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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09272 |
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| _version_ | 1866914380971507712 |
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| author | Hu, Botao Amber Huang, Danlin Tao, Yilan Elan Hu, Xiaobo Aaron Lin, Rem RunGu |
| author_facet | Hu, Botao Amber Huang, Danlin Tao, Yilan Elan Hu, Xiaobo Aaron Lin, Rem RunGu |
| contents | Mycorrhizal networks -- often called nature's ``wood-wide web'' -- are vast underground mycelial systems that connect individual plants through countless hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi joining with plant roots. Through these hyphal webs, resources and signals -- carbohydrates, minerals, and biochemical cues -- are mutualistically exchanged and redistributed across plants, sustaining forests as relational symbiotic ecologies rather than isolated individuals. What is it like to be a plant within the wood-wide web? We present \emph{FungiSync}, a multi-person, co-located mixed reality (MR) experience that translates mycorrhizal interdependence into a felt, somaesthetic participatory ritual. Participants embody different forest plants by holding masquerade-style MR headset masks with wood-branch-like handles decorated with mushrooms. In MR, each participant perceives a distinct, audio-reactive psychedelic augmented reality overlay -- composed of resource-representing visual elements -- layered atop a shared physical terrain, symbolizing an individualized digital \emph{umwelt} (perceptual world). FungiSync reprograms human hand touch into a metaphorical mycorrhizal exchange. When participants touch hands, their digital \emph{umwelten} begin to entangle: visual elements leak, mix, and merge across perspectives, as if hyphae were forging new connections and carrying resources between hosts within a larger mycelial network. By making mycorrhizal interdependence perceptible through embodied contact, FungiSync invites participants to feel with \emph{fungal epistemics} -- a more-than-human alternative way of knowing grounded in symbiotic relationality as both an aesthetic experience and an ethical orientation -- offering a critique of the accelerated individualism characterizing our technology-mediated posthuman era. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_09272 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Entangling Like Mycorrhizae: Mixing Realities Through Touch in "FungiSync" Hu, Botao Amber Huang, Danlin Tao, Yilan Elan Hu, Xiaobo Aaron Lin, Rem RunGu Human-Computer Interaction Mycorrhizal networks -- often called nature's ``wood-wide web'' -- are vast underground mycelial systems that connect individual plants through countless hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi joining with plant roots. Through these hyphal webs, resources and signals -- carbohydrates, minerals, and biochemical cues -- are mutualistically exchanged and redistributed across plants, sustaining forests as relational symbiotic ecologies rather than isolated individuals. What is it like to be a plant within the wood-wide web? We present \emph{FungiSync}, a multi-person, co-located mixed reality (MR) experience that translates mycorrhizal interdependence into a felt, somaesthetic participatory ritual. Participants embody different forest plants by holding masquerade-style MR headset masks with wood-branch-like handles decorated with mushrooms. In MR, each participant perceives a distinct, audio-reactive psychedelic augmented reality overlay -- composed of resource-representing visual elements -- layered atop a shared physical terrain, symbolizing an individualized digital \emph{umwelt} (perceptual world). FungiSync reprograms human hand touch into a metaphorical mycorrhizal exchange. When participants touch hands, their digital \emph{umwelten} begin to entangle: visual elements leak, mix, and merge across perspectives, as if hyphae were forging new connections and carrying resources between hosts within a larger mycelial network. By making mycorrhizal interdependence perceptible through embodied contact, FungiSync invites participants to feel with \emph{fungal epistemics} -- a more-than-human alternative way of knowing grounded in symbiotic relationality as both an aesthetic experience and an ethical orientation -- offering a critique of the accelerated individualism characterizing our technology-mediated posthuman era. |
| title | Entangling Like Mycorrhizae: Mixing Realities Through Touch in "FungiSync" |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09272 |