A Human Connection

A Giant Interactive Glowing Mushroom Art Piece

This piece invites you to ignite your sense of wonder and play by making a connection to the mushroom and to those around you. You're encouraged to make a connection by placing your left and right hand on the handprints on the stem of the mushroom and watch as the mushroom lights up above your head.

Keep holding your hands on the handprints to watch as the colors slowly drift through the different hues. Get all three pairs connected at the same time to see the mushroom dance through the rainbow in unison. Discover the full wonder of the piece by creating a circle of people holding hands and then include the mushroom as one of the people. Notice what happens when any two people break the connection.

The piece was inspired by a human powered circuit experiment that I participated in as a middle schooler. My science teacher had the entire class form a circle and hold hands. She then had two of the kids disconnect and hold onto a sound maker. The device started buzzing. But when any two people stopped holding hands, the device turned off. The whole thing fascinated me, and I thought it was so cool! We were a living circuit! It was magical to me that the human body was conductive enough to act as a circuit.

This piece captures that wonder and joy by using conductive 3D printer filament and copper tape to allow the human body to safely connect to and close a circuit which then triggers the Arduino to turn on the LEDs. The stem of the mushroom has three sets of handprints that each light up a subset of the LEDs on the mushroom allowing multiple people to experience the piece at once. The handprints can be connected by a single person or even a circle of people holding hands.

An interactive giant mushroom that invites you to touch the pairs of handprints on the stem and play with the light that your touch triggers. 

Photos