Music for Mycelium is an electronic piece of music inspired by mycorrhizal fungi—structures that mycologist Paul Stamets has called “Earth’s natural internet” for their ability to form vast networks that enable trees and other plants to exchange information, including warnings and nutrients.

Because this natural network is almost entirely underground, scientific inquiry has been limited. The mushrooms we see on the surface are merely the fruiting bodies, like the tip of a massive iceberg. For this reason, we use music with the hope of creating a form of interspecies communication with these fungal networks, so vast that they dwarf anything in the human world in both density and complexity. If the planet is alive, as we believe, why not try to speak with it?

Originally conceived in February 2021, Music for Mycelium was first played live for the plant, animal, and fungal communities in a pine forest in Sumava. As part of Links. Contact in the mushroom network, an online event produced by Stiftung Kunst and Natur, the performance aired in early March, accompanied by visuals of the forest captured in laser scans by Marcel Karnapke.