SPORE PRINT FILM SERIES
Ongoing Series, 2010 – Present
16mm film, miscellaneous mushroom spores
Edible mushrooms are foraged, grown and harvested to create 16mm sound films and derivative materials – collectively known as the Spore Print Film Series.
This series is a study of organic, modern and contemporary technologies that explore cycles of creation, destruction and archival permanence.
Mushroom spores (their reproductive unit) are placed on film (a reproductive unit) to produce an audiovisual loop. As the projector loops the film, playing its deteriorating images and sounds, the film is digitally recorded and then archived.
Like fingerprints, no two spore prints are exactly alike. Along with color, smell and other physical markers, they are used as a testing mechanism for field identification. Hundreds of individual mushroom spore prints make up each film (and billions of spores comprise each print) – each with their own unique shape and coloring.
During projection kinetic forces disperse the spores – accentuating and de-saturating the films’ colors and sounds. These colors, shapes and sounds are only palpable, like the spores themselves, when experienced en masse.
Each of the films in the series features different audiovisual movements provided by different mushroom species, including: bellas, shaggy manes, lion’s manes, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, and more – producing prints ranging from intense Rorschachs made of melted black ink, to delicate white, brown, blue, grey, pink and yellow arrangements that shadow the shapes of the gills that they rain down from.
As they are played, a maelstrom of slowly-shifting-shapes is produced where form is in constant flux.
These films present media and matter as vibrant and spontaneous. They are not only meant to be seen and heard, but inhaled as well.
The films are looped until they are nearly erased.
Spore Print Films have been exhibited at The Agway (Buffalo), Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo), Center for the Arts (Buffalo), Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center (New York City), Feverish World Symposium (Fall 2018-2068, Burlington), FLORA ars+natura (Bogotá), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo), Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (Kuala Lumpur), Mono No Aware VIII (Brooklyn), Silent Barn | Title Point (Brooklyn), UNIFOR – Fundação Edson Queiroz Universidade de Fortaleza (Fortaleza) and more.
The project is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts and the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes Electronic Media and Film Finishing Funds.