Related Projects
Saša Spačal
Mycophone_emergence, https://mycophone.wordpress.com/mycophone_emergence/
Mycophone_emergence is an invitation for you to become the explorer of the force of technology, to enter the realm where biological and non biological are no longer anything else but a type of material that technology as dynamic force deals with and manipulates through the hands of human beings.
Martin Howse
Radio Mycelium, http://libarynth.org/parn/radio_mycelium, http://www.psychogeophysics.org/wiki/doku.php?id=mycelial
"Radio Mycelium proposes the construction of a series of experimental situations examining a new networked imaginary, the single organism of the fungal mycelium, in relation to pathogenic, electromagnetic communications."(http://fo.am/radio_mycelium/)
Laura Popplow
Fungutopia, http://www.fungutopia.org/
"As an installation fungutopia shows the different possibilities that mushrooms offer to help to make the world a better place: Mushrooms are open source medicine, food, fertilizer and soil-recovery-method. They can be cultivated quite simply even indoor and are perfect for urban fungiculture. The workshop shows simple techniques to grow mushrooms in cities, whereas the prototype MUSHroom tries to combine Open Source Electronics with Biology to grow even more rare medicinal species year round indoor. As a community-project fungutopia tries to bring together people for urban fungiculture and share knowledge and experience. The Online Community grow.fungutopia.org is the web equivalent of the f2f experience."(http://www.fungutopia.org/index.php?/about/)
Gediminas ir Nomeda Urbonai
Zooetics Pavilion (Psychotropic House at CAC, 2015), http://www.zooetics.net/
"..was inspired by British novelist J.G. Ballard writing about living plant technologies in his collection of short stories Vermilion Sands (1971). In his fictional world Ballard describes a psychotropic house that interacts with its inhabitants and bio-clothes made from hypersensitive plants that respond to their wearers. Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas created a laboratory in the gallery making living material by mixing mycelium (mushroom root) with agricultural waste (sawdust, straw etc)."(https://traceywarrwriting.com/2015/10/15/m-for-mycelium/)
Fungi / mycelium
Features
- Transport of allelochemicals; Allelopathy, a phenomenon where compounds produced by one plant limit the growth of surrounding plants
- Mycoremediation
- Mycofiltration
Life cycle
Most fungi grow as mycelium consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae, which are cylindrical, thread-like structures 2–10 µm in diameter and up to several centimeters in length. All together hyphae may form extremely large organisms, as for example Armillaria ostoyae, which occupies 965 hectares os soil found in US Oregon's Blue Mountains (Casselman 2007).
Mycelium/Hyphae
“Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. A typical single spore germinates into a homokaryotic mycelium, which cannot reproduce sexually; when two compatible homokaryotic mycelia join and form a dikaryotic mycelium; that mycelium may form fruiting bodies such as mushrooms.”(wikipedia)
“One of the primary roles of fungi in an ecosystem is to decompose organic compounds”(wikipedia)
“Turning a backyard compost pile will commonly expose visible networks of mycelia that have formed on the decaying organic material within. Compost is an essential soil amendment and fertilizer for organic farming and gardening. Composting can divert a substantial fraction of municipal solid waste from landfill.”(wikipedia)
"Around 90% of land plants are in mutually-beneficial relationships with fungi. The 19th-century German biologist Albert Bernard Frank coined the word "mycorrhiza" to describe these partnerships, in which the fungus colonises the roots of the plant." (Fleming 2014)
Allelophaty
“The team tested the soil in the cylinders for two compounds made by the marigolds, which can slow the growth of other plants and kill nematode worms. In the cylinders where the fungi were allowed to grow, levels of the two compounds were 179% and 278% higher than in cylinders without fungi. That suggests the mycelia really did transport the toxins.”(ref http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0027195) The team then grew lettuce seedlings in the soil from both sets of containers. After 25 days, those grown in the more toxin-rich soil weighed 40% less than those in soil isolated from the mycelia. "These experiments show the fungal networks can transport these chemicals in high enough concentrations to affect plant growth,” says Morris, who is now based at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.
- allelopathy* (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0027195) (http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-grow-wild-mushrooms-mycelium-from-spores-ex/)
As a result of this growing body of evidence, many biologists have started using the term "wood wide web" to describe the communications services that fungi provide to plants and other organisms.
Sclerotium
A sclerotium (plural sclerotia, from Greek skleros - hard) is a compact mass of hardened fungal mycelium containing food reserves.
References
- Nic Fleming (2014) “Plants talk to each other using an internet of fungus”. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internet (Accessed 8 November 2016)
- Paul Stamets (2005) "Mycelium running". Available at: https://decroissons.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/paul-stamets-mycelium-running-how-mushrooms-can-help-save-the-world.pdf (Accessed 8 November 2016)
- Paul Stamets (2008) “6 ways mushrooms can save the world”. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world (Accessed 8 November 2016)
- Wikipedia. Micelium. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium (Accessed 8 December 2016)