Mama & Baby Mushrooms

Speculative smart home lighting system inspired by bioluminescence and fungal mycelial networks

Collaborated with Jiashu Sun, Lucky Hyosun Kim, Stella Huynh
Video Prototype | Design Process Document

What will smart home technology look like if it is based on ecological systems rather than energy-intensive, surveilling smart home network? Based on the idea of solarpunk, we question if our homes can functioned more like living ecosystems, and if system connection design came from nature rather than a centralized control systems.

Design Concept

We want to reimagin a home lighting system that draws inspiration from bioluminescence (the ability to illuminate some organism have) and mycelial networks (fungal's webs that connect and communicate across with each other). The design came from nature rather than a centralized control systems.

Therefore, we designed a speculative system that uses a type of hypothetical color-changing bioluminescence mushroom to creating a lighting system. In the system, there will be a "mama mushroom" that controls how the network of "baby mushrooms" lit up, mimicking how real fungi communicate through mycelial connections.

This design challenges the typical smart home aesthetics of sleek minimalism, instead embracing organic forms, handcrafted materials, and the "semi-chaotic blend" characteristic of solarpunk futures, where advanced biotechnology coexists with earthy, living surroundings.

Implementation

A video prototype illustrated how the full speculative system would function in a home context. The mama mushroom will be the control placed in different rooms. It can control the path the baby mushrooms light up. The light trail will lead to different rooms, with the trail to each room having different colors (match with the mama mushroom's color), allowing user to navigate in the dark.

The mama mushroom's cap rotates to select which room's pathway should illuminate. The light trail of the baby mushrooms will light up when the user pads the mama mushroom, using a speculative fungi mycelial networks that can sense and respond to touch.

We built a working prototype to illustrate the physical and tactile interactions of the design.

This prototype have a rotation mechanisms to achieve the rotation of the mama mushroom's cap. We also used Arduino, touch sensors, and color-changing LEDs to create the interaction of padding mama mushroom and then the baby mushroom change color. For the mushrooms, we used worbla plastic (shaping with the help of clay molds) and other translucent materials to allow the light to shine through and create a bioluminescent aesthetic. We also decorated the mushroom with moss like decorations to create a more earthy feel.