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1. the type of information you are looking for at this stage, and

2. your past relationship with feedback -- and capture these details in your journal entry for your documentation website before the class session

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Researching about type of plant to use

This week I was going over articles talking about art installations involving plants - using mushrooms. When I consulted Camilla, she suggested me to use oyster mushrooms. I looked further into the details as to why oyster mushrooms are better than other plant or mushroom species. The reasons are as follows:

• Bioelectric activity: Oyster mushrooms are known for their significant bioelectric activity, which makes them suitable for projects where monitoring and visualizing biological signals are essential. Their cellular responses to environmental changes can be more pronounced, providing clearer data for artistic interpretation.
• Ease of Cultivation: They are one of the easiest mushrooms to cultivate. This can be particularly advantageous for an art installation because you can grow them in various substrates, even on materials like coffee grounds, straw, or sawdust, which might be more accessible and sustainable for an art setting.
• Growth rate: They grow relatively quickly, reaching maturity in just a couple of weeks.

I browsed Amazon to search for Grow Your Mushroom kits to see how to cultivate my own mushrooms and also the pricing.

Visualization

Aside from the research, I started to play around with p5.js to sketch out basic patterns which can be manipulated based on the data inputs. For now, I have sketched a basic particle system that flows freely within the canvas as shown below.

I have also done basic research on the type of sensors/electrodes I’d use for data collection.

• Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) - <for humans> measures the electrical conductance of the skin, which changes in response to emotional arousal and other psychological processes.
• DIY electrodes - <mushrooms> using copper or silver wire is a cost-effective and customizable way to gather bioelectric data from your oyster mushrooms.
• Ag/AgCl Electrodes - Silver/Silver Chloride electrodes are commonly used in bio-sensing due to their stability and low polarization characteristics.