ZOE is a temporary co-existence between reishi mushrooms (Ganoderma lucidum) and a custom-made robotic system. The artwork explores the possibilities of internal communication between a robotic system and fungi. Within this seeming paradox of nature and technology, an ecosystem emerges in which both affect and care for one another through sensing technologies. The project continues on to research the interaction and unknown communication within fungal mycelia networks.
ZOE uses sensors to collect data from both the environment and the mycelium of the reishi. This data mediates a form of internal communication between the mushrooms and the robotic system. The behavior of the reishi influences the robotic responses, while the robot, in turn, affects the shape of the light-sensitive fruiting bodies over time. This reciprocal influence becomes visible in the morphology of the mushrooms, sculpted through ongoing interaction.
Alongside real-time visualisations, the project also explores tactile engagement with data through the Mushroom Data Carpets, daily hand-tufted translations of fungal and environmental signals. These physicalisations of the data do not aim to explain the data, but to stay close to its ambiguity. Offering an alternative to conventional visualisation, they support a slower, more reflective mode of engagement and contribute to a growing interest in sensorial approaches to data in the arts and art-based research.
ZOE is the first step in an ongoing interdisciplinary research project called Mycobotics. The project investigates how fungi, robots, and humans can interact through parallel, asynchronous, and context-driven processes. Rather than relying on direct input–output feedback, it examines how autonomous agents influence one another indirectly through shared environmental conditions. It explores whether fungal mycelium, through its sensing properties and electrical activity, can function as an active component in real-time robotic systems. By developing sensor interfaces and adaptive robotic behaviours shaped by fungal signals, Mycobotics aims to establish experimental systems in which living organisms and machines operate as co-constitutive agents within responsive environments of sensing, adaptation, and interaction. We introduce the framework of parallel interaction, which shifts the focus from direct causality toward indirect influence through shared environmental conditions. This allows for an artistic practice where the outcome is not predefined, but continuously shaped by unfolding processes across biological, machinic, and human actors.
