Watch a Mushroom Play a Keyboard Through Electronic Sensors

Mushrooms make delicious ingredients in savory recipes. According to Boing Boing, they also make catchy music. In the video above shared by the outlet, you can watch a mushroom “play” a keyboard. But who’s behind the funky (or rather, fungi) music, and how did they pull it off? 

Bionic and the Wires, an ensemble based in Manchester, UK, made it possible. They grow plants and mushrooms to make electronic music. Certain processes in these organisms, such as photosynthesis and growth, produce electrical bio-signals that can be harnessed to power simple devices. The group attached sensors to the mushrooms to capture these vibrations, which were then converted into signals that moved the robot arms and resulted in the “performance” captured in the video.

Bionic and the Wires’ YouTube channel consists of 16 videos in which a plant or mushroom plays an instrument. “Mushroom Playing Keyboard” is their most popular video, followed by “Mushroom Playing a Handpan.” Bionic and the Wires’ plants and fungi also play the violin, the glockenspiel, and the drums. Although this isn’t the first instance of sedentary lifeforms producing music via electronics, Bionic and the Wires puts a spin on the science by giving their mushrooms and plants robotic arms, which makes it seem like they are in control of the beat.

Other artists blending music and biology include MycoLyco, a mycological researcher who connects his pink mushrooms to synthesizers as they “talk.” Nerdist shares that the creator has streamed live mushroom shows for his audience, and that he even eats his mushrooms after they’re done performing. The Guardian reports that Tarun Nayar‘s “organismic music,” used to create ambient soundscapes, has gained widespread popularity as well. The electronic artist and former biologist has over 900,000 followers and 21.3 million likes on TikTok.

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