Sororitas ex Mycelio

Sororitas ex Mycelio is a collective working with performance, sound, and living systems.

Their practice treats fungi and other nonhuman organisms as collaborators, generating immersive works that merge bio-data sonification, choreography, and transmedia storytelling to explore entangled ecologies and altered ways of perceiving.

Suomi

Sororitas ex Mycelio is an interdisciplinary artistic research project combining queer sound ecology, performance, and craft-based practice. Working with bio-sensing, installation, and VR theatre, we develop alterLife: interBeing — What the Forest Remembers, a speculative narrative in which time travellers return to a future Earth shaped by ecological dysbiosis, seeking to reconnect with what remains of a primordial forest intelligence.

The project is rooted in Suomi (Finland), centered in the Boreal Forest region, where it unfolds through residencies at Mustarinda, the Old Mill, Ars Bioarctica, and beyond. Each site operates as a satellite within a distributed network, shaping the work through its specific ecologies, seasonal rhythms, and communities. From boreal forest systems to Arctic transitional zones, these environments inform both the material processes, such as fungal and lichen biodata sensing, and the evolving narrative structure.

This research extends across geographies, later connecting to Boreal regions in Canada, where parallel ecologies and environmental conditions offer new contexts for continuation and exchange. Together, these sites form a translocal network of forest systems, linked through shared climatic pressures and more-than-human relations.

Grounded in critical fabulation and environmental realities, the work does not imagine a distant future but emerges from present ecological conditions. As queer, feminist artists, we approach this process through deep listening, collective presence, and care, engaging with living systems as collaborators rather than resources.

Across these regions, the project grows as a multispecies, relational practice, where each phase contributes to an interconnected whole, mirroring the very systems it seeks to understand.

The work operates across two interconnected audience modalities: a local, embodied installation-performance influencing environmental conditions in real time. and a remote, networked VR performance-environment.

Local participants form the physical and bio-electrical foundation of the system, while remote participants act as a distributed atmospheric layer.

Together, these audiences co-create a shared, multispecies environment whose stability and evolution depend on collective attention and relational dynamics.

Costume Concept: Living Carriers / Bio-Signal Bodies

Wearable ecologies
Bodies that are already in transition
Neither fully human nor fully environmental

Hybrid Material Stack

Combine:

algae yarn / bio-filament
wool / linen (local)
mycelium-based elements (if possible)
reclaimed textiles
translucent membranes (silicone, bio-plastic, agar experiments)

Colour Palette:

lichen greens
soft greys
fungal whites
peat browns
pale mineral tones
occasional bioluminescent hints (subtle)

The performance costumes are developed as wearable ecologies, constructed from biomaterials including algae-based yarns and locally sourced fibres. Rather than functioning as static garments, they act as evolving surfaces that reflect processes of symbiosis, growth, and transformation central to the work.

Developed in collaboration with local artists and queer youth participants, the costumes emerge through a series of workshops that treat material-making as a form of collective world-building. Contributions from participants become embedded within the garments, creating a shared authorship that extends into the performance itself.

The body is not wearing the system
The body is inside the system

CARRIER I (Tosca) — The Archive Body

Concept:
A body that holds memory. Denser, sedimented, layered.
Feels like something that has accumulated time.

CARRIER II (LPuska) — The Signal Body

Concept:
A body that transmits and disperses. Lighter, more porous.
Feels like something that is becoming atmosphere.

The Proposal

alterLife: interBeing
Immersive fabulations of what the forest remembers

"The forest is queer. Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on." J.R.R. Tolkien

We approach the boreal forest (taiga) as both a personal and planetary space, an intimate place of belonging and a biome vital to Earth’s climate and biodiversity. We do not see the forest as a backdrop but as a collaborator: a living network of trees, fungi, lichens, and mosses entangled in cycles of survival and transformation.

alterLife: What the Forest Remembers is a performative installation and live, networked VR environment composed of hand-blown glass terraria embedded with gold as a conductive element. Each sculptural form houses living plants native to Finland’s Boreal regions, cultivating contained ecosystems within fragile, transparent membranes. These terraria function simultaneously as habitat, instrument, and interface. The glass bodies resonate and amplify subtle vibrations, air movement, touch, breath, and the micro-activity of the enclosed plants, while embedded conductive elements act as sensors to register bio-electrical signals. When activated by human presence, the sculptures become points of contact through which plant, environment, and body are brought into relation.

Grounded in queer ecology, the project approaches the boreal forest as a network of entangled, interdependent relations that exceed fixed boundaries between species. This framework extends into the design of the installation itself, where participants are invited to connect through touch and shared circuitry, dissolving the separation between bodies and foregrounding collective, multispecies experience.

