Walk through any damp woodland in the British countryside and you are walking across a massive, hidden intelligence network. Most people ignore what is happening right beneath their boots. They spot a toadstool, maybe kick it by accident, and keep walking. But a major new contemporary art exhibition opening at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery in Exeter aims to shatter that narrow view.
The show, titled Living Labyrinths, proves that fungi aren't just woodland cleanup crews or pizza toppings. They are active cultural players, biological marvels, and musical collaborators. And honestly, it is about time we started paying attention to them. Building on this theme, you can find more in: What Is Really Happening Inside Auroville Right Now.
When Mushrooms Start Making Music
Can a mushroom actually make music? Sound designer and DJ Jason Singh decided to find out. Instead of sitting in a studio, he spent hours hunkered down in Devon’s Fingle and Yarner woods with a specific mission. He hooked up biofeedback sensors directly to mycelium networks—the vast, rootlike webs hiding underground.
He didn't just record ambient nature sounds. Every note you hear in his installation, The Intelligence Below, is a live translation of electrical voltage emitted by living fungi. Observers at ELLE have provided expertise on this matter.
Think about that for a second. The electrical pulses shifting through underground networks are converted into audio frequencies. Singh calls it a way to tune into living systems that usually operate completely outside our sensory awareness. Sure, he got some strange looks from hikers while standing in the middle of the woods with his gear. But the resulting soundscape changes how you think about forest floors forever. Fungi aren't just sitting there. They are humming with activity.
Beatrix Potter Was a Mycologist First
Most people know Beatrix Potter as the creative genius behind Peter Rabbit. They picture her writing cozy children's books about hedgehogs in waistcoats. They miss the real story entirely.
Long before her books gained global fame, Potter was deeply obsessed with mycology. She spent years meticulously painting and studying mushroom spores, developing independent theories about how fungi reproduce. The scientific establishment of Victorian England shut her out because she was a woman without institutional backing.
At the Exeter exhibition, rare watercolour studies loaned by the Victoria and Albert Museum put her scientific rigor on full display. Beside them sits a contemporary sculpture titled In Balance by artist Jo Pearl. The sculpture honors Potteromyces asteroxylicola, a prehistoric fossilised fungus named directly after Potter in 2023 after researchers identified it within Natural History Museum collections. History finally caught up to what she knew all along.
Mapping the Human Mycobiome
Fungi usually get associated with deep forest soil or decaying logs. Artist Gemma Anderson-Tempini decided to look somewhere much closer to home: inside the human body.
Collaborating with scientists from the University of Exeter's MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, Anderson-Tempini created a detailed visual map of her own mycobiome—the specific fungal communities living inside her. She didn't use standard art store supplies for the project either. She ventured out into the Devon landscape to gather raw materials, collecting red sandstone from Exmouth and rich chocolate-brown soil from Killerton, then grinding them down by hand to make her own watercolours.
Every single human carries an active fungal ecology. Until now, nobody bothered to draw it. While modern books have popularized forest ecology, this work turns the lens inward. We are walking ecosystems, and fungi make up a critical chunk of that internal puzzle.
Why the South West Became a Hub for Fungi Culture
Exeter’s RAMM didn't choose this topic by accident. Curator Lara Goodband spent five years pulling the exhibition together, noting that the south-west of England has an ideal climate for it. It is damp, mild, and practically built for mushrooms.
Beyond the weather, local culture holds a deep fascination with the kingdom. You have ecologists studying soil remediation alongside folks interested in the psychoactive properties of wild mushrooms, paired with folklorists tracking ancient fairy ring myths. Victorian archive specimens of bizarre stinkhorns and bird's nest fungi sit right alongside cutting-edge digital soundscapes.
Interest in this space exploded recently, largely fueled by books like Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life. People are waking up to the fact that plants rely entirely on fungal networks to share nutrients and send distress signals. They are the invisible glue holding terrestrial ecosystems together.
If you happen to be near Devon before February, go look at the exhibition. If you cannot make it, stop looking at mushrooms as passive plants. They are closer to animals than plants anyway, and they are running the world from underneath your feet.
