Reticula Hibrida, detail, top view, Interactive Installation, custom-made incubators, custom-made copper plate, sound, intaglio print, laser cut paper, inoculated Petri dishes, ‘Trichoderma harzianum’, ‘Pleurotus ostreatus’, 2019

Richard Bright: Can we begin by you saying something about your background?

Darya Warner: I was born in Ukraine and moved a lot during my childhood since my father was in the military. We ended up settling in Belarus after the collapse of the Soviet Union. My fascination with nature comes from my early childhood memories. My mom will tell me stories about finding me staring at the tree branch, stone, flower, and bark – with deep concentration mixed with sparks of surprise. Before I learned how to read, I wanted to be outside, and later it was a hard choice between books and the outdoors, but I would combine both. I have been feeling a profound connection with a living matter daily. I want to be consumed by the trees, the birds, the soil, the air – an overwhelming desire to be dissolved into the elements, the building blocks, the “actants “^[1], and be reassembled again. Although it is impossible in the physical form we know, I have experienced these senses through my emotional state since I was a kid. They only grew stronger but are now tainted with sadness and grief.

Darya, circa 1984-1985 – personal archive.

When I moved to the United States, I dropped my unfinished law degree and embarked on the search that would fuse my artistic mind with my passion for science and exploration. After several years and jumps from school to school, I settled on the School of Visual Arts in NYC, and two years into my undergrad,  Suzanne Anker, the Chair of the Fine Arts department and bioart pioneer, launched the BioLab. I remember hearing a click in my head, an overwhelming joy that I had stumbled upon the most precious treasure ever. The opportunities and possibilities unraveling in front of me were beyond my imagination. The Bioart class taught by Suzanne Anker was my warp drive into another galaxy. The hardest part was choosing which area I wanted to settle on. I settled on Fungi and Bioluminescent Algae.

^[1]“Bruno Latour : an actant is a source of action that can either be human or non-human, can do things, has sufficient coherence to make a difference, to produce effects, etc.” (Bennet, preface)

RB: What is the underlying focus of your work?

DW: I work at the intersection of art and science with an emphasis on the interconnectivity of intelligence across species through the prism of Climate Change. My projects explore the Biophilia Hypothesis, also known as “the love of all living things,” as a crucial factor in reconnecting humans and nature via interactive installations, visual displays, photography, sound, time-based media, and bioart in the new form of hybrid matter. I address environmental impact issues among artists and connect creative processes to earth-conscious practices, a cornerstone of my research on sustainable art practices.

I use technology and science as a bridge for living matter collaborations. I orchestrate organic forms between networks through the balance of control and chaos and let my media, including biomedia, flow freely and develop its own story. I want to evoke a feeling of empathy in my viewers through sensory and participatory experiences to help my audience to re-establish the lost bond with nature. At the same time, I critically examine my practice to comply with sustainability guidelines from the perspective of environmental impact. Most of my work is ever-evolving, temporal, site-specific, site-responsive, and eco-conscious.

As part of my art practice, I use microscopes with the primary idea of merging scales, colliding the visible and invisible worlds at the point of human perception. The microscope is the bridge that connects and brings me closer to the understanding of the interconnections between them.

Substrate Research at KHOJ Artist Residency, New Deli, India, 2018.  Puneet Kishor and I spent a significant time in the kitchen outlining the foundations of MycoPrinter Prototype. I invited mycelium to try various dishes we made and materials we encountered.

RB: Have there been any particular influences on your ideas and work?

DW: Yes, a particular event profoundly influenced my life and ultimately found its way to manifest through my practice.

I am a Soviet Union child. My first 9 years were dyed with decomposing communism: mild surveillance and censorship, with limited access to the “capitalistic ” enemy culture, blended with reminiscence of faded but still strong glory of our Leaders, Lenin and Stalin. The level of responsibility assigned to me as an older child was pretty substantial; with my father on another military mission and my mom working long shifts, I had to make breakfast, prepare, and walk my younger sister to school before I started my studies. Living on a military base near one of the most ancient cities in Eurasia, Pskov, my days were filled with the exploration of thick pine woods, endless marshes, and vast fields. We had no internet or gadgets, and TV was limited, dull, and slow for my limitless energy.

