Mycology

sound sculptures . . . 2022 . . . duration: 10 minutes

I read a fascinating book, Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (Random House, 2021) about the bizarre world of fungi. Mycelium is the root-like mass of a fungus branching out in soil, forming a colony too small to see or grown to span thousands of acres as in Armillaria. Lichens are complex fungal communities of different organisms, like the black rocky shoreline stripes of Hydropunctaria.

Mycelium

branching, thread-like hyphae

Branching is a recursive process, with a pitch splitting into two mirroring lines of pitches, then each of those lines mirror splitting again. By powers of 2, the branches eventually build a tone-mass of 8 lines then even massive 16-pitch sonorities.

Hydropunctaria maura

“water speckled midnight”

Pointillistic speckles are set in the dark tonal colors of a Viennese 12-tone pitch series, never random but kaleidoscopically sparkling in a restless texture of overlapping rhythms.