Participants engage the forms by wearing or holding them, completing circuits through touch. Galvanic skin response, breath, and environmental fluctuations are captured alongside plant bio-activity, producing a shared field of bio-electrical signals across multiple bodies. As participants connect with one another, the system shifts from individual interaction to collective co-composition. This biological and human data is transmitted in real time into a live, server-based VR environment. Within this space, performers and remote participants inhabit an evolving virtual ecosystem whose visual, spatial, and sonic conditions are continuously modulated by these incoming signals. The virtual world does not operate independently; it is activated and shaped by the combined presence of plants and participants in the physical installation. The installation is conceived as a 360º immersive environment, with terraria suspended overhead yet accessible to the body. As engagement intensifies, the space transitions from dispersed interaction to a collectively activated field.

Live VR Environment: Networked Ecosystem

The bio-electrical signals generated in the installation are transmitted in real time into a live, server-based VR environment. Within this space, performers and remote participants inhabit an evolving virtual ecosystem whose visual, spatial, and sonic conditions are continuously modulated by these incoming signals. The virtual environment does not operate independently; it is activated and shaped by the combined presence of plants and participants in the physical installation. Bio-electrical signals are captured and translated in real time using custom systems developed in TouchDesigner, enabling a continuous exchange between biological processes and virtual space.

Performance: Keepers of Continuity

Within this system, L. Puska and Tosca Terán perform as Keepers of Continuity, mediating the flow between biological, human, and virtual processes. Their role is not to control the system, but to attune and guide it—responding to shifts in bio-electrical activity, audience interaction, and environmental conditions as they unfold.

Performing simultaneously in the physical installation and the VR environment, their actions establish a continuous bridge between spaces. Movements enacted in VR are echoed as gestural, ritual forms in the physical environment, creating a mirrored choreography across realities.

Using real-time visual and sensing systems, the performers interpret and modulate incoming data streams, integrating plant signals, human interaction, and environmental inputs into a cohesive, evolving field.

Culmination: Collective Activation

The performance culminates in a moment of shared connection. As participants complete circuits through touch and proximity, the accumulated bio-electrical signals intensify, rendering the Boreal forest perceptible across sound, image, and virtual space. In this moment, the forest is not represented, it emerges through the combined presence of plants, bodies, and attention. The installation and VR environment function as a single multispecies system: a feedback loop in which biological processes, human interaction, and virtual space continuously co-produce one another.

The work asks not only how we perceive the forest, but how we might enter into its processes, becoming part of a system that listens, responds, and remembers.

The development of alterLife: What the Forest Remembers is supported through a series of research residencies, including an Old Mill residency and awarded residencies with Mustarinda and Ars Bioarctica. These contexts provide direct engagement with Finland’s Boreal forest ecosystems and access to site-specific research environments at the edge of Boreal–Arctic transition zones. This phase focuses on field sensing, material development, and the refinement of biodata translation systems within ecological conditions that are central to the work. The project is further developed in collaboration with VR choreographers and 3D environment artists, supporting the creation of a responsive virtual ecosystem that is both technically robust and performatively grounded. These collaborations extend the work beyond installation into a fully realized live VR theatre framework.

Sororitas ex Mycelio brings together the complementary practices of L. Puska and Tosca Terán, whose collaboration is grounded in a shared focus on ecological systems, embodiment, and multisensory environments. Their work intersects through a commitment to more-than-human perspectives, material experimentation, and performative installation.

L. Puska’s practice is rooted in material research, sculpture, and embodied performance, with a strong connection to Finnish Boreal forest environments and local research networks. Her work grounds the project in physical form, developing the wearable glass terraria and their relationship to the body as sites of care, containment, and transformation.

Tosca Terán contributes extensive experience in bioart, immersive media, and live VR performance, alongside long-term engagement with the Canadian Boreal region through biodata collection and ecological fieldwork. Her work forms the technical and conceptual foundation for the project’s real-time multispecies systems.

Together, their collaboration connects Boreal ecosystems across Finland and Canada, positioning the forest as a translocal living system that exceeds national boundaries. Integrating biological sensing, sculptural form, and live VR performance into a unified, responsive environment.

For our "alterLife" fabulation, we position ourselves as keepers of continuity revisiting a crucial moment in the Earth's history. Our placement begins in the Northern Hemisphere, visiting the Boreal, asking her to recall the time when the human symbionts were held by the Gregorian Calendar, cutting her down, mining her humus, destroying the networks that connected her across Earth. Reconnecting with what is known as the Vernal Equinox, we intend to follow a circular path, a Lunar calendar, as a way of guiding our movement and decolonizing ourselves.

Our goal is to begin to develop the early stages of this project in the second season of 2026.

The Terrariums

Hand-blown glass terraria embedded with gold as a conductive element.

Each sculptural form houses living plants native to the Suomi Boreal, cultivating small, contained ecosystems within fragile, transparent membranes.

These objects function simultaneously as habitat and instrument. The glass bodies resonate, amplify, and translate subtle vibrations, air movement, touch, and the micro-activity of the enclosed plants, into evolving soundscapes. When activated by human presence, the sculptures become interfaces through which the body encounters plant life sonically and vibrationally.