I was five years old when Chernobyl happened on April 26, 1986. We were supposed to fly to Kyiv (90 km from Chornobyl that day. We didn’t. Before anything was known to the public, my grandmother asked us not to come without giving a valid reason. We stayed in Pskov, awaiting a cold and late spring typical for this northern region. We finally went to Kyiv to see my grandparents a few months later. For the next 5+ years, I was not allowed to touch anything outside. We had to wash our shoes upon entering the house and avoid the rain clouds coming from the east at all costs.  The trips to the farmer’s markets were saturated with anxiety: where does this come from, is it contaminated… The absence of governmental support, which was about to collapse in the following years, combined with ignorance and secrecy, was putting its citizens into the lasting consequences of radioactive fallout. We were all exposed, some significantly more than others.

The damage from the initial explosion could have been contained by educating the population about the dangers of the accumulation of radionuclides in produce, soil, and water. It was partially achieved, but again like everything in the Soviet Union, it was confusing, not transparent, and painted with overly optimistic patriotic calls for action.

Mushrooms are a significant part of my culture, from fairy tales and culinary arts to indigenous religious practices and medicine. The majority know how to collect and pickle mushrooms. From the late summer to the late fall, the cities will empty on the weekends, and the nearby woods get filled with [ грибники ], mushroom hunters. Pskov was not directly affected by the fallout, but still, the radioactive rain was frequent, so our summer gatherings were postponed indefinitely. During blistering cold and raging winter months, we consumed our pre-Chornobyl collected treasures. A few years later, my father was relocated to Belarus.

70 % of Belarus received various amounts of the fallout, and ⅓ of south agricultural territories were heavily contaminated.  The forests that once were my playground suddenly acquired a tenebrous aura. A hidden, invisible dark force living within has a lifespan of 30 + years. I wanted to know more about it, and I needed to know more – to conquer my fear which was magnified by the invisibility of the threat. I’d hear or read a glimpse of alarming reports in cancer cases, personal and not, and sometimes deaths. I get my routine thyroid check-up by my doctor once a year with the usual: “ Oh yes, you have a cyst, but we all do – it’s normal for Belarus; just keep it in check.” The new normal has arrived invisibly and inevitably, like radiation. While writing this, I cannot avoid noticing the similarities in our lives through the Covid-19 pandemic. Over time, mushrooms became associated with danger in my mind, and for years, I tended to avoid any interaction with them, either at home or in nature. It could have been a psychological defence mechanism to cope with the fear of contamination. But it all changed once I relocated to NYC and was introduced to fungi from a new perspective through the Bioart Art class at the School of Visual Arts.

RB: Can you say something about your Life Textures series of works?

DW: Since 2016, I have been zooming into various fruits and vegetables using a dissecting microscope and unconventional light techniques. The result of my process focuses on how a tiny flower/mushroom in the field is its entity — one of a kind.  In the era of manic consumerism and overabundance of resources, it is easy to forget how precious nature is and how every living being contributes to the overall balance. My microscopic portraits aim to re-establish this connection  –  to show the unseen, unconventional beauty and fragility, and to help others rethink the embedded paradigm that nature exists for us that has been a dominating attitude for centuries. Life Textures exist as a separate project and accompany other ideas on occasion.

All images are minimally processed without any color corrections, shot in RAW, and can be printed in a large size preserving their high resolution.

Life Textures/Blood Orange, Archival Inkjet Print on paper, 20”x40”, 2017

Life Textures/Cauliflower, Archival Inkjet Print on paper, 20”x40”, 2017

RB: Your work, 43⁰ 00’26.0”N 78⁰47’27.1”W, is a deconstructed book of laser-etched hand-made mushroom paper with GPS trails. How was this created?

