LCD Weekly Issue - 033 - Two sides
⛰️ Words from the mountains
Autumn is my favorite season, and it's the perfect time to visit the forest! I love how mushrooms of all sizes, colors, and shapes emerge from the soil. It feels as if the world beneath is waking up and reaching out—a very Halloween-like sentiment.
I remember reading about how trees and mycelium are interconnected. Signals start sparking beneath your feet as soon as you enter a forest. For this week's topic, I researched this further and came across terms like "Wood Wide Web" and "mycorrhizal networks."
I found this lovely article that explains both of these terms deeply: "Underground Networking: The Amazing Connections Beneath Your Feet"
"When most of us think of fungus, we imagine mushrooms sprouting out of the ground. Those mushrooms are in fact the "fruit" of the fungus, while the majority of the fungal organism lives in the soil interwoven with tree roots as a vast network of mycelium. Mycelium are incredibly tiny "threads" of the greater fungal organism that wrap around or bore into tree roots. Taken together, myecelium composes what's called a "mycorrhizal network," which connects individual plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals. German forester Peter Wohlleben dubbed this network the "woodwide web," as it is through the mycelium that trees "communicate."
Then, I came across another article stating that there needs to be more data to confirm whether this network of mycelium works or if the wood-wide web is even real! What 🙁! Read here: "Do Trees Really Support Each Other through a Network of Fungi?"
"Mycorrhizal networks are delicate: dig up a root, and you've destroyed the very web of fungi and wood you wanted to study. To begin to figure out if a particular fungus really connects any two forest trees, scientists can sequence the fungus's genes and construct a map of where genetically identical fungi are growing. This is a tremendous amount of work, Karst says, and she and her co-authors could find only five such studies across two forest types, comprising only two tree species and three fungi varieties."
For me, this phrase was the one that struck me the most. While talking about tree communication and cooperative forests:
"I find this whole controversy really interesting because it's an example of people wanting to project their own values onto nature and of them wanting to see in nature a model for human behavior," Flinn says."
What do you think about this? Part of me wants to believe every word of the first article, but as the second article states, it is important to see other perspectives and understand the magnitude of research that it takes to understand the forest-mycelicum connections.
Or we should let nature be, thrive undisturbed, and worry more about topics we can fix.
🐅 LCD in the Wild - Fungi Foundation
Keeping the fungi theme alive, today we showcase The Fungi Foundation:
"The Fungi Foundation works for the Fungi, their habitats and the people who depend on them.
"The FF is a global organization that explores Fungi to increase knowledge of their diversity, promote innovative solutions to contingent problems, educate about their existence and applications, as well as recommending public policy for their conservation."
🪄 Inspiration- Alexey Seliverstov
LA-based experimental composer Alexey Seliverstov combines field recordings, reel-to-reel tape recorders, and vintage and modular synthesisers in his work.
Listen to his creations with headphones and enjoy nature sounds coming to you in unexpected forms.
Soundscape - Rainy Countryside, Windy Day (Tropical Rainforest)
🔥 Hot in the School - NHP Workshop - Recap
Next week, we will recap the amazing Non-Human Persona event we hosted in London with Design for Good.
As always, we have exciting projects in the works at the school, but we can't share them just yet! Stay tuned for new adventures!
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That is all for this week!
Marce
