A collaboration between Kaitlin Bryson and Matea Friend with sound by Ian Nelson

18’ x 5’ x 13’ site-specific installation and weaving made out of organic cotton rope, video installation projection mapped onto woven sculpture @ UCLA Botanical Garden.

Mycorrhizal networks are expansive fungal systems that interconnected multiple species of plants together via plant root systems in the soil. These organisms tap into the plant’s root and work symbiotically with their hosts immobilizing minerals and nutrients that are otherwise unavailable, in exchange for excess carbon that the plant has derived through photosynthesis. Over 95% of the Earth’s plants rely on these collaborations.

This symbiosis is also a form of interspecies communication. The plants and fungi are electrochemically communicating through the medium of the mycorrhizal network. The complex woven network behaves like a neural network, transmitting signals through electrical pulses as well as translating vital information throughout the ecosystem.

Trans(re)lations is an artwork that makes the invisible visible, by scaling up and illuminating these unseen forces and communicative potentials. We know so little of the world below our feet. By creating an above-ground mycorrhizal network, layered with projected imagery and electrical signals, this work begins to break down the communication barrier between humans and the more-than-human world. Nestled in the urban sprawl of Los Angeles, The UCLA Botanical Garden was home to this site-specific installation to imagine and excite the abounding electro-chemical communications that are happening all around us.