DW: During the fall of 2019, I had spent every other day cycling around the North Campus of the University of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, and circling in Letchworth woods, searching for specific species of mushrooms. Letchworth woods is full of decay matter and a perfect ground for saprophytic mushrooms.  I must have made hundreds of miles of trails in a small area of the woods and around it. I was surprised how little my mushroom harvest was – some days, and I would barely find any. It was a dry fall, and my life revolved around weather patterns and University at Buffalo lawn mowing crews (collecting Agaricus campestis). My goal was to sustainably harvest local species, store their spores for future propagation, drying them to create pigments for the following research project. I used nature’s very printmaking tool – spore prints. Each mushroom can produce up to several spore prints. The opportunity to observe the transition of the Letchworth woods from lush summer attire to first frost deep sleep created a deep connection to this place.  After a while, I felt like I became a part of the ecosystem – wandering in “aimless “patterns searching for “food. “I learned how to move quietly and trained my eye to spot my subjects of interest. I felt like I was creating large-scale drawings through my countless explorations – my network over the network of mycelium occupying this long decaying forest.  In preparation for the show at Western NY Book Art Center, I chose nine trails out of hundreds that I have recorded, and after I made my paper out of mushrooms that were used for spore prints, I laser-etched those trails on it. The most unique and overlooked part of this project was the smell of the deconstructed book. It was earthy, mushroomy, poignant – a smell that mycelium might have sensed (if only I can anthropomorphize ) making its journey through the soil and decayed wood. It was so strong, but only when the paper was very close to one’s face. It has been almost three years since the project took place, but the smell is still there – very faint, like a memory.

430 00’26.0”N 78047’27.1”W. Detail.  Deconstructed Book, page 9 out of 10, laser etched paper made out of various mushrooms.

RB: How important is the concept of ‘transience’ in your work?

DW: I think this is the crux of my work—the vital concept. I always think about my works as having a life of their own. They sprout, grow, and/or decay – every stage has a particular beauty. I am obsessed with the process of growth, the process of change. This is the reason I choose to work with living matter – I start the process with the organism and let it continue to reshape the work. I think this is the closest we may call practices with living matter a collaboration. We have no means of getting consent from the being who does not speak the same language, but possibly care could be the language of collaboration. I often let contamination take place – just to see what happens. Contamination sparked the project I did this spring with Dr. Erin Almand.

Mind the Fungi, digital print, 2022. Dr. Erin Almand and I propagated various common molds in the Petri dishes experimenting with different dyes of agar. Some species were changing the color of agar by metabolizing specific nutrients. This was a fun project that ended in producing individual portraits of various molds – they reminded me of islands around the world.

Regarding working with Fungi, a mycelium network could be considered a type of ecological memory. The fungi use their own sensory apparatus to find food, avoid danger, and transact nutrients across vast forest regions. As a forest dies and changes over time, the remnants of the mycelial network remain, even though the changes in topography. In this way, the mycelium is an artifact processing trauma and loss, in much the same way that the human brain processes trauma and loss by creating densities within its network that can be retriggered.

From this perspective, I consider this aspect of my practice as a sort of archivist for ecologies, documenting these relationships as they change, inter and intra-subjectively.

What’s  for Dinner? 2019-…. ‘Pleurotus eryngii’ are vigorous decomposers and have been  “ digesting” Kurt Vonnegust’s “ Paino Player since May 2019.

RB: Can you say something about the components contained in your work, Reticula?

