A FUNGUS GARDEN

APPARITIONS

September 2020
Ars Electronica
Kepler’s Gardens
Digital Exhibition

How would a fungus garden look like?

The semantic universe of the word garden is often related to a designed outdoor space, either for leisure or the cultivation of edible plants. In the same idealized imagery, the Fungi Kingdom is represented through bright and colorful mushrooms, like the famous Amanita muscaria. But, what is the role of Fungi within a garden? Invisible organisms acting underneath the soil, carrying information through the ecosystem, digesting dead matter; Fungi are one of the most active components in a garden’s sustainability.

How would a fungus-only garden look like? There are some known fungus gardens that are made by termites and ants. These insects cultivate fungal mycelium inside their underground galleries in order to feed from it. Both organisms, insects and fungus, create a symbiosis that maintains the balance.

A fungus garden is a digital exhibition which invites you to know more about the importance of Fungi and the marginality in which they have been for being associated with death. Through an online experience around the Fungi Kingdom within a variety of media, A fungus garden approaches degeneration in the human body as a symbol of mystery and beauty, noticing about the invisible webs in which we are imbedded.

Through mushroom 3D spaces, a 360º tour, videoart, poetry, performance and games, A fungus garden claims justice for the forgotten pieces; for those invisible that are, nevertheless, key parts of an interdependent existence and that make life possible as we know it today.