Mycelium is a billion year old biotechnology. It powers entire ecosystems, recycles the dead, and NASA thinks we can probably use it to grow houses on Mars. Follow a mycelial network under a microscope and it looks very much alive. Which is why in speculative biology, architecture and computing, it’s being treated less as matter and more as a living system. Researchers are now using mycelial networks as experimental computing media, tapping into their electrical activity to build rudimentary biocomputers, shroom-robots, neuromorphic components that mimic how brains process signals, and self-sensing materials. In these projects, mycelium is the biomaterial computers are built from, the sensor that reads the world, and part of the processor itself. And once you start seeing fungi as a dense, living network, new possibilities emerge. What if this biology is something we can build with? Mycelium already runs underground logistics for entire ecosystems. And under controlled conditions, those same threads can be bio-engineered into dense, complex interlocking sheets. This is the start of materials that are programmed, not manufactured. So we did a bit of programming to build the softest mycelium leather jacket ever made. There’s currently just one in the world as it’s a concept piece to show what will become possible in the next decade. Currently it’s ours, as we built it. However we are of course open to offers. But please note, we think the jacket may be conscious… so you’d have to be extra nice to it.