Audience participants engage the forms by wearing them, completing a circuit between human and non-human systems. In this act, the body becomes a conduit, entangled within a living acoustic ecology.

At a time when human life is increasingly detached from non-human voices, this work responds to the accelerating loss of natural soundscapes and the ongoing extraction of forest ecologies. As environments are silenced through urbanization, climate change, ongoing war, and industrial expansion, our sensory relationship to the living world is diminished.

By cultivating native plant species within glass enclosures, the work stages a tension between preservation and isolation: a living system held in suspension. The terrarium becomes both refuge and warning, a contained ecology that echoes broader conditions of environmental fragmentation.

Through sound, the installation reactivates listening as a mode of ecological relation. It proposes that plants are not a passive background, but active participants in shared environments, carriers of subtle signals, rhythms, and presences that persist beyond human perception.

Glass, in this context, is not neutral. It is a barrier, an amplifier, and a lens, separating while making perceptible.

The work asks: what forms of attention are required to hear what remains?

TouchDesigner

Building networks with TouchDesigner enables the use of varied sensorial data and physical sensors/scanners.

We are currently conceptualizing the physical installation to present within a 360º space with the terrariums suspended from the ceiling yet wearable by the audience.

Tosca and Laura perform in both the physical space and the VR space. Their movements in VR become a gestural ritual in the physical space.

The climax of the performance is through the audience connecting and making the Boreal visible.

Awarded residencies 2026- 2027 toward the alterLife project

Our residency starts September 2026

Vanha Kaivos Residency is located in Outokumpu, North Karelia

We will be working in the Kiisuhalli
A unique, huge, echoing space with cold conditions in winter. The space is impressive and has an echo that lasts for several seconds!

Our plan is to play back field recordings and voice readings to record them within Kiisuhalli, as well as the mine tunnels- if allowed.

Our residency starts November 2026 and runs through December

Mustarinda Residency is located at the top of the second highest hill in Kainuu, on the north-eastern edge of the Paljakka Nature Park

Ecotones.

We are very excited for the opportunity to stay at the edge of Paljakka Nature Park!

Even in winter months. This allows us quiet moments within the primeval forests nearby. The Mustarinda house is powered by geothermal heating, solar panels and wind power.

We look forward to joining the shared thinking about the theme of ecotones, and to use the opportunity to reflect on our practice in relation to the

Vaara-Kainuu Art National Park initiative

Our residency starts February 2027 through March 2027

Ars Bioarctica fosters art-science research residencies, with a focus on responding to the subarctic environment and emergent ecological discourses. The locale’s unique ecology, social and economic cultures, as well as the scientific context and infrastructure of the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station act as a catalyst for site-sensitive research.

Her practice has evolved through a critical engagement with materiality and its ecological implications. Trained in metalsmithing, Terán initially worked with reclaimed and recycled materials, creating hand-built objects and sound-based installations. Over time, she became increasingly aware that even recycled materials remain entangled in extractive systems, prompting a shift in both methodology and material approach.

This transition led her toward bioart and the exploration of alternative, living materials. Working with mycelium, she began cultivating sculptural forms, films, and substrate-like surfaces that grow rather than are imposed, reframing her role from maker to collaborator. This shift also extended into a reconsideration of other materials, including the high energy demands of glass, and toward lower-impact processes such as clay and ceramic experimentation using local earths and techniques like Obvara firing.

Across these material shifts, Terán’s work has moved toward systems that are responsive, relational, and more-than-human, where form emerges through interaction rather than extraction. This trajectory directly informs her current practice, in which biological processes, human bodies, and technological systems are brought into dialogue as co-creative agents.

Within alterLife: What the Forest Remembers, this approach manifests through the development of real-time systems that translate bio-electrical signals from plants and human participants into immersive audiovisual environments. Drawing on her experience with biodata sonification, modular synthesis, and networked VR performance, Terán constructs frameworks in which living systems actively shape the conditions of the work.

Rather than representing ecological systems, her practice enables them to operate as dynamic participants, forming the basis for a multispecies feedback loop that links physical installation, human interaction, and virtual space.

L. Puska’s practice is rooted in sculpture, glass, and embodied performance, with a strong connection to Finnish Boreal environments and local artistic and research networks. Working as a performance artist with technical training in glass, she brings deep material knowledge and a sensitivity to form, balance, and structural presence.

Her work centers on the relationship between body, object, and environment, asking how we live with the forms we create and how these forms shape our behaviors, perceptions, and responsibilities. Through performative installation, she develops situations in which the body is placed in direct relation to material structures, emphasizing proximity, weight, fragility, and care.

Within alterLife: What the Forest Remembers, Puska grounds the project in the physical. Shaping how participants encounter and inhabit the work. Anchored in the body and its capacity for attention, connection, and responsibility.

Through her collaboration with Tosca Terán, Puska’s practice expands into dialogue with more-than-human systems, positioning the installation as a site where material, biological, and human relations are brought into shared experience.