I'm interested at looking into the use of fungi and mushroom imagery throughout folklore and fairytales. I want to see if there's any room for crossover with the more scientific based research I've done. Mushrooms make a lot of appearances in fairytale imagery and historically they've had lots of different meanings and significance to different cultures, exploring these ideas could lend me some new inspirations for my own work. I think a good example of these potential for this crossover of science and folklore comes from Fairy Circles; the name given to a perfect circle of mushrooms that grows commonly in forests during the summertime. In British folklore these circles were the spots where fairies would dance after a rainstorm, and people were warned not to enter them as humans would fall into a hundred year sleep if they did. Scientifically speaking, we now know that these circles form due to the pattern of growth of the mycelium below the surface. The fairy circle ...
Rebecca East Process and Practice Evaluative Statement Throughout this project looking at the theme of ‘Poetic Science’ I wanted to explore the intricacies of mushrooms and mycelium, finding ways to illustrate the complex ecology of these species, while also looking into more fictional mediums like fantasy and fairytales, where fungi imagery is often used. In my initial research I started reading ‘Entangled Life’ by Merlin Sheldrake, which expanded my knowledge of not just how many species of fungi there are but also in how they shape the world around us in many different ways; this made me realise that I would need to narrow my focus away from fungi as a whole, as the topic is far too expansive to cover in a single project. I took inspiration from some places I visited on a trip to Berlin last year, where scientists and artists have looked at specific use cases for certain fungal species and decided that focusing on individual species and looking at them in more det...
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