FungiSync

Thematic Statement

Recent years, cascade of global disruptions - the U.S.-China trade war, COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and climate change pressures - has accelerated deglobalization. These crises exposed critical vulnerabilities in centralized institutions, compelling governments and corporations to reevaluate their external dependencies amid deepening ideological divides. As nations prioritized domestic resilience over global efficiency, the result was fractured supply chains, hardened borders, and heightened geopolitical tensions.

Yet this fragmentation catalyzed the emergence of alternative systems. Decentralized networks gained momentum, offering novel approaches to human organization. Nature provides an illuminating model through the Wood Wide Web - the vast mycorrhizal fungal network that underlies forest ecosystems.

While trees dominate the visible forest landscape, it's the unseen fungal networks beneath that truly bind the ecosystem together. These underground connections facilitate resource sharing and communication, creating resilient communities through distributed cooperation. This natural architecture parallels emerging decentralized technologies, which aim to build digital ecosystems based on peer-to-peer networks rather than centralized control.

The relationship between visible trees and unseen fungal networks offers a powerful metaphor for the complementary role of decentralized systems alongside traditional institutions. Just as forests thrive through the interplay of visible and hidden networks, human society might achieve greater resilience through a hybrid approach - maintaining essential centralized structures while nurturing decentralized alternatives that enhance adaptability and cooperation.

This natural model demonstrates how complex systems can self-organize and sustain themselves through distributed relationships, suggesting a path toward more resilient social and technological architectures.

Artwork

FungiSync is a mixed reality participatory ritual performance inspired by the mycorrhizal network "Wood Wide Web" to foster human plurality and collective wisdom. Participants wear masquerade-style mushroom-decorated mixed reality masks—metaphors for technology-mediated pluriversal worldviews—becoming living nodes in a dynamically evolving mycorrhizal network of shared consciousness. Through various ritualized secret handshakes, the most ancient protocols, they exchange and blend distinct worldviews, mirroring how fungi orchestrate resource sharing and signal exchange in the "Wood Wide Web." This embodied network performance manifests actor-network theory through interspecies dialogue, celebrating the entanglement of multiple worlds in a decentralized web of infinite collaboration, enhancing mycological awareness of decentralized technology's role in today's deglobalizing world. Let’s Celebrating Mycopunk!

One Liner

FungiSync is a mixed reality performance where participants wear mushroom-themed MR masks, each embodying a unique worldview. Through ritualized handshakes, they exchange perspectives, mirroring the resource-sharing of mycorrhizal networks' "Wood Wide Web," reflecting how decentralized technology can interweave our increasingly fragmented world.