Mycoology

Modern Mycoology: How, But not Why, to Grow Mushrooms in Egg Shells or

Using the truth to tell a lie Using that lie to tell the truth

By  Alexis  Williams

Mind control Life on earth continues as an intricate web of relationships, not a balance but a constantly changing struggle between living organisms for survival. These organisms live amongst each other, inside each other, on top of each other; each species influencing the experience of many others, each playing a role in the eco system.

Toxoplasma is a parasite that typically spends part of its life cycle living inside a rodent and the end of its life cycle in a cat. To facilitate this transition it affects its mouse or rat host to behave in a way that will make it, with parasite inside, more likely to be delivered into a cat’s intestines, the only place the parasite can live out the final stages of its life. It makes its host less afraid of cats. It makes the host interested in cats. Once the cycle is complete the parasite is often transferred from a cat to a human host.

In these cases our behaviour and personality is also altered making us less anxious about dangerous situations and more likely to take risks. Human female hosts become more intelligent, affectionate, social and obedient, men become less intelligent, more loyal, frugal and mild tempered but in almost all cases the host becomes neurotic and insecure.

Many parasites affect their host’s behaviour in a way that puts them into suitable locations for different stages of their life cycles. Euhaplorchis californiensis is a fluke that causes fish to jump making it easy for wading birds to catch them and eat them. The hairworm begins its life in a grasshopper and inspires the grasshopper to jump into pools of water, where it drowns. The

hairworm then swims away from its host as the beginning of the next cycle of its life.

The Cordiceps mushroom is another parasite that controls its host’s mind. There are thousands of different cordyceps species who each attack a different host species. The ophiocordiceps infects the carpenter ant causing it to behave irrationally until, always at noon, it attaches itself to the underside of a leaf and dies. At sunset a mushroom erupts from its head, dropping spores down and infecting new ants, perpetuating the cycle. Healthy ants know the symptoms of an infected ant, recognize the danger and banish infected ants as far away from the colony as possible.

Termites have several levels of security who guard their queen from infected citizens for the same reason. Birds abandon infected eggs and push them out of the nest, but the parasite initiates a growth on the outside of the shell to deter predators from eating the eggs before the mycelium has fully colonized the egg and had a chance to fruit and spread it’s spores.

Perfidy Generally we believe scientific sounding things.

TV commercials famously appropriate the credibility of scientists to convince consumers that a product is effective by using invented scientific words. “Birds abandon infected eggs “is the point where the above information stops being accurate and drifts into fiction.

Toxoplasmia and hairworms are real, so are cordyceps that infect insects but I invented the Cordyceps pennipotens, the flying cordyceps mushroom. It is an art project grown in an art studio lab.

Originally I planned to grow naturally glow in the dark fungus on agar inside birds egg shells, record time lapse video of the fruiting event that would break the shell when the mushrooms emerged and display the fictitious cordyceps in a natural history museum style.

The project was intended to represent a lie: that cordyceps mushrooms infect larger animals than insects, for example birds, implying that they could infect you. It is true that our behaviours and personalities are affected by organisms living inside us. What we like to eat, our mood, how we smell and who we attract are influenced by the non-­‐human organisms in the human micro biome. The image of a mushroom fruiting from an egg is a metaphor.

The risk of infection is a theme I worked with as a performance artist, but while straddling science and art I feel I have a responsibility, even if I am creating fiction, not to instill irrational fear or discomfort towards nature. I do not want to add to the cultural pollution of

scientific misinformation and damage the public’s understanding of biology. I especially must not use mushrooms to create discomfort in the viewer and in turn increase the viewer’s

potential distrust in mushrooms. As a mycological artist I aim to work against mycophobia, to encourage appreciation and to increase acceptance and support of new innovation and integration of mycotechnologies into society particularly mycoremediation, permaculture, environmentally responsible building and packaging materials and possible power sources and communication tools. By showcasing mushrooms in my work as wondrous, powerful but controllable forces I hope to invite my viewers to take an interest in mycology and new mycological trends. I will not try to produce confusing natural history exhibits but instead sculptural work that is aesthetically pleasing, conceptually engaging and politically relevant while sharing and reinterpreting the basic science that I learn on the way.

Earnst Haeckle, German biologist and author of Art in Nature spent his life studying and illustrating organisms. In Natural History of Creation (1876) he exagerated some of his

embrionic illustrations to support the theory that in utero development mimiced evolutionary development. When accused of fraud Haeckel argued that his figures were schematics, not intended to be exact.

