nanotopia

www.toscateran.com

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Mycelia from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

Mycelia live stream during the A MAZE. / Berlin Game Jam December 4th, 2021.

Mycelia Nanotopia’s Midnight Mushroom Music, in collaboration with the Metaverse Crew, presents Live Reactive Fungi Frequencies and Interpretative Dance Performances featuring R00T and Particle dancers from the MVC.

Connecting living mycelium* biodata into a VR experience, Nanotopia's bio-sonification modules translate micro fluctuations in conductivity into MIDI, enabling them to send fungi energy through their synthesizers, creating a multi-species musical entanglement.

The connected mycelium reacts sonically and visually within the audio-reactive world, to the virtual and physical human presence in a fungi-feedback loop.

Visitors into Mycelia are encouraged to explore, harvest Amanita, and go for a swim while listening to mushroom melodies and experiencing the dance.

Mycelia is a hyphal growth from the Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis project presented by Tosca Terán during the Goethe Institute's New Nature Climate Science Exchange 2020. Mycelia was created to perform and share during A MAZE. / Berlin July 2021, and premiered for as their opening night performance!

Original concept: Tosca Terán Sara Lisa Vogl

Mycelium bio-sonification & live music: Nanotopia ft. Ganoderma lucidum & Pleurotus ostreatus

Dance Performance: R00T, ICMIC, LEXNEVILLEZA, NON-FUNGI, TYSON_X

World building: The MVC's deac.online / Dale Deacon Phace / Jason Stapleton Tonetastic / Sean Davenport Tyson_X / Tyson Cross

Avatar creation: deac.online / Dale Deacon Nanotopia / Tosca Hidalgo y Terán Phace / Jason Stapleton R00T / Sara Lisa Vogl Tyson_X

Atmospheric audio & performance audio set-up: Tonetastic James King

Acknowledgements: Thorsten S. Wiedemann & A MAZE. / Berlin Liz Rosenthal + La Biennale di Venizia Wondering Chew Manglebird MetaRick Maud Clavier VRChat Prefabs Ilealloo Poiyomi RED_SIM Hirabiki

Links: mycelia.live nanotopia.net

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Sym-Dys-micro from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

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Chaos_consortia from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

Created for In Space Grey  Knot gallery Ottawa, Canada

Considering fluctuating assemblages, lands, populations and transactions. I’m drawn to Symbiogenesis. Symbiogenesis, literally ‘becoming by living together,’ refers to the crucial role of symbiosis in major evolutionary innovations.

On a microscopic level, borders and boundaries collapse, our shared environment becomes more apparent. Carl Sagan told us, "Humans are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." Perhaps the {human}Holobiont is a way for the Earth to explore itself as a thinking, learning, self-assembling mass of microbes, bacteria and fungi. A Chaos Consortia.

Extinction/Evolution Capitalism/Communism Anthropocene/Chthulucene

The visual representation of the grey space in this work is a collision and interaction between different information streams to visually represent an analog to the intersecting extremes of the black and white polarity of beliefs, facts and concepts. However, the grey space is not a fixed point between polar opposites; therefore, the composite image produced by the interaction of point cloud data from Canadian Boreal forest regions with bio-data gleaned from living mycelium is in a constant state of change. At first, the flux of seemingly unrelated data streams creates a kind of noise that, when viewed over time, betray a sense of pattern evoking the building blocks of life itself on a nanoscale. There is no permanence or exact repetition to the visualization. Still, a powerful suggestion of the transience of all living things is conveyed through a virtual cycle of life and death, creation and decay.

Photogrammetry scans output as point clouds which have been fed into a code driven generative feedback loop. The Point cloud scans are being triggered from biodata that was translated in real-time from living fungi, which also create the soundscape.

Touchdesigner feedback loop inspired by an elekktronaut tutorial ����

[nanotopian]

Symbiogenesis.mp4 from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

Considering fluctuating assemblages, lands, populations and transactions. I’m drawn to Symbiogenesis. Symbiogenesis, literally ‘becoming by living together,’ refers to the crucial role of symbiosis in major evolutionary innovations.

On a microscopic level, borders and boundaries collapse, our shared environment becomes more apparent. Carl Sagan told us, "Humans are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." Perhaps the {human}Holobiont is a way for the Earth to explore itself as a thinking, learning, self-assembling mass of microbes, bacteria and fungi. A Chaos Consortia.

Extinction/Evolution Capitalism/Communism Anthropocene/Chthulucene

The visual representation of the grey space in this work is a collision and interaction between different information streams to visually represent an analog to the intersecting extremes of the black and white polarity of beliefs, facts and concepts. However, the grey space is not a fixed point between polar opposites; therefore, the composite image produced by the interaction of point cloud data from Canadian Boreal forest regions with bio-data gleaned from living mycelium is in a constant state of change. At first, the flux of seemingly unrelated data streams creates a kind of noise that, when viewed over time, betray a sense of pattern evoking the building blocks of life itself on a nanoscale. There is no permanence or exact repetition to the visualization. Still, a powerful suggestion of the transience of all living things is conveyed through a virtual cycle of life and death, creation and decay.

Photogrammetry scans output as point clouds which have been fed into a code driven generative feedback loop. The Point cloud scans are being triggered from biodata that was translated in real-time from living fungi, which also create the soundscape.

