Kerosine chronicle. Greta-Fungus
Kerosine chronicles. Greta-Fungus
“Kerosene Chronicles. Greta-Fungus” is the second part of a trilogy about symbiosis between the technophilic Kerosene Fungus, machines, and humans.
The first part explored the Fungus-Machine pair. The second part is the creation of a hybrid virtual AI agent, grown through a biocybernetic interface to bring the worldviews of the Kerosene Fungus and the human closer together. A limbic system model, built with biofeedback, translates fungal physiological data and reactions into “mood.” This mood guides the AI agent’s behaviour, virtual body changes, and emotional tone in fungus-world relations. Real-time data (air traffic stats, maritime oil transport, accidents, oil spills, migration, politics) affect the fungus by changing its light and chemical medium and are assessed on a benefit-harm scale. Thus, a virtual political persona forms, conveying the worldview of an organism whose place in the human world is as a migrant with fluid gender and race, adaptive to shifting conditions.
The current stage of the trilogy is based on the unmodified Kerosene Fungus organism, but is conceived as an intermediate step towards the creation of a biocybernetic hybrid: Kerosene Fungus + human DNA + an AI agent evolving over time.
Project Structure:
There are three main blocks of the distributed installation:
Physical body (kerosene fungus, kerosene, water + Czapek’s mycological medium). The physical body can receive positive or negative stimuli based on incoming external data. Positive stimuli: fresh kerosene, water, glucose, aeration, darkness. Negative stimuli: exposure to light of varying spectra and intensities.
Virtual body (pseudo-hologram). It varies along the Fungus-Human scale and reflects the emotional states and reactions of the virtual personality to incoming external data and from the bioreactor.
Virtual personality (expresses itself on social media ? ).
A feedback loop is built between all three blocks, allowing for the gradual “growth” of a hybrid bio-cyber entity, Greta-Fungus, through a series of constant interactions.
This is organized using several AI agents as follows:
AI agent 1 searches, filters, and retrieves news from Google News Top and a number of specialized sites. The search focuses on events: a) having a global impact (wars, terrorism, political crises and decisions with global consequences), b) influencing changes in parameters specific to the Kerosene Fungus (flight delays and cancellations, plane crashes, drifting tankers with oil products, disabled AIS, changes in tanker routes, oil spills, natural and man-made disasters, destruction of oil infrastructure, destruction of “green” energy infrastructure, destruction in agriculture, deforestation, large fires on land, water and in the sky, weather data in the region of the bioreactor with the Kerosene Fungus, achievements of other technophilic organisms, biotechnological news, large migration flows).
photo Nada Zgank, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana
AI Agent 2 summarizes the news and evaluates its impact on the life and well-being of the Kerosene Fungus and the Human on a scale of -10 to +10. Based on the results of this evaluation, the virtual personality morphs along a scale of Fungus (100 percent) – Hybrid (50/50) – Human (100 percent). After the state of the virtual personality is determined, the emotional reaction of the current personality to the event is assessed, taking into account the previous emotional state of the virtual personality, the virtual body, and physical data from the bioreactor. The transition to a new state occurs smoothly, similar to the functioning of the physical limbic system, which has the ability to inhibit mental reactions in a living organism.
AI Agent 3 forms a pattern of physical stimuli through which the event is transmitted to the physical body of the Kerosene Fungus and then collects the reaction to this incoming data through such data as: changes in the absorption spectrum, changes in the acidity of the bioreactor environment, changes in the color of the environment, and changes in the amount of oxygen in the environment.
AI Agent 4, taking into account feedback from the bioreactor, refines the emotional pattern and creates a text response from the current virtual personality on social media. The post from the virtual personality is generated using language engines created for each of the three hypostases on the personality morphing scale (taking into account the actual current contribution of each hypostasis).
Photo: Nada Zgank, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana / where dogs run
Photo: Nada Zgank, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana
Simultaneously, the virtual body in the pseudo-hologram changes to allow the viewer to see what the distributed hybrid entity Greta-Fungus is feeling and what is happening to it. The morphing of the virtual body in the pseudo-hologram corresponds to the morphing of the virtual personality and their emotional response. Animations of the five body stages from Fungus to Human were previously created using a neural network. For each group of bodily states, groups of emotional reactions have been generated (fear – anxiety – interest – calm – joy). Each emotion in the group has an intensity scale (from 1 to 10) to relay the emotional pattern through the state of the virtual body. Each animation unit begins and ends with a neutral emotional state, allowing for relatively quick changes and demonstrations in Greta-Fungus’s behavior. Additionally, there are animations of transitions between different incarnations on the personality morphing scale (from Fungus to Human). Ultimately, the emotional pattern that arises in response to an event shapes the virtual body and its emotional state.
Thus, by organizing constant cycles of mutually influencing transformations of the physical parameters of the Kerosene Fungus and the virtual personality and their reactions to events in the outside world, we hope to gradually grow a bio-cyber-AI, an organism capable of broadcasting its worldview.
This is a slow process that has only just begun. But it’s crucial for us that AI’s avalanche-like learning incorporate not only human perspective and value systems, but also real-world data from a technophile organism that has survived the Anthropocene and managed to create an incredibly successful evolutionary strategy.
In our view, the Kerosene Fungus is an ideal agent for building horizontal relationships in the technobiosphere, and therefore its contribution to shaping the AI worldview is critically important.
Kerosine chronicles. Greta-Fungus
2025
Generative installation
Kerosene fungus (Amorphotheca resinae), kerosene, water, Czapek medium, AI agents, borosilicate glass bioreactor, sensors, silicone tubes, LED and LSD displays, spectrometer, Raspberry Pi controller, computer, software, glass lens, monitor
Programming: Sergey Mashkov, RuGu.
Produced by: Kersnikova Institute and Kapelica Gallery within the framework of [EUDigitalDeal]
Exhibitions:
2025 / Ljubljana / Galerija Kapelica / [EUDigitalDeal]: WHERE DOGS RUN «Kerosene Chronicles. Greta-Fungus» + ZORAN SRDIĆ JANEŽIČ «Code of Diversity»