Picasso said that Art is a lie that tells the truth.

He was talking about research and the importance for an artist to show what is found not what she was looking for.

The military and large companies hire artists, like International Fashion Machine, to experiment with new technologies to find overlooked applications before releasing it to the public and competition.

The biological fiction of the Cordyceps pennipotens

hatch from the egg and liberate its spores, infecting grown birds and repeating the cycle.

Inspired by the cordiceps mushroom who fruits from the heads of caterpillars and moths after influencing them to behave in manners most beneficial to the parasite I imagined a mushroom that would control the behaviour of other animals, and how they might interfere with natural cycles.

I invented a parasite that spent its life inside a bird. The spore, having been inhaled by a female bird, would colonize the fertilized egg, perhaps sensing the infection, or perhaps under the influence of the parasite growing inside her the mother pushes the infected egg from the nest on to the forest floor. Although the forest duff is a dark and humid place, suitable for the fruiting of mushrooms, the egg and fungal spawn become vulnerable to predators. The fungus initiates a defence mechanism: poisonous growths on the outside of the shell that deter predators while the mycelium thrives on the inside. Once nutrients inside the shell run out the fungus produces fruit, mushrooms

The ephemeral sculptural work consists of live cultivated mushrooms grown inside cultivated eggs on which basic crystals were grown. The work is a fetishized art object created inside an artist studio biology lab.

Process Lab set up I began the project by building a clean space in my studio. I used the frame from a tent and sheets of plastic which I stapled together then sealed the seams with packing tape. I covered the floor in plastic. There is something a bit unsatisfying about building a space impermeable to microorganisms and then leaving a hole big enough for myself to get through. The door is a series of plastic flaps with a switch back. I furnished the space with a plastic table, flow hood and HEPA filter. The temperature in the school, which I cannot control, went up dramatically as I began to build and since mushroom production is partly initiated by cool autumn air I will have to remove the eggs from the safe lab environment into a place that I can drop the temperature. I foresee these organisms being disturbed by their transportation on the metro, but expect the event to be ritualistic for me and look forward to it.

Oology (wild bird egg and nest collection) One of the first and regular steps in this project is to collect eggs, a once respected Victorian scientific practice, now illegal. My partner eats 3 chicken eggs a day so I blow them empty and use them as incubators for the growing mushroom mycelium. While shopping for large animal veterinary syringes at a farm supply store, to fill the eggs with growing medium, I made friends with a farmer who keeps large birds who gave me goose, duck and emu eggs and will give me peacock and ostrich eggs when they begin laying in the summer. I expect it will be easier to fruit mushrooms from larger containers but still plan to try quails eggs. I will

show the finished work in petri dish nests and natural bird’s nests so I have been collecting abandoned nests.

Sterile technique Working with mushroom cultures is a delicate process. The fungal mycelium is encouraged to grow on a nutritious medium inside sterile vessels. The environment would be very comfortable for many organisms if they were given a chance so great care is taken not to introduce any contaminations but the air around us is filled with microorganisms. We are all covered in bacteria, viruses, tiny single celled explorers moving around looking for a nice place to colonize. The air is filled with unimaginable quantities of fungal spores released by moulds growing in our homes or that were released by mushrooms on the other side of the planet that have been riding around on the wind, on the backs of insects, animals and ourselves.

I use a pressure cooker, alcohol swabs and a soldering iron to keep my work space, tools and media clean. I only enter my clean space while I’m wearing a Tyvek suit with hood, gloves and dust mask to keep the microorganisms on my body from contaminating my cultures.

Whenever I leave I spray bleach on everything.

Crystals Having never grown crystals before I searched the web for instructions and wondered if I could use an egg as a scaffold for crystal growth. I found many simple instructions for growing salt, sugar and borax crystals and was able to make them form on the outside of the eggs. The problem was that the crystals added further fragility to the egg which needed to be sterilized before inoculation. There is no way the crystals

could survive pressure cooking. Also it was possible that the salt/sugar/borax would mix with the agar and inhibit the mycelial growth. A possible solution would be to coat the egg with something like a lacquer to strengthen the crystals and seal in the toxins or to use the salt covered eggs without pressure cooking, hoping that the salt would have killed anything living on the egg.

