And then this creates these artifacts in the actual body of the file. It’s like corrupting the data so that you’re not able to fall entirely into the the image, because something about the body of the file has been sort of altered or distorted in some way that brings you back into touch with the fact that you’re looking at this MP4, or this JPEG, and it sort of breaks the spell.
You use a lot of cool words to describe the show. I’d like to hear your definition of a few of them, starting with “futurology.”
When I think about futurology, I’m thinking about, again, this idea of the cyborg, but in terms of the cybernetic organism, which is conceivably us now, even when we use contact lenses, or pacemakers, or our phones. And I think it’s this idea that the machines that we engage with in our lives, those things shape how we’re able to move through the world. And I’m really suspending the idea that there’s a bad sort of thing coming for us with technology — I don’t entirely disagree with that premise, but for this work I’m just choosing to view it more in terms of how it could help us to reimagine ourselves.
So with all this futuristic-cyborg-techie stuff, how do you get to this other cool term, mycology, which if I’m not mistaken is the very natural study of fungi?
So mushrooms are another one of my little loves, and I think mycelium is so beautiful and interesting — the mushrooms are the fruiting body of the mycelium, and the mycelium is the thing that’s really alive, that grows under the earth and facilitates a lot of communication between plants and trees and the exchange of nutrients.
So it’s a really cool thing. And I think what was so compelling to me about fungi and mycelium is I read this book that called fungi “an organism of an indeterminate form.” So it’s an organism can take any shape, any size, and it’s effectively immortal unless it’s killed by environmental toxins or drought or things like that. And it’s ubiquitous on the planet. It’s everywhere. It’s inside of us, it’s in the soil, it’s in our houses, it’s in the air. And I think my first sort of link with fungi and mycology is to use this idea of like, well, what if I thought of my body less in terms of the boundaries of my body, and more in terms of the mycelium inside me or the bacteria and all of the other things that are making quite a large percentage of my body? Just use it as like a metaphor to think about my body as something that could be sort of transforming, and to not be limited to the shape of a person. I think everyone would probably agree that actually the experience of being a human being is very messy, it can be very chaotic, like it doesn’t feel like the shape of a form, it feels like a whole world. And I think in this way, like mycelium, and the idea of an indeterminate form, I’m getting closer to that experience.