DW: From the Latin “Reticulum”– network, the installation explores the overlap of various networks created by humans, nature (fungi), and machine-made algorithms in time and scale.” Reticulum limina” navigates us through time-lapse created by the software algorithm of image processing. The threshold changes every 9 points (corresponding with an average of 9 days of mycelium to develop a visible network), culminating in “Reticulum mycelium”. The way the algorithm chooses specific marks is unknown – a mystery within. Simultaneously, the viewer is encouraged to interact with mycelium growth in real-time through “Reticulum hybrida” first by placing the ear onto the Petri dish, which acts as a mini amplifier. The humming noise emitted through the copper plate is a 220 Hz sine wave broadcasted for the open hours, hypothesized to assist with growth in living organisms. Here the source is hidden – by moving the dish around on the copper plate and identifying optimal hum volume, the viewer is actively participating in the growth of Pleurotus ostreatus. The mycelium is growing on the paper, onto which the map of the urban collecting site of the species is laser etched. For the show’s duration, the “control” in the middle of the piece is anchored, and only three other Petri dishes are allowed to be moved. The mycelium networks develop over time, colliding all elements together into a reticulum, a network. When I installed this piece at the University at Buffalo Gallery, I was not sure what would happen. It was a pure experiment. Within two weeks, the mycelium was over-competed by a common green mold, Trichoderma harzianum, which, to my surprise, grew in circular patterns responding to the sound stimulation. The audience moved the dishes during the open hours except for the ‘control’ in the middle, which did not produce any ‘rings’. This project continues to investigate the patterns and networks overlap between humans, nature, and technology. It raises the questions of care and control and possible collaborations between human and non-human agents towards forming the common ground for coexistence.

Reticula, Installation view, the audience is “ guiding “ the system of care, Center for the Arts, University at Buffalo, 2019

Reticula, detail – close-up of the growth after two weeks of interaction.

Reticula investigates complex care-based networks we create through our interactions with nature, in this case through sound and with fungi. By interacting with the living organism, the audience invents new cartographies and networks together, invisible at first but developing over time. Here the notion of the Biophilia Hypothesis is applied to evoke the empathic response through assisting with growth, thus establishing the care connected with the living being. Since the network develops slowly, the audience is encouraged to come back two weeks later to observe the collective result of invisible human/fungi network collaboration. This art and science project aims to facilitate a dialog on all-inclusive species hybrid spaces that need to be created to establish a paradigm shift in the era of “Climate Change. “Reticula” is an example of how science and technology can act as a possible vehicle for establishing eco-conscious interspecies collaborations.

RB: Can you say something about your exhibition, NETWORKS, ENTANGLED, which you created in 2020 during Covid 19? How did the pandemic affect the realization of the work?

DW: I was approached by Kit McNeil in the summer of 2019 with the proposal of creating a show about Fungi. Some projects were already developed (Reticula and living sculpture of fungi decomposing Kurt Vonnegut’s Piano Player). Others were developed specifically for the space: a large 23’ long paper project with hundreds of individual spore prints was created for the long wall at WNBAC. I worked on the project throughout the summer and fall of 2019, creating an extensive network of intersecting projects that were different in execution and materials but connected via one central theme – Fungi. I wanted to mimic my process of exploration of mycelium networks. Like fungi go through different stages of development (mycelium, mushroom, spores I aimed to reflect this in the show for the audience to experience the versatility of Fungi. However, not only from an aesthetic point of view but also from a biological. From spore prints and laser etching to interactive care pieces and living sculptures, I wanted to engage the audience from multiple perspectives and share how multifaceted and dynamic this magnificent organism is. In my experience, the relationship between the general public and fungi in the USA is more in the beginning stages in comparison to those in Eastern Europe. It has been changing, especially with mushrooms making it Mainstream with Fantastic Fungi (a film by Paul Stamets ). With my work, I wanted to connect human and mycelium-made networks as a hybrid entity. “Networks, entangled” envisioned a hybrid space of mutual empathy between mycelium and humans. The show was scheduled to open on March 13th, 2020, and literally that day the full Lockdown was implemented in NY State. It was painful to walk by, knowing that this might be the only way the audience would experience this show. We installed over 50 individual artworks. A massive effort. The pandemic lingered, and I stayed in Buffalo indefinitely since the art job market froze and no one knew what to expect next. However, WNBAC kept on extending my show and finally, in the early fall of 2020, we could host a few people by appointment only.

Reticula Mycelium in yellow ochre, Intaglio print on Reeves BFK, 36”x42”, 2020

Networks Entangled, installation view,  Western NY Book Art Center, Buffalo, NY, 2020

RB: What projects are you currently working on?