Cultures I ordered sterile petri dishes and mushroom cultures from Carolina biology supply and Sporeworks on line. They shipped the live specimen to my door. I used a potato dextros agar solution made from agar bought in china town on the advice from Anna Dimitri. The agar was a fraction of the price of the lab grade agar.

I used a lot of it before noticing that the Chinese food agar is mostly sugar. My first 40 dishes were made of this sweet agar in which I tried to culture three bioluminescent strains and 10 old edibles that I expected to have lost its virility. The old phoenix oyster, like its name, after spending two years in my basement came through and thrived. Struggling alongside were the old Hericium, and King Strapharia. The new ghost fungus worked very hard and managed a few hyphel threads. The honey mushroom mycelium turned brown and sent down rhyzomorphic strands. New dishes were ordered and I started over with new unsweetened agar.

I set up the project expecting to be PCing jars of grain and eggs all the time but my PC gasket would not hold pressure. Unable to find a replacement gasket I used a pair of C clamps to hold tight the lid on the old pressure cooker but the pressure blew the handle off. This is why there so many warnings about pressure cookers. I traveled to Ottawa to use a friend’s

All American PC. A PC is an absolutely necessary tool to work with mycelium working without one has greatly limited what I can do with and how quickly things get started.

Shared knowledge With this project I’m trying to subvert normal artistic and scientific experiments and make the work exist outside the science and art worlds by making it open source, by publishing my process as a zine and by posting it online.

This project was supported by hundreds of google searches. The internet is a place where entertainment and research meet and can be interchangeable. So I ask ‘does it matter if what you read is true?’ This experiment has become not ‘Can I grow mushrooms in an egg?’ but ‘What happens when science is in the hands of an artist?’ and has led to several new projects including much less literal ways to tell the biological fiction of the Cordyceps pennipotens and other artistic applications for growing crystals, mycelium and bacteria.

1 VA 045

12 Seasonal Affective Disorder light with timer

2 Old silk screen with circus logo

for growing bioluminescent algae

3 Terrarium for fruiting mushrooms or keeping

13 Sea salt for growing crystals

caterpillars

14 Empty egg shells for incubating mushrooms

4 Pot for cooking grain to feed to mushrooms

15 Box from bio supply shop

5 Luna Moth found by Mark Combellack

16 My clothes as I am about to go in the lab

6 Mason jars for sterilizing grain, eggs and

and am wearing an anti-­‐microbial suit

cotton

17 Gyotaku print of a salmon wearing a dress

7 Pressure Cooker on hot plate for sterilizing

meeting a sparrow

8 Bail of straw for growing mushrooms on

18 Little red wagon

9 Box of petri dishes

19 Collection of wasp nests

10 Microscope

20 Collection of 1200 butterflies

11 Microwave for mixing agar

21 Mushroom spore prints on glass

22 Butterfly dust on cotton

23 Books on mycology

24 Tukami matts from Hideki

25 Toad stool

35 Digital print of manipulated macro

26 Artist conk drawings

photograph of wild mushrooms

27 Garrison creek graphite rubbings

36 Gyotaku print of goldfish

28 Dried oyster mushrooms grown on grain

37 Quilled phone book

29 Porcelain rabbit, first test as crystal

38 Bin of mushroom cultures

growing scaffold

39 Bin of skulls and bones

30 Jar of bees and horse hair

40 Sacred geometric drain cover graphite

31 Boschesque flowers from Fiona Annis

rubbing

32 Gyotaku prints of a wood pecker

41 Locker full of lab supplies

33 Spacecraft from the playful geometer

42 Clean room

34 Spore print and text hand written in ink

43 Parasol reupholstered with digital

made entirely from mushrooms

mushroom prints on mulberry paper

44 Stardrop Asterism, man hole rubbing

Instructions

How to grow Crystals

To grow crystals you need a very concentrated solution of water and a soluble crystal like salt.

Dissolve as much salt into boiling water as you can until it sits on the bottom of the pot. If you leave this pot for a few days or weeks the water will evaporate and the salt will reform into little cubes. If you place something in the pot, or pour the solution into another container with an object in it, like an egg, crystals will form on the object above the water line as the water evaporates. Only use enough water to partly submerge the object, or invent a way to dangle the object above the water level to completely cover it with crystals. Borax is a cheap chemical sold in pharmacies for treating minor cuts and burns. When dissolved in water and evaporated it creates much bigger crystals than the salt, but instead of the crystals being formed above the water line they form on the part of the object that is submerged, so it is better to float the object in the liquid. Borax crystals form much more quickly than salt.

