Lawrence Millman's presentation Fungipedia and other Tales is now available to MST members to watch on the meetings video page.
A presentation on adventures in ethnomycology, ecology, music and fungi history. Lawrence Millman discusses how mushrooms are much more closely related to humans than to plants, how they engage in sex, how insects farm them, and how certain species happily dine on leftover radiation, cockroach antennae, and dung. He explores the lives of individuals like African American scientist George Washington Carver, Beatrix Potter, and Gordon Wasson, Millman considers why fungi are among the most significant organisms on our planet and how they are currently being affected by destructive human behavior, including climate change.
Author-mycologist Lawrence Millman has written 17 books, including such titles as Fascinating Fungi of New England, Last Places, A Kayak Full of Ghosts, Lost in the Arctic, Giant Polypores & Stoned Reindeer, and — most recently — At the End of the World. He has done fungal inventories in places as diverse as Iceland, Honduras, Nunavik, Bermuda, Belize, Western Samoa, and Nantucket Island. In 2006, he found a polypore (Echinodontium ballouii) previously thought to be extinct. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
The long-anticipated film Fantastic Fungi is finally here, and the MST will be onsite for the a special one-night screening at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
Sunday, December 1st 6:15pm Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, 605 Bloor Street West, Toronto
After the screening and Q&A, ArtSci Salon invites movie-goers to join them at Paupers Pub (across from the cinema) to continue the conversation.
And join the MST in partnership with ArtSci Salon for Fantastic Fungi Futures, an interdisciplinary discussion on November 29th. See https://myctor.org/uab for details.
Fantastic Fungi is a vivid journey into the mysterious subterranean world of mycelium and its fruit— the mushroom. A story that begins 3.5 billion years ago, fungi makes the soil that supports life, connecting vast systems of roots from plants and trees all over the planet, like an underground Internet. Through the eyes of renowned scientists and mycologists like Paul Stamets, best-selling authors Michael Pollan, Eugenia Bone, Andrew Weil and others, we experience the power, beauty and complexity of the fungi kingdom. The film is a blueprint for what connects all humanity and the natural world. There is much to learn from the mycelium network, and Fantastic Fungi is an inspiring place to begin the process of bringing us together as interconnected creators of our world.
During this workshop Tosca Teran introduces the amazing potential of Mycelium for collaboration at the intersection of art and science. Participants learn how to transform their kitchens and closets in to safe, mini-Mycelium biolabs and leave the workshop with a live Mycelium planter/bowl form, as well as a wide array of possibilities of how they might work with this sustainable bio-material.
Mycelium= Essentially, the term mycelium is used to refer to the thread-like structures of fungi. Mycelium (plural mycelia) develops from the fungal hyphae. While mycelia plays an important role in reproduction (vegetative parts of fungi), they are also involved in the decomposition of organic matter, which makes them very important in nature. -Microscope Master
Tosca Teran, aka Nanotopia, is an Multi-disciplinary artist. Her work has been featured at SOFA New York, Culture Canada, and The Toronto Design Exchange. Tosca has been awarded artist residencies with The Ayatana Research Program in Ottawa and The Icelandic Visual Artists Association through Sím, Reykjavik Iceland and Nes artist residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland. In 2019 she was one of the first Bio-Artists in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto in partnership with the Ontario Science Centre as part of the Alien Agencies Collective. A recipient of the 2019 BigCi Environmental Award at Wollemi National Park within the UNESCO World Heritage site in the Greater Blue Mountains. Tosca started collaborating artistically with Algae, Physarum polycephalum, and Mycelium in 2016, translating biodata from non-human organisms into music.
For further information please contact Joanne Hamblin, MST President at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
