“Does the Internet Dream of Mushrooms?” Are the Earths largest information networks on the verge of consciousness? Is mycelium the Earths internet? Can you grow mushrooms in an old computer?
This piece began online, somewhere in the vast tangled web of search queries and DIY instructional videos on mushroom cultivation.
From this research the pearl oyster mushroom was selected for its cultivation in an old Hitachi computer monitor (discarded by a group of anonymous engineering students).
Over the course of three weeks, a mycologist in Olympia Washington revitalized liquid cultures isolated from a pearl oyster mushroom native to the Washington area. After which a large jar of vigorously growing mycelium was shipped across the country to Pittsburgh.
For three months the mushrooms were cared for by practicing cultivation techniques I read about online. These methods included growing mushrooms alongside plants, whose oxogen production enables the mushrooms to breath and form fruiting bodies. Each day I would monitor the humidity inside the computer monitor making sure the mycelium was clean and healthy. Until at last the fruiting mushroom bodies emerged, and the sculpture was exhibited in an out-cove at Carnegie Mellon University. Ceremoniously the fruits of the sculptures were later eaten by the Artist and friends .
The structure of mycelium is ingenious and beautiful, growing in a three dimensional web of microscopic hyphal filaments that efficiently and intelligently navigate unknown environments. The shape of mycelium networks are not dissimilar from the ones found in the human brain, maps of the internet, and maps of dark matter in the universe (Paul Stamets).
“I see mycelium as the Earths natural Internet, a consciousness with which we might be able to communicate. Through cross species interfacing, we may one day exchange information with these sentient cellular networks. Because these externalized neurological nets sense any impression upon them, from footsteps to falling tree branches, they could relay enormous amounts of data regarding the movements of all organisms through the landscape”(Paul Stamets Mycelium Running)
