Fungalist massive! Scientist makes electro MUSIC out of mushrooms by wiring them up to his synthesiser
- Former biologist Tarun Nayar shares the otherworldly music on TikTok
- He has become an internet sensation and even has his own Spotify account
A completely bonkers TikTok account has gone viral, after a man found out that mushroom produce biolectric signals, which he tranformed into bizarre music.
Musician and former biologist Tarun Nayar – who goes by @modernbiology on TikTok – has wowed the internet after sharing clips of him plugging fungi into a synthesiser and creating beats.
Mr Nayar, who is from Vancouver, Canada, has now revealed the method behind his whacky music career.
And he even has his own Spotify account – which has a whopping 11,341 monthly listeners.
To be more technical about what the musician does, the phenomenon is called biodata sonification, which essentially measures microcurrent fluctuations occurring across the surface of a plant.
Mr Nayar hooks up the fungi to a modular synth to transform their bioelectrical signals into electronic music – and this tech can work on just about any living organism.
In explaining how the mushrooms make music, Mr Nayar shared an interesting video which has garnered over 30,000 views.
He set up some mushrooms in his back garden alongside a synthesiser, he said: ‘As you can see these two electrodes are sending a really small current through the mushroom, and as the mushroom’s electrical activity changes over time, there’s note changes on the synthesiser.
‘So it’s like a really nice way of listening to the life energy of a plant or fungus.
‘And right now he or she or they seem to be stoked about all the attention.’
To be clear, the mushrooms are not actually making the music themselves, or deliberately choosing which notes we hear.
The device the musician uses only translate biological processes into frequencies that he then turn into music.
In his other viral videos, the musician can be seen embedding electrodes in the plants and changing up the frequencies on the sound board.
In turn, he creates amazing music that sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack of a ’80s sci-fi film.
And because changes in bioelectricity trigger pitch changes in synthesisers, this can add space echoes and the differences in pitches to create weird and hypnotic sounds.
This has taught scientists more about mushrooms and how they communicate with one another, MixMag report.
And the videos Mr Nayar shares have wowed the internet, as social media users have been left astonished by what he creates.
In one video that has gone viral and garnered over 1.1 million views, Mr Nayar shared a clip of him making music from a long, phallus looking fungi – called the desert shaggy mane mushroom.
And TikTok users have urged the TikToker to post more music and videos for this particular fungi on his pages, with one writing: ‘make a Spotify for the mushrooms bro.’
A second person wrote: ‘These r my favorite videos.’
Someone else said: ‘This is awesome.’
While another person jokingly put: ‘Sounds exactly how you expect it to.’
A fourth TikTok user wrote: ‘my brain melted hearing this,’ as another chimed in saying: ‘I like this it calms me.’
One more person said: ‘Reminded me of crazy frog at the beginning.’
And a second comedically wrote: ‘Mushroom says to the other mushrooms: “we are getting probed again by an alien”.’
Mr Nayar has also previously experimented by making music with a range of fruits and plants, including watermelon, cocoa, mango, seaweed and cactus – all of which produced unique and interesting sounds.
