The first version of this installation was presented as part of the Moving Image Makers Collective's 'Conversations with a Forest' project in autumn 2021.
The key component of this installation is an apparatus designed to give the participants a direct line into the heart of the forest. Participants are invited to follow a set of simple instructions:
1. Lift Telephone Handset
2. Push and hold button
3. Speak
4. Release button
5. Replace telephone handset
Participants are advised that as human operators, by following the set instructions, they would be connected to the mycorrhizal network. Through the handset and connection, they are invited to share their fears with the forest. Those fears would then be captured by the forest, acknowledged, and released to circulate and dissolve among the ferns, mosses and lichen.
In reviewing the first version of this piece the writer Marcus Jack noted:
"Jason Moyes’ mycorrhizal connection network (2021) promised to deliver the human operator’s message to its titular structure, an augmentation of the mycelial network by trees to form an inter-plant grid where nutrients and signals can be exchanged. Through simple instructions Moyes invites users to share their fears via a landline handset in the woods, stark and analogue in feel, for transmission across organisms. By what means remains decidedly unclear, however, instead this posthuman prop works to catalyse thinking, asking not how but what exactly is it that we want to say?"
In the next version, my desire is to focus more on the moving image, projecting from the apparatus to the ceiling of the space. I hope to experiment with translucent materials to give texture and body to the projected images.
In addition to the film projected by the apparatus, additional complementary images will fill the space in such a way as to give the viewer the experience of being in the forest in the dark.
This brief but intimate feeling of standing quietly in a forest, albeit artificial, will facilitate a deeper level or contemplation on the questions "what exactly is it that you want to say."
Inspired by the instruction cards made by the Fluxus artist George Brecht, a simple guide on how to repeat the process of connecting to the mycorrhizal network without an apparatus will be issued to visitors.
The key component of this installation is an apparatus designed to give the participants a direct line into the heart of the forest. Participants are invited to follow a set of simple instructions:
1. Lift Telephone Handset
2. Push and hold button
3. Speak
4. Release button
5. Replace telephone handset
Participants are advised that as human operators, by following the set instructions, they would be connected to the mycorrhizal network. Through the handset and connection, they are invited to share their fears with the forest. Those fears would then be captured by the forest, acknowledged, and released to circulate and dissolve among the ferns, mosses and lichen.
In reviewing the first version of this piece the writer Marcus Jack noted:
"Jason Moyes’ mycorrhizal connection network (2021) promised to deliver the human operator’s message to its titular structure, an augmentation of the mycelial network by trees to form an inter-plant grid where nutrients and signals can be exchanged. Through simple instructions Moyes invites users to share their fears via a landline handset in the woods, stark and analogue in feel, for transmission across organisms. By what means remains decidedly unclear, however, instead this posthuman prop works to catalyse thinking, asking not how but what exactly is it that we want to say?"
In the next version, my desire is to focus more on the moving image, projecting from the apparatus to the ceiling of the space. I hope to experiment with translucent materials to give texture and body to the projected images.
In addition to the film projected by the apparatus, additional complementary images will fill the space in such a way as to give the viewer the experience of being in the forest in the dark.
This brief but intimate feeling of standing quietly in a forest, albeit artificial, will facilitate a deeper level or contemplation on the questions "what exactly is it that you want to say."
Inspired by the instruction cards made by the Fluxus artist George Brecht, a simple guide on how to repeat the process of connecting to the mycorrhizal network without an apparatus will be issued to visitors.