Author: Marina Oprea
Scientific collaborator: dr. Bogdana Mitu -National Institute for Laser, Plasma & Radiation Physics (INFLPR)
Technical description: Epoxy resin, steel frame, LED lights, motion detector
Part of the resin components were taken to the lab and subjected to various processes of plasma deposition.

Concept: Intracluster Sprouts, the proposal for Fusion AIR proposal and collaboration with INFLPR, is an interactive artwork inspired by mycelium, the branching system that makes up the vegetative apparatus of fungi, containing spores that seek to feed on everything around them, in a permanent expansion, a system capable of interpreting and communicating with the environment, changing its properties. Moreover, the mycelium constitutes a network of inter-connectivity between plants, a co-hybrid existence with all surrounding systems, be they natural, artificial or virtual, proposing a mutant, rhizomatic but healthier model of coexistence and communication.

Mycelium is already found everywhere on earth, at a macro and micro level, outside the human body but also inside it, a catalyst for the many mycotic processes without which life or death (putrefaction) would not be possible.

Thus, drawing an analogy between plasma, the fourth and most common form of matter in the universe, and mycelium, Intracluster Sprouts imagines the existence of mycelium outside the terrestrial context. Like mycelium, plasma can alter the properties of the bodies it comes into contact with, giving them new, almost alien characteristics. Just as the mycelium within the earth forms the network through which plants communicate, the wood wide web, so does plasma binds together the stars within the cosmos, including our own sun.

The spores before you, however, do not need the sun’s energy. Fungi have been shown to be more closely related to humans than to plants. Their inner light is generated by the very presence of human bodies.