Linz, Austria. September 3–7, 2025 — Fernando Fernández took part in the latest Ars Electronica, one of the world’s leading festivals of art, technology and society, held in Linz since 1979. Under the 2025 theme «PANIC yes/no», he contributed to two projects and introduced Sinfonía Biótica to European creative networks.
You can read the MOSAIC / UOC article on echoes from Ars Electronica here:
Computational Compost: digital waste and organic fertility
One of the projects I worked on was Computational Compost (2023), directed by Marina Otero Verzier and produced at Tabakalera (Donostia). The piece explores the environmental cost of data storage: behind the metaphor of the cloud lie infrastructures that consume energy, water and raw materials, and emit heat and CO₂.
The prototype links technology and ecology: waste heat from computers running simulations of the origin of the universe powers a vermicomposting system where worms and microorganisms turn organic matter into fertile soil. Celestial and biological bodies are tied together by metabolism, fermentation, decomposition and regeneration.
The work also includes a film centred on the quipu MCHAP 0780, a pre-Columbian device at the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art in Santiago, inviting us to imagine other digital futures. Fernando took part in the installation at Linz, helping to integrate the project into the festival space.
Ritual Device for Fungal Humus: the sound of fungal metabolism
Alongside this, Fernando collaborated on The Ritual Song of Fungal Humus by Santiago Morilla, together with Joaku de Sotavento and Coco Moya (Menhir). A shiitake-growing greenhouse becomes a sound instrument where fungi and visitors produce polyphonic landscapes in real time.
Electrodes capture the electrical activity of fungal metabolism and convert it into MIDI signals that trigger vocal samples by Coco Moya, inspired by Baka pygmy polyphonies. Floor sensors register visitors’ steps, adding higher tones that layer over the deeper voices of the mycelium. The piece’s subtitle captures this: «We Should All Be Musicians, Dancers, and Mushroom Cultivators (At the Same Time)».
The MYCOTUNE v.1.0 system—battery-powered and recordable—also allows biosonification of other living organisms outdoors. The work invites us to reflect on what it means to care for healthy soil and how that care can transform growing, eating and living with other forms of life.
Sinfonía Biótica: presence in European networks
Ars Electronica was also an opportunity to present Sinfonía Biótica — interspecies creative ecosystems, the virtual reality experience that uses electrical signals from living organisms to generate immersive, generative environments. The aim was to share the research, connect with people interested in the work, open collaborations and build networks within Creative Europe.
The connection with projects like Ritual Device for Fungal Humus is direct: both use Biodata devices (open-source Arduino ESP-32–based hardware) to amplify electrical signals from living beings and turn them into MIDI data, and both use sonification to translate interspecies communication. Sinfonía Biótica explores the above-ground world of trees; Ritual Device, the underground world of mycelium. Together they extend an ecosystem of works that make the complexity of life networks audible.
A festival for reflection
Ars Electronica 2025 brought together 122,000 visitors and 1,472 artists, scientists and activists from 83 countries around the tension between panic and action in the face of AI, climate breakdown and social change. Fernando participated with projects that place art, science and ecology on the same plane—where digital waste can nourish soil and fungi can make music with their inhabitants.
The presence in Linz helps make visible the work of MolinoLab—the art and culture space in western Salamanca that he founded—within European international circuits and opens paths for future collaborations.
