, a natural internet in the words of Paul Stamets.

As a reference to the "ecosphere" spheres or balls will be the environment where mycelium will start to grow. Since mycelium is not rejecting the metal wires they will be introduced through little holes and they will help us measure the activity of mycelium. This will be an approach to analyze how is mycelium communicating among itself (in a same sphere) and among other mycelium colonies (different spheres).

7 Balls were made with mycelium growing inside of them. Four spheres will be interconnected and 3 of them were made to test the different ways mycelium can or may grow.

Sphere01, Food: Cardboard, Single Test
Sphere02, Food: Cardboard, Connection Test
Sphere03, Food: Cardboard, Connection Test
Sphere04, Food: Cardboard, Connection Test
Sphere05, Food: Cardboard, Single Test, Metal filaments open
Sphere06, Food: Wood, Single Test, Metal filaments open
Sphere07, Food: Cardboard, Single Test, Light Bulb Sensor