“…when they excavate the modern day
they’ll find us: The Brand New Ancients.
See — all that we have here is all that we’ve always had.”

-Kate Tempest,The Brand New Ancients

NEW ANCIENT is a sculptural installation grown and assembled out of fungus mycelium. Hidden below the ground, the mycelium has remained, since prehistoric times, as the very key life force of the terrestrial ecology, a weaver of a matrix of interconnected aware earth, a literal living network. This sculpture is made of mycelia that have been primed and grown to envelope around electronic elements, utilizing a cutting edge biotechnological material, mycelium composite, a new kind of ecological plastic. This composite is made from recycled debris held together by the mycelium. I grew this fungal material into the form of several skulls. By networking the mycelium around electrical wiring, I was able to produce a bio-techno hybrid. Circuitry pop out of the eye sockets of the skulls. The static skulls of fungal material spark to life! Each positioned side by side, diode eyes lights up, one by one, in a unifying sweep. These skulls are in communion, as if watching an LCD monitor in front of them. On the screen there is a visual algorithm running, a representation of a mycelium network in pixel form, growing in real time. The display is porting from a large block of mycelium composite that serves as the console. This ‘myco-module’ has attached microprocessor units. One is like the brain behind the digital hyphae while the other is like the brains within the skulls. The skulls are literally wired into the main module in a fiberoptic mess. Collectively, the device feels as if it’s on this endless journey of trying to understand what it itself is —what mycelium is. And the whole thing reeks of fungus.

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