3rd Floor Art Forum

Zeke Smith

Mushrooms: good on pizza, sometimes psychedelic, and also the world’s oldest and most uncelebrated tool.

See how mushrooms push fungal forms: as bricks, as environmental cleaning tools, as vibrant dyes. Today, mushrooms have become a pioneering tool for designers,a  subject for artists, and important biotechnology for scientists. Explore how these fungal fieldworkers reimagine the relationships between human beings, technology and the greater living environment.

On display are examples of the many actual uses of mushrooms including fungus as a actual tool and some as future tool.  The mushrooms here are designed to be substitutes for bricks and lumber, function as environmental cleaning tool, serve to optimize human health, cover the body in warming cloth, source for a spectrum of vibrant dyes and as a catalyst for spiritualism as a psychotropic activator, spiritual talisman and totem.

Mushrooms are even being used as a source for alternative “green” building resources.  This is referred to as “self-actualized matter” by myco-matter pioneer Phil Ross.  This describes how matter can be directed to form objects such as blocks, bricks, lumber, and insulation. This patented process produces mushroom-based-tools that are organic and posses natural abilities/strengths such as being inherently fire retardant but that can simultaneously be cultivated to grow into a fully functional object such as a chair.  

Mushrooms know as polypores are made into a paperlike material that are fabricated into cloth and hats. This is a near-lost traditional Eastern European art now making a resurgence in mycological circles.

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