INTERFERENCE SPORES || BECOMING OCTOPUS
2023
6–8 pm Thursday
7 September
7 September
Workshop: Rethinking AI though mycelium networks and meditations on becoming Octopus.
By Shira Wachsmann , John Wild, Maggie Roberts 0rphan Drift
Thursday 7 September 20236–8 pm
Cromwell Place
4 Cromwell Place London
SW7 2JE
United Kingdom
Not only neurons produce spikes in electricity. Many mycelia communicate environmental changes through their vast underground networks, using complex trains of electrical activity. This workshop will explore counter imaginaries of AI through practical experiments in growing mycelium, connecting to its neural-like spikes in electrical activity using cheap accessible equipment, considering how mushrooms could serve as tangible indicators of intensity of environmental changes and question evolutionary concepts central to the current discourse on Artificial Intelligence.
The workshop will be accompanied by a series of meditations on becoming Octopus by Maggie Roberts 0rphan Drift. Becoming Octopus aims to transport the meditator into the body, sensory attributes, and liquid environment of a Common Octopus. This involves prioritising the senses of touch and taste; processing reality with 8 arms and a central processing unit simultaneously; flowing the outside through the insides and camouflaging the body to become the ground using an array of colour effects and protean skin textures. The experience will combine meditation techniques, communications with an octopus and expanding human perception to engage with multidimensional beings – all in response to the current uncertainty and extended temporality we find ourselves in.
Workshop attendees will take home their own seeded mycelium network.
Image credit: Maggie Roberts, Becoming Octopus Meditation + John Wild, Interference Spores.
By Shira Wachsmann , John Wild, Maggie Roberts 0rphan Drift
Thursday 7 September 20236–8 pm
Cromwell Place
4 Cromwell Place London
SW7 2JE
United Kingdom
Not only neurons produce spikes in electricity. Many mycelia communicate environmental changes through their vast underground networks, using complex trains of electrical activity. This workshop will explore counter imaginaries of AI through practical experiments in growing mycelium, connecting to its neural-like spikes in electrical activity using cheap accessible equipment, considering how mushrooms could serve as tangible indicators of intensity of environmental changes and question evolutionary concepts central to the current discourse on Artificial Intelligence.
The workshop will be accompanied by a series of meditations on becoming Octopus by Maggie Roberts 0rphan Drift. Becoming Octopus aims to transport the meditator into the body, sensory attributes, and liquid environment of a Common Octopus. This involves prioritising the senses of touch and taste; processing reality with 8 arms and a central processing unit simultaneously; flowing the outside through the insides and camouflaging the body to become the ground using an array of colour effects and protean skin textures. The experience will combine meditation techniques, communications with an octopus and expanding human perception to engage with multidimensional beings – all in response to the current uncertainty and extended temporality we find ourselves in.
Workshop attendees will take home their own seeded mycelium network.
Image credit: Maggie Roberts, Becoming Octopus Meditation + John Wild, Interference Spores.