John Wild: Rethinking AI though mycelium networks
Thursday 14 March 2024
Numerous mycelia communicate environmental changes through their extensive underground networks, employing intricate patterns of electrical activity. This workshop delved into alternative perspectives on AI through practical experiments involving mycelium cultivation. It utilised affordable, accessible equipment to link with mycelium’s neural-like spikes in electrical activity, contemplating how mushrooms could act as tangible indicators of the intensity of environmental changes. Additionally, it questioned central evolutionary concepts within the ongoing discourse on Artificial Intelligence.
Workshop participants will create their own seeded mycelium network while asking the questions;
- How does mycelium’s pluralistic symbiotic relationship with other species challenge the application of universal and binary logics in digital AI?
- Can we develop environmentally sustainable computing whose logic and flows of information work with and through living biological systems?
- Is it feasible to develop AI algorithms that facilitate symbiotic co-evolution with nature?
- Is a sustainable AI based on bio-computing viable?
- Could the subtle boundaries between artificial and natural worlds hold keys to inspire a revaluation of our entangled relationship with technology and the ecosystems we inhabit?
John Wild is a London-based artist who works across performance, sound, text, code, electronics and machine learning to research the futures imminent within digital technology.
John has presented his work at Transmediale (Berlin), iMAL (Brussels), Late at the Tate (Tate Britain), the Barbican (London), Catalyst Arts (Belfast), [SPACE] Art + Technology residency, Iklectik and the Royal College of Art.
John’s current research focuses on critical artificial intelligence narratives and the poetics of digital infrastructure.