Speculative Artificial Mycelium Network


🏆2024 AI x Art Hackathon 3rd Place


< Speculative Artificial Mycelium Network > illuminates the limitations of human perception through an AI artificial mycelium network, inspired by the complex connectivity and ecological characteristics of natural mycelium. This work explores the existence of non-human entities and interactions between humans, aiming to speculate on a world beyond the constraints of human cognition.

The project encompasses perspectives from speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, and actor-network theory.

Speculative realism challenges the anthropocentric notion of correlative reality and considers the reality of things independent of human perception. This philosophical foundation allows mycelium to be understood not merely as mushrooms—the fruiting bodies perceived by humans—but as independent entities with their own ontological status.

From an object-oriented ontological perspective, all objects possess independent and unique ontological status, engaging with others through limited interactions. This project treats both humans and mycelium as autonomous and equal objects, emphasizing that their interactions are not holistic but constrained. Rather than reducing the relationship between mycelium and humans to a simple subject-object or observer-observed structure, the project explores the potential for dynamic mutual influence.

These dynamic interactions between objects extend into the fluid networks described by actor-network theory. Humans, mycelium, and environmental factors all act as equivalent agents, interacting individually to form a network that serves as the foundation of reality itself.

Through the metaphor of artificial neural networks and mycelium, this project aspires to experiences that transcend the limitations of human cognition. The artificial mycelium network acts as a medium revealing a world structured by connections and interactions beyond the familiar, limited perception of mushrooms. It invites speculation on unseen layers of reality and the possibilities of speculative realism.

Thus, this project is an experimental endeavor at the intersection of contemporary philosophy and scientific modeling, exploring new possibilities. By dissolving the boundaries between human and non-human, nature and artificiality, this work encourages contemplation of relationships beyond the correlative world, proposing new perspectives on existence and perception.

< Speculative Artificial Mycelium Network > is a team (Jiwon Kim, Kirak Kim, Minseok Choi, Juseon Yeom) project. I participated from start to end, including proposing key ideas and visualizing ideas.




< Speculative Artificial Mycelium Network > - Coexistence within coexistence:
Human and non-human ways of living in an environment composed of nature and artificial structures


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