DW: I am currently working in several directions. Since I moved to Colorado in 2021, I became intrigued and alarmed by the Water status in Colorado: water rights, fracking, conservation, and pollution. The ongoing drought, water restrictions, and unclear water regulations have created a sense of urgency and anxiety. When you read about drought in California, it all seems so abstract unless you are living and experiencing it for yourself every day. Now I am no stranger to this. Coming from the East Coast with unlimited access to water, I was distant from this ongoing catastrophe for a long time. It made me realize how disconnected we are from many things happening around us, contributing to widespread apathy.  The “Tale of Water” is a long-term research project which, I am hoping, will be able to reconnect us to the widespread problem of the Water Crisis. The project is aimed to be participatory, educational, and community-based and serve as a jumpstart point for conversation on what we can do. I see this project as an ongoing and evolving living system fed through various outlets – data and emotion-driven. A combination that is only possible through art.

I continue my research into Hybrid Matter, Sustainable Art Practices, and Radical care concepts that started over three years ago. I am currently building the next MycoPrinter version which is sponsored by the AirForce Academy Small Interdisciplinary Grants program. MycoPrinter is an open-source 3D bioprinter that prints mycelium substrate ready for inoculation with various types of fungi, thus combining additive manufacturing with fungi biological tissue to create a living sculpture. It was developed over the course of 5 years of research conducted at three different institutions. The primary impetus for this project comes from the overflow of toxic, non-recycled materials from industries that further harm our environment and has a much broader intended application besides “mycoprinting”. It is designed to print with a variety of living organisms, to be versatile and mobile, inexpensive, and easily assembled under limited access to the materials.  Mycoprinter is a part of the Hybrid Matter series –  a series of traveling artworks that address local sites, history, and ecology. It initiates a dialogue on sustainable art practices and the collaborative possibility of art and science. As a traveling artwork, it enables the series of site-specific temporal sculptures using a custom-made low-tech 3D bioprinter, MycoPrinter. The first site of the Hybrid Matter series was supposed to be Buffalo, China Factory, Buffalo, NY.  Unfortunately, due to Covid-19 the project, although completed, was never exhibited at the location. Finally, in 2021 I implemented this concept in the project SOURCED as part of Visiting Artist Residency at Redline Contemporary Art Center. The project with “SOURCED focused on local food networks and soil, and I was able to create a combined soil portrait of urban gardens of Denver and 3D print it into a living sculpture seeded by local edible plants. In addition, Mycoprinter and Sustainable Art practices research was finally implemented into a new course I designed as an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at the Airforce Academy, Colorado. The course is mainly based on the project created with Eric Barry Drasin during the Pandemic. It focuses on the transference of information between different media, from slit scanning and 3D scanning to 3D printing a living sculpture. This spring, my students 3D printed and grew three types of organisms with custom-made substrates. One of the course’s main aspects was introducing my students to working with organisms.  To me, the ultimate collaboration with living matter is based on care, and care was a requirement for passing this course.

HYBRID MATTER: BUFFALO  China Factory, 2020, images illustrate a process of connecting the history of local fungi via custom site-specific substrate using MycoPrinter 2.0

MycoPrinter from Darya Warner on Vimeo.

HYBRID MATTER: DENVER, 2021,  soil samples to be converted into a custom site-specific substrate.

HYBRID MATTER: DENVER, 2021, Living Sculpture – 3D printed with MysoPrinter 2.0 using a composite of 6 different soils and inoculated with locally adapted seeds. The shape of the sculpture is a direct representation of phloem and xylem cells taken by Darya under the microscope on site.

Currently, I am at the Oak Springs Garden Foundation residency for July. As always, I have a plan, but this time my plan is not to have one but to be open to new ideas and new inspirations. I have been waiting for this residency since 2020. Covid took a significant toll on so many art organizations, and luckily I am finally here. I still brought my microscope…

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http://www.daryawarner.com/

All images copyright and courtesy of Darya Warner

Art, Consciousness, Imagination, Installation, Nature, Photography, Science, Technology