↑ Ritual device for fungal humus – Photo: Santiago Morilla

A Living Installation of Sound, Soil, and Symbiosis

Theme Exhibition: “PANIC: Complex. Absurd. Ominous”
When: September 3–7, 2025
Where: POSTCITY, Bunker | Linz (Austria)
Curated by: Manuela Naveau

Artist santiagomorilla.com Instagram
Event details ars.electronica.art

In Ritual Device for the Cultivation of Mushroom Humus (2025), Spanish artist Santiago Morilla constructs a sound installation animated by the metabolic life of fungi. At its core, the work is a closed-loop system: saprophytic mushrooms—organisms that digest decaying organic matter—generate bioelectrical signals as they grow. These signals are captured and translated into an evolving sonic environment.

The installation does not interpret nature metaphorically. Instead, it allows biological processes to directly structure form and rhythm. Mycelial growth becomes a compositional force; decomposition becomes performance.

Viewers are not positioned as observers but as quiet disruptors. Sensors in the soil register their presence and movement, feeding this data into the acoustic system. The resulting soundscape is neither authored nor random—it is negotiated. A feedback loop between organic and artificial, human and nonhuman.

The project’s collaboration with Fungi Natur, a mushroom supplier from northern Spain, reinforces its premise: that authorship can be distributed, and that creation is not solely human.

Morilla resists spectacle in favour of attainment. Ritual Device does not seek to impress—it listens. In doing so, it proposes a subtle but radical shift: from representation to co-existence, from subject to system.