Leave the container in a safe place where it will not get knocked or shaken for several hours/days/weeks depending on your patience/commitment level. You can add fresh solution to the container as time passes. Other cheap and easily found minerals can be used like sugar or borax.

How to empty an egg

To grow crystals on, mushrooms in or keep for any reason it can be handy to blow an egg empty while keeping the shell intact. If your egg comes straight from a bird it could have salmonella on the shell that could make you sick so clean the egg before you begin with a sponge, then with an alcohol swab or peroxide to kill any bacteria. Hold the egg in a support like an egg cup. A shot glass works well. Use a strong sewing needle to pierce the egg. A heavy object can be used as a hammer if the shell is very strong. Gently make a series of piercings to create an air insertion point. If you want to fill the egg with a growing medium to grow mushroom make the next hole on the same side of the egg, otherwise put the holes on the top and bottom of the egg. Pierce another hole at least an inch and a half away from the air insertion point and with the needle break the egg shell to make an opening the size of a pea or two, bigger if you are using a large bird’s egg like an emu or ostrich. This hole will be the drain. Insert the needle or a skewer into the drain and break up the yolk. Wipe the air insertion point clean with an alcohol pad or paper towel as egg will have spilled out while you made the second hole. Clean all the little crumbs away so they do not end up in your breakfast. Hold the egg over a bowl and with your mouth over the clean air insertion point gently but firmly blow. Position the egg so the bigger hole is below your face so you do not blow egg into your eyes. This can be tricky if you are using a small egg with holes close together on the same side. Breath through your nose while keeping pressure in your mouth the way a didgeridoo player does to keep the egg from spilling back out your valve and ending up in your mouth if you break contact to catch your breath.

How to make an emu omelette

A frittata is an omelette where everything in the omelette is fried first, then the egg is poured on top and once the bottom of the omelette is cooked it is put under the grill to cook the top.

1 Preheat oven to 500 2 Chop up meat and vegetable: sausage, tomato and wild mushrooms, or whatever ingredients you prefer.

3 melt some butter and drop these ingredients in the pan.

4 while they cook blow the emu egg into a really big bowl. If you have never blown an egg do it before you start cooking as it can take some time to get right.

5 pour a splash of water into the egg and a little milk if you like. The water will make the egg really fluffy when it’s cooked. Splash in some Worcestershire sauce, or soy sauce. Hot sauce is nice here too.

6 whisk it all together with a fork 7 pour the egg mixture into the pan over the meat and veg. use a wooden spoon to gently move the egg around so that there is always new raw egg on the bottom of the pan, but don’t turn it into scrambled.

8 Slice or shred some cheese and sprinkle on top.

9 Put the entire frying pan under the grill. Close the oven door as much as you can with the handle sticking out. Stand there and watch as it will only take a minute or two to cook the top of the egg. Wait until there is no liquid and the cheese is melted and bubbling.

How to make an egg into a spawn vessel

After pressure cooking the intact and sterile egg shells can be used as vessels to hold agar and become the incubators for the growing

mycelium. If you put the holes on opposite sides of the egg you can close one hole with silicon before sterilization. This seal can be used as a self-­‐healing injection port when inoculation with mushroom cultures but mainly will keep the agar from spilling out before it sets. Wrap the eggs in paper and drop them into wide mouth mason jars. Small mouth jars are difficult to work with because you won’t be able to get your hand in the jar to get the egg out and will risk spilling water over your clean work space.

Fill the jars half way with water. Gently fill the jars with as many eggs will fit holding them under the water to fill them with water. Use a piece of Tyvek suit or a coffee filter instead of the metal jar lid held down with the ring and then cover with tin foil. Cook at 15lbs of pressure for one hour. Let the jars cool overnight. Keep the eggs inside the jars until the moment before you fill them with substrate.

Use a large syringe without a needle to fill the eggs with agar through the fluid evacuation point. A chicken egg will take about 60ml of agar. Cover the air insertion point with an anti-­‐ microbial filter made from a piece of paper first aid tape to allow oxygen to pass into the shell but to keep out contaminants.

