Earth Day app, Fungi, horseman and the bible apocalypse

I really appreciated the work of Finnish artists Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho that Group 1 had presented. The installation titled Lines is a visual representation of potential elevated sea levels should we continue down this trajectory. It manages to convey complex ideas in a simple, effective and beautiful way.

Currently, especially given the limitations of the digital platform, there is a heavy emphasis on data visualization that is dependent on graphs, or charts or maps. How do we spread awareness in a way that is alarming but not overwhelming?

Earth Day

The earth day 2020 app is attempting to accumulate information to facilitate machine training.

Fungi

Kaitlin’s lecture on fungi was an eye-opener for me. I will try to summarize the facts I learnt that perked my interest. Mycelium is a network-like body and the mushroom is the outer reproductive structure. The hyphae is able to learn information about “enemy” bodies and how to absorb nutrients and transmit this information to the rest of the network. One type of fungi is the Glomeromycota: mycorrhizal fungi (literal translation “fungi root”). The fungi form a mutually beneficial relationship with a plant by tapping into its root system since both share common goal of sharing nutrients. The fungi get carbon / sugar from plant roots, branches out and gets water, nitrogen, minerals, etc and delivers this to plant. Over 92% of earth’s plants have this relationship. It is mind boggling to think that there could be such magical vast networks / cellular intelligence just beneath our feet. And I loved that they referenced FernGully: The Last Rainforest in the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGyECGJqWDU), mirroring these fungi networks to the magical protective abilities of fairies. I also like the analogy of these interconnected patterned networks to neurological networks, communication systems; Internet networks, political systems, etc.

The potential uses for fungi are vast. Myco remediation: the use of fungi to consume and break down environment pollutants, in order to clean up a polluted site e.g. mine sludge, crude oil spill, etc. This is an idea I may revisit as I had referenced vertical walls of moss for air purification in my previous blog post. A primary Google search has shown architectural projects that combine these.

“Researchers have developed a “living concrete” that grows moss, lichens and fungi that could turn city buildings into giant air purifiers. Spanish researchers have developed a porous, acidic concrete that acts almost like soil for moss, lichen, fungi and other drought-tolerant vegetation.“

Mycelium is a sustainable alternative material to plastics, leather, cloth, wood and building materials.

A start-up is imagining how mushrooms may be turned into leather

In this DIY kit, you can hydrate prepackaged dehydrated “mushroom material” and let them grow into the form you want (in this case, you are able to make light shades)

DIY Kit Lets You Make Designs Out of Mushrooms | WIRED

One may also DIY from scratch as seen in these open source instructions:

https://www.core77.com/posts/55675/How-to-Grow-Objects-With-Mushroom-Mycelium https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uRifizJav72kHglFgek2zZZUOKyDP63I4idw2--VEdY/edit

I do wonder if this would be viable in Singapore’s hot and humid weather. Years back I bought a mushroom log from a local mushroom farm and it died within a short period of time.

Locust and the bible apocalypse

Lastly, in response to the locust swarms and the book of revelation, there were some images floating around the internet in Singapore recently.

White horse seen galloping across near-empty road in Bukit Timah ...

And no shortage of comments about how one of the horsemen had lost his white horse.

https://backyardbend.com/buildings-made-of-moss-growing-concrete-could-remove-more-co2-and-air-pollution-than-thousands-of-trees/

https://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/25/mushroom-materials-ecovative-modelling-kit-mycelium-designs-of-the-year-2015/

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmothership.sg%2F2020%2F04%2Fwhite-horse-bukit-timah%2F&psig=AOvVaw2Vi4Cla-AR_I_fg8VCl9tr&ust=1587551629456000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCMCw7Oqo-egCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAV

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