The idea that fungi want to speak to us, can speak to us, and that we can understand them is extremely anthropocentric. Trendy videos on social media presented with attractive captions such as “listen to the world of mushrooms” or “mushrooms can speak and make music” are not much else but plain clickbait. This age of unapologetic clickbait often leaves us feeling helpless. I myself as somewhat of a amateur mycologist professional sound artist receive these videos very often from my friends thinking I like them. It’s far from the truth. I find these a cheap trick, offensive to electronic music, mushrooms and science.

We do need to speak about this. 

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An electrode pinned to a fly agaric and cables connected to the musician’s black box. Pleasant sounds oscillating on the edge of meditative electronic music let the fungi and lichens speak. It’s likely to have come across similar content and maybe even been captivated by it while scrolling through social media. However, the presentation of a “sonified” mushroom and the catchy “singing nature” headline is in most cases just clickbait.

In this mutlimedia performance I consider the problems and benefits of this trend, as well as the sonification of non-musical data and its pitfalls in general. While criticizing this practice, I demonstrate my own iteration of sonifying the mushrooms during this audiovisual performance.

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Following the performance, there is a discussion with the audience about this problematic topic.

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This performance took place on AFO documentary film festival in Olomouc in 2024.

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program notes & bio