“FungiSync: Merging Cyberdelic Mixed Realities” by Hu, Hu, Lin, Huang and Tao – ACM SIGGRAPH HISTORY ARCHIVES

“FungiSync: Merging Cyberdelic Mixed Realities” by Hu, Hu, Lin, Huang and Tao

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    FungiSync: Merging Cyberdelic Mixed Realities

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    FungiSync is a somaesthetic mixed reality participatory ritual inspired by cyberdelic culture and fungal wisdom, exploring collective intersubjectivity through asymmetric mixed reality swapping. Participants hold masquerade-style, mushroom-decorated masks, each featuring a distinct, audio-reactive psychedelic augmented reality overlay—underscoring how technology-mediated realities can become asymmetrical and “techno-autistic.” Traditional social protocols, such as handshakes, have been reprogrammed—upon bodily contact, these mixed realities merge or swap, mirroring fungi’s collaborative resource exchange. This process blurs the boundaries between individuals and dissolves binary perspectives between “you” and “me”. FungiSync exposes the impact of technology-mediated asymmetries while proposing an alternative: fostering a non-dualistic discourse that echoes fungal interdependence.

References:


    [1] Chris Frith and Uta Frith. 2005. Theory of mind. Current biology 15, 17 (2005), R644–R645.

    [2] Botao Amber Hu, Yuchen Zhang, Yilan Elan Tao, and Tongzhou Yu. 2024. HoloKit: Demonstrating an Open-Source Smartphone-Based Mixed Reality Headset for Mixed Reality Design Education. In Companion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Melbourne VIC, Australia) (UbiComp ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 205–209.

    [3] Theodoros Papatheodorou and Jessica Wolpert. 2024. Algorithmic Amplification. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Art Gallery. 1–1.

    [4] Mateo Sanchez Petrement. 2023. Historicizing psychedelics: counterculture, renaissance, and the neoliberal matrix. Frontiers in Sociology 8 (2023), 1114523.

    [5] Merlin Sheldrake. 2021. Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures. Random House Trade Paperbacks.

    [6] Richard Shusterman. 1999. Somaesthetics: A disciplinary proposal. The journal of aesthetics and art criticism 57, 3 (1999), 299–313.


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