Abstract
Inoculated: the WiFi-Eating Organism is a living sculpture and hybrid organism born from the entanglement of fungi and wireless infrastructure. Drawing on Lynn Margulis’ theory of Symbiogenesis (Margulis 1981), the structural logic of lichens (Nash 2008)—symbiotic life forms composed of fungi and photosynthetic partners—and the speculative ecologies imagined by writers like Sue Burke (Burke 2018), Inoculated envisions a future organism not adapted to sunlight, but to the electromagnetic signals saturating contemporary ecosystems. Rather than photosynthesis, it speculates a form of radiosynthesis. Positioned within a lineage of non-anthropocentric design, and influenced by thinkers such as Donna Haraway (Haraway 2008), the project reimagines technology as both an environmental condition and a potential symbiotic partner.
The project poses a central question: Who has the right to evolve, with whom, and how? As humans continue to transform the environment through both visible changes like urbanization and deforestation, and subtle but invasive invisible transformations, we are not only emitting carbon but introducing new energetic conditions into the atmosphere. Inoculated proposes that technology is no longer a uniquely human domain, but an ecological pressure. A variable in the ecosystem that nature might absorb, reshape, or eventually co-opt.
