Bionic Arms Enable Mushrooms To Create Music Using Their Own Energy (Listen)

Bionic Arms Enable Mushrooms To Create Music Using Their Own Energy (Listen)

An English musical project helps plants and fungi branch out from their quiet natures and express their creativity thanks to a set of bionic arms.

Translating their bioelectrical signals into movements of the arms, the mushrooms begin to jam out on keyboards and drum machines, allowing the listener to see and hear them in a different light—a neon light.

Bionic and the Wires have been up to this for sometime, showing how the electrical signals coursing through the flesh of plants and fungi carry enough data and diversity to translate into multiple different expressions.

According to their website, the band is made up of Andy Kidd “on synth” and John Ross “on plants.”

Ross is the visionary force behind Bionic and the Wires. A multi-disciplinary artist, technologist, and environmental thinker, Jon’s work challenges human-centric views of creativity by granting non-human lifeforms additional and useful tools to express themselves in a different way.

His practice spans sculpture, performance, and electronics—always driven by a desire to reveal the hidden intelligence of nature.

Kidd also translates the bioelectrical output of the non-human bandmates into synth sounds, creating a soundscape of electronica music unimagined by the human mind.

LETTING MUSHROOMS STRETCH OUT:

• Research Suggests Mushrooms Talk to Each Other With a Vocabulary of 50 ‘Words’
• Watch This Mushroom Propel a Robot Across the Ground—We’re Not Joking

While the group was first focused mainly on music, their experiments have expanded to include mushrooms giving spoken word performances by coding each individual electrical signal into a different word spoken through a speech app, and mushrooms substituting the drum sticks in the bionic arms for paintbrushes, which they then use to create paintings.

The mushroom below is of the Leccinum genus, and it’s immediately clear its taste in music is better than its… well, taste.

WATCH some performances below…