Fungiversum (Sieniversumi in Finnish) is a little machine made for Art & Craft School Robotti. Robotti is a Finnish non-profit association that provides activities for children which encourage creative exploration of technology through art. I’ve collaborated earlier with Robotti and made the Call the Forest installation for a children’s touring exhibition. Fungiversum was made as a part of Robotti’s project called Elektronisen rakentamisen oppimisen polku and it was funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education. The project focused on creating inspirational materials for art teachers through collaboration with artists working in the field of electronic art.

When I was asked to create a small electronic art project in the DIY spirit, I thought it would be great to include some open archival materials in the work. There are lots of wonderful archival materials available online, which are in the public domain or otherwise available for reuse. I’ve worked previously with such materials to make electromechanical pieces like the Forbidden Fruit Machine and As Light Goes By, both of which were inspired by paintings. For Fungiversum, the staring point were images of fungi, as I really enjoy walking in forests and learning about mushrooms. The fungal illustrations that I used are from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The great diversity and peculiar forms of mushrooms inspired me to create a fungi universe, combining the illustrations with the spectacular astronomical images from NASA. Please see this document for detailed info regarding the sources.

To animate the fungi, I used two DC motors with gear boxes from Robotti’s DIY material collection. The motors were combined with simple mechanical parts in order to create different kinds of movements. LEDs and switches made of aluminium foil and nuts were also used to create interruptions in the movement and light. For the structural and mechanical parts I chose materials, which are relatively easy to obtain and work with. Also, the internet holds loads of DIY tutorials related to simple automatons and moving machines. I tried to include similar materials, so that variations  of the mechanisms – with or without electronics – could be made based on these resources.

During the project Roi and Iiro from Robotti made studio visits and interviews with all the artist that participated in the project. You can find these videos on Robotti’s website (in Finnish).

I thank Roi Ruuskanen and Iiro Tujula from Art & Craft School Robotti for the nice collaboration and the opportunity to take part in the project.