Midnight Mushroom Music

Forest UnderSound is an invitation to consider the sentience of fungi. Sentience is the ability to perceive one’s environment, and experience sensations such as pain and suffering, or pleasure and comfort. Many countries acknowledge animal sentience, and animal’s ability to experience pain, fear, distress, hunger, and thirst, in their laws, which are designed to protect animals from such suffering. In 1997, the European Union agreed to recognize animals as sentient beings under European law. Animals and fungi share a common ancestor and branched away from plants at some point aproximately 1.1 billion years ago. It was only later that animals and fungi separated on the genealogical tree of life, making fungi more closely related to humans than plants. For Forest UnderSound, mycelium from Ganoderma lucidum (Reishi/Lingzhi) and Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushrooms), along with mycorrhizal fungi growing and connecting within the roots of various plants has been cultivated. Both the plant roots and mycelium ha