How to make agar agar as nutritional substrate

Agar is basically Chinese Jello, but instead of being made of horse bones it’s made of sea weed. It is used by scientists to grow things in labs because it solidifies to a hard jelly at room temperature and does not melt like Jello. It is mixed with a nutrient, in this case potato broth, and a drop of honey to comfort the mushroom.

Boil 150g of potato in 600 ml of water for about an hour. Remove the potatoes and save the

broth. Add 13g of agar powder to 500ml of potato broth and a drop of honey. If you double the recipe do not double the honey, you only need a tiny bit. Cook the mixture in a jar in a pressure cooker at 15lbs of pressure for an hour. If you do not have a pressure cooker agar can be cooked in the microwave. Cook for 2 min, let it stand in the microwave for 30 sec then cook for 2 more min. The agar powder must dissolve for it to work. Do not stir or touch the mixture once it is cooked to avoid contamination. Use immediately by pouring into petri dishes, or injecting into egg shells.

How to steal a wild bird’s nest

Oology is illegal because stealing wild bird eggs affects the wild bird population, but birds only use nests when they have eggs. Once the babies have flown the nest the nest is abandoned, sometimes they are reclaimed the following year, but often birds will build a new nest. The nests are easily spotted in the winter when the leaves are off the trees and there is snow on the ground to give you a boost up the tree. Nests are easily found along roadside fence lines that an also give a helping boost to reach high up nests. Many small tidy nests fall apart if they are removed from the tree so it is useful to trim the part of the branch that the nest is built in. Use a large ratcheting pair of cutters, preferably with long handles to extend your reach.

How to get a gallery show Most galleries put out a call for submission at least every year, some of them post on their websites. Go to galleries and artist run centers and ask them what and whose work they usually show. Do Google searches for calls for submissions. Before sending an application read

the gallery’s mandate to see what kind of work they normally show so you know what work of yours is suitable and how to talk about it in a way that will be easy for them to envision your work in their space. Usually an artist CV, an artist statement, a biography, a description of the work proposed and a few sample images are expected in the submission. Keep all your submissions to use to cut and paste together to make new submissions. Submissions for the same work will get better each time you submit if you tailor it for the gallery each time. Get someone to proof read your submission and to make suggestions on how to improve it.

How to make a zine

There is no one way to do this. Basically a zine is a low budget self-­‐produced bunch of pages bound together somehow. Beyond that the contents, the design, the materials and tools used are up to you. To make this zine I used Word, Photoshop and Indesign to create a PDF file. I then uploaded it to issue.com and took it to the local print shop. I work at a digital printing lab so I printed the centerfolds myself with a large format ink jet printer. The print shop printed the rest with a laser printer. This could all have been done on a desk top printer and bound at home. The tricky part is figuring out how to distribute the material. Publishing it on line is a cheap way to distribute material.

There are many print-­‐on-­‐demand companies on line that you can up load to and your readers can order a copy directly from the company at no financial risk to you. The copies I had printed will most likely be distributed at zine fairs and gallery shows where I will show the sculptural work.

Bibliography

“Inhaling the Spore: A Journey Through the Museum of Jurassic Technology.” Dir Leonard Feinstein. 2006.

"Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature.” Harry N. Abrams. 1990 “The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home.” Paul Stamets, J. S. Chilton. 1983 “The Strength and Fragility of the Egg: Spring Hurlbut's Interventions in the Cassical Idiom.”

Cynthia Imogen Hammond. 1996 "Radical Mycology | Spawning Mycelial Networks." The Spore Liberation Front. AK Press. Ed. 1.1 2010 “The Century of Artists' Books.” Johanna Drucker. Granary Books. Ed.2. 2004.

“Ernst Haeckel: Evangelist for evolution and apostle of deceit.” R. Grigg. 1996. http://creation.com/ernst-haeckel-evangelist-for-evolution-and-apostle-of-deceit

“Carved Ostrich Eggs.” Eggsclusive12. 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XF9tSprnwg “Grocery Store Agar Tek.” Helltick. 2007. http://www.shroomery.org/9427/Grocery-Store-AgarTek “How to Grow Great Crystals.” Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D. 2013. http://chemistry.about.com/cs/growingcrystals/a/aa012604.htm “Toxoplasma – The Brain Parasite That Influences Human Culture.” Ed Yong. 2008. http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/10/05/toxoplasma-the-brain-parasite-thatinfluences-human-culture/