Bioacoustics as Forms of Resistance: Growing Mycelium Instruments and Mushroom Communication in a High-Tech City-State

Singapore-based experimental band The Observatory (天文台樂團) recently showcased their bio-sonification exhibition at Singapore Art Museum: REFUSE (14 January–17 April 2022). Set against imagery of manicured gardens in a celebration of organic growth and decomposition, REFUSE is a critical pun. First, REFUSE means to reject the current anthropocentric worldview in a time of ecological crises, and secondly it embraces inter-media arts that fuse recycled instruments with bio-sounds. Instruments were either the platform to grow mushrooms onto, or even themselves fully bio-fabricated by mushrooms – including a fully playable lap steel mycelium guitar that is simultaneously played by a mushroom. To amaze the audience further, these instruments were all wired to vibrate, their rhythms controlled by a growing mycelium whose organic growth is visually mapped and translated into signals that trigger the vibration. As the humidity and density of the mushroom jar changes, the sounds also vary, each sound unique even during the same day. As Obervatory band-member Yuen Chee Wai (袁志偉) told En-Chieh Chiao of our cover-image curating team when describing the mycelium's sounds, “They play like a decomposing composition.” The cover team chose this exhibition because it speaks to a research note and to an article in this issue that respectively address the issue of noise control and aging in Singapore. While the city–state endeavors to contain both noise and health in old age as parts of governance, here the artists renounce control over sound and let biological non-human actors set the course of subtle sensory experiences.