[nanotopian]

Symbiosis_Dysbiosis cloud files from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

Point cloud file composition experiments, Fungi biodata soundscape. symbiosis-dysbiosis.com

Project funded by the Goethe-Institut Montreal, Canada Arts Council, The Toronto Arts Council. In kind support from Dames Making Games, Trinity Square Video, InterAccess. Sponsored by bHaptics

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Forest-UnderSound-KinectMycelium from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

Living mycelium biodata disrupting point cloud scans of bracket mushrooms as time/water rings. Soundscape was being created in real-time, visitors movements are tracked through the water-like rings via Kinect depth mapping.

[nanotopian]

Happy Spring 2021!

Hello there! Its been awhile… I miss holding workshops at the studio, meeting new people. But these times while intense and difficult for myself, my partner and many many people that are experiencing various hardships- self-isolation has held some surprising positives. For myself and some friends/colleagues we’ve been extremely fortunate in receiving support from arts councils, and the…

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Web-Sym from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

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MASSIVE

https://massivesci.com/articles/symbiosis-dysbiosis-art-biology-fungi-plants-vr-ecology-environment/

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Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

A mixed reality immersive experience. Funding through an R&D grant from the Goethe-Institut Montreal and the Toronto Arts Council project grant

[nanotopian]

New Nature VR +Art

New Nature VR +Art

The Goethe-Institut Montreal & WiiT present Friday, November 20, 2020 from 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM (EST): New Nature | Art+VR Connection via VR-Headset, Windows PC and Zoom live stream.  Register in AltSpaceVR https://account.altvr.com/events/1594283278402060813 or via Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_biD5IF4uQ4GFjdFmj45ewg The focus for this event will be on topics related to the…

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Mycelial Networks between Reality

Mycelial Networks between Reality

Meetup #3 – New Nature | Art+VR Meetup for Womxn on the social VR platform AltspaceVR on November 20, 2020 at 12:30 EDT // 18:30 CET. Connection via VR-Headset, Windows PC and Zoom live stream. Further information about participation will follow. The focus for this event will be on topics related to Goethe-Institut Montreal’s ongoing project New Nature, between contemporary artists, filmmakers,…

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Remote Realities Residency

Symbiosis//Dysbiosis  conceptual verification with test subject feedback Tosca Hidalgo y Terán, Sara Lisa Vogl

Boreal forests, or taiga, represent the largest terrestrial biome. Forests occupy approximately one-third of Earth’s land area, account for over two-thirds of the leaf area of land plants and contain about 70% of carbon present in living things yet despite this significance, humankind…

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Midnight Mushroom Music: Live Streams 2020

Midnight Mushroom Music: Live Streams 2020

During self-isolation towards flattening the curve, on a positive side, Nanotopia found themselves able to focus more time on their music/sound collaboration, as well as diving into TouchDesigner to create generative visuals that would react/respond to the audio and/or mycelium.

Generally scheduled to take place once a month, on a Saturday night. Here is a list of the streams that have taken…

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Bio-Sonification/Bio-Material Interview

Podcast, live & paper interviews (click on images)

      Sept 7, 2020 Interview with Dr Yewande Pearse of Dublab’s Sound Science 

      September 10th, 2019 Live interview on  Statewide Drive with Fiona Wyllie

    April 14, 2019 Interview with Jen Parrilli of FungiTown

MUSIC WORKS #135 MYCELIUM MUSIC

Winter 2020 interview with Greg Smith for Music Works magazine +…

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Bandcamp uploads

2 Mothers- From July 18 2020 and more summer explorations available on the Nanotopia bandcamp Some will hit Spotify soonish. Thanks for listening!

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Moon in Cancer from Nanotopia on Vimeo.

Audio/Visual from Nanotopia's Midnight Mushroom Music live stream August 15th, 2020.

Concerning the Moon in Cancer live stream: to answer the question regarding samples and loops= nothing in our live performances is pre-recorded*. We are performing live in realtime. We often work with sequencers and build upon or subtract from them.

For Moon in Cancer we were performing with the following: Studio Electronics BoomStar 4075 Pittsburgh Synthesizer Block Erica Synths, Black Wave Table Doepfer A-111-5 Mini Synth Voice Make Noise René, Tempi, Pressure Points, Morphagene Qu-bit Bloom fractal sequencer Korg SQ1 Moog Mother32, Mini Moog Voyager, Grandmother Mutable Instruments, Plaits, Branches Momo Modular, Atom (Mutable Inst clone of Elements) Mel9 pedal iPad text to speech

When collaborating with mycelium we might use a combination of electrodes recording biodata** and translating this to MIDI (in realtime) which is brought into synth(s), from there we might add reverb, delay, etc. this depends on the mycelium's activity at the time. and/OR we bring MIDI to Yarns and Bastl where we branch out with CV and Gate into various instruments. Then you might say the Mycelium is a semi-random voltage source. * Pre-recorded samples, some of our past live streams have incorporated sound bites from a Music Thing Modular- Radio Music- such as Carl Sagan, Moon Landing, Voyager missions, birds, etc.

**Bio-Sonification Modules: We build our own modules, we also offer kits and pre-built modules for sale- meaning we have many bio-sonification modules for our own sound explorations :) THE most 'melodic' if you will, mycelium we've experienced to date is Ganoderma lucidum. Which (for reasons still tbd) reacts and responds to people in a space, and definitely responds to being touched. Follow Nanotopia on Spotify, @nanotopia_net on Instagram, nanotopia.net