Week 3

Mycelium in Architecture

In week 3 of class we discussed mycelium and its formal and functional parallel with the human brain, and functions of fungi. Remember: humans share over half the DNA with fungi! Mycelium is the interweaved thread-like part of fungus that grows in a layer of soil beneath the plants and functions as nutrient transportation in the entire earth.

Mycelium: Neural Network

In week 3 of class, we discussed mycelium networks as well as the different properties that fungi have. The mycelium serves as a network where it communicates information with other living creatures and where fungi receives nutrients when need be. Mycelium is the first and foremost successful (biological) network, the formal structure that the hyphae makes is very similar to the neurological network of our brain and what the internet strives to be.

 

Week 03: Mycology

This week we learned about fungi and its various uses and properties. One of the interesting things that I learned was that fungi exists as a network of mycelium under the earth which distributes nutrients to plants. This network also has a conscience that lets it adapt to the situations around it. Like the neural pathways in our brains, the mycelium is able reroute nutrients if any pathway is ever blocked or cut off. I had never realized that fungi were so sophisticated and it seems like we could derive a lot of ideas from studying these networks.

MYCELIUM | Project Proposals about Fungi

This week in class, we focused on fungi and mycelium. The references/artworks we discussed included a TED talk about reconstructing the Western tradition of a funeral service. The artist, Jae Rhim Lee, proposed in her "Death Mushroom Suit" project proposal, to rethink about how we are impacting the environment when we are buried in the ground with toxins from embalming, or the toxins in our body that are released in the air after cremation. We correlate death with either disappearance or loss, but our bodies decay and become part of this Earth.

Week 3 Mycology

This week, we discussed mycelium networks and their role as a network in distributing nutrients among plants, as well as several projects that make use of this unique structure as a material.  Although we tend to conceptualize fungi as 'mushrooms', they are not plants (or animals).  An interesting fact this made me remember from like bio 1 or something  is that each individual fungal cell is encased in a wall of keratin and has a barrier between it and its neighbor cell that can be closed off in case the chain is broken - sort of like a giant basket&nbs

MYCOLOGY | Week 3

This week our class focused on mycelium and other fungi. We ate various species of mushrooms and looked at them under a microscope. A few students took several photos of microscopic fungi and we observed them as a class. I was fascinated by the mycelium network underground and how it has a consciousness. I learned that mycelium is much more important than I originally thought it was. It connects hundreds of living organisms with one another, allowing them to share the same life sources and supplies.

Week 3: Mycology and visiting the biomedical library

This week it was about fungi, a topic that was quite unfamiliar to me before this week. There are three types of fungi, mushrooms are probably the first to come to mind. Yeasts and mold are also fungi. Yeast is a unicellular fungus, including baker's yeast, as we learned last week in grain and the making of bread. Mold is another example of fungi, a multicellular that is often dark and fuzzy. Although it usually appears in old and decaying bread and fruit, mold is used to create cheese and also antibiotic penicillin. 

Mycelium, Our Brain, and the World Wide Web

It is fascinating that the mycelium serves as a network among all the plants (or perhaps even animals) forest-wide. Fungi remains a special kind of thing, if not mysterious, since it does not belong to plants nor animals. Its amazing growth speed can be compared favorably to bacteria -- immediately after a rain, the mushrooms spring out, seemingly out of no where. When I was young, I really liked to seek for the mushrooms after a rain. There is a unique scent, fresh and clean, in the forest after rain, and mushrooms had always been magical for me.

Week 3

The first thing that comes to mind is how UCLA is like a forest. All of the different departments and buildings are trees within this forest. Even though all of these departments act as separate entities, they are all united under one umbrella organization that unifies and gives them an overarching vision and goal. This analogy got me thinking about mycelium and the role it plays in the forest. It connects trees in a forest and gives them shared access to nutrients and resources required to thrive.

Ecosystem in a Tube!

   Life on earth strives everywhere, no matter how harsh the environment appears. From the waters thousands of meters below sea surface where sunlight never shines through, to hundreds of miles from the shore where rain seldom hits the ground, one can always find traces of life. All living organisms, along with the surrounding environment, constitute an ecosystem, and all the diverse ecosystems together forms the biosphere.

 

One with Nature

My three childhood homes presented me with very different perspectives of nature. I primarily grew up in a southern San Diego suburb where rivers of sidewalks perfectly divided plots of identically designed Spanish-style homes, each with a single oak tree surrounded by neatly cut grass in the front lawn. My parents encouraged my younger sister and I to play outside, and as long as we were in the backyard, shoes were optional. I enjoyed running through the dewy grass and gardening with my mom. These interactions with plant life, however, were always situated in a manmade setting.

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