WALKING WITH MUSHROOMS by Sarah Nicolls and Seb Bacon

This is an experimental art project, funded by the British Mycological Society's artistic programme to promote fungal science through art in all its forms.

Registered users will have an opportunity to generate a personalised, 10 minute soundscape about the hidden world of fungi, customised to where you live.

We hope our combination of creativity, environmental passion and interest in technology will make this a fun and interactive way to learn more about the mushrooms in your area.

Thank you for listening and please register by UK Fungus Day, 5th October, when you'll receive an email telling you how to generate and download your personalised 10 minute podcast, unique to your location.

The majority of common knowledge or interest in fungi is around the "charismatic" or edible fungi such as Amanita muscaria (the red and white spotty one) or Boletus edulis (porcini or ceps). However, there are fascinating stories to tell about the lesser-known groups such as rusts, lichens, and ascomycetes, and fungi that are more commonly found in urban or household settings such as Peziza species.

We've used Artificial Intelligence and music in a sound walk to teach you, the listener, about mushrooms in an interactively generating, data-driven and immersive artistic experience, personalized to your location and delivered via uniquely generated AI narration. We want to tell you stories, sharing facts about the most-reported fungi in each individual's area, including urban areas, blending these with more general stories about non-charismatic fungi.

We have generated the information both from our existing knowledge and the FRDBI (for location-specific information) and the soundtrack is inspired by a neighbour-sensing mathematical model of hyphal growth.

The music is created and performed by Sarah Nicolls on her unique in the world 'Inside-Out Piano', an extraordinary reshaped piano which enables Sarah to play the strings as well as the keys. This means other-worldly sounds are combined with piano melodies to create textures and colors to match the incredible world of fungi.

About the creators

Seb Bacon

Seb Bacon is a data engineer, digital artist, and fungus enthusiast. He leads the engineering team at the University of Oxford which generated some of the first global insights into Covid-19 at the start of the pandemic, using 58 million patient records. In his spare time, he generates data-driven insights for community projects. He is also a mushroom fanatic, frequently leading his children through thickets and up hillsides to spot mold, mushroom, fungus and fungi.

Sarah Nicolls

Sarah Nicolls is a world-leading concert pianist (called an "edgy Brit" by The Guardian) and runs an arts and ecology programme on her farm in Stroud. Sarah is supported by Innovate UK's Women in Innovation programme in her quest to develop a lightweight vertical grand piano which enables new sounds to be found. She has performed on five continents and has composed her own music since 2005.

Privacy Statement

We are collecting your email address specifically to ensure we can update you on UK Fungus Day on how to access your data.

We will delete all email addresses from our records within three months of UK Fungus Day.

We won't share your email address with anyone else.

We will only send you emails about accessing your personalised audio, or to give you technical support.