Mycelium is perhaps one of Nature’s most remarkable and wonderful underground networks fungi use to connect, communicate and exchange nutrients between plants and trees.
The artists at the Sixth Sense Festival currently running in Bengaluru’s Alembic City, bring the network alive through graphics, lights and sound as an immersive experience to the audience. Along with this, the artists want the audience to understand the concept of ‘Mycelial Imagination’ that literally runs Planet Earth. It is a metaphor drawn from the way fungi grow.
‘Mycelial Imagination’ refers to a way of thinking that is:
- Networked rather than linear
- Relational rather than individualistic
- Decentralised rather than hierarchical
- Interconnected across disciplines, communities, and ecosystems
Instead of imagining the world as separate silos, mycelial imagination sees hidden connections — between economy and ecology, art and science, humans and non-humans. This concept runs what a few Nature writers call the ‘wood wide web.’
The ten-day festival offers 20 Waste-to-art installations, 15 Art-tech Immersive Showcases, and 6 + Music Performances.
The festival’s venue is a sprawling abandoned glass factory, which looks like a city inside a medieval fort.
The festival is curated by the Swordfish that also runs the popular Echoes of Earth Music Festival in Bengaluru in December.
Why is it called Sixth Sense?
According to the organisers, “The sixth sense is a non-linear journey for those eager to experiment, explore how art, technology, and nature’s intelligence can elevate human emotion and renew our connection with the natural world. As a platform, it supports and amplifies a new generation of artists and visionaries shaping new media art as an immersive, tech-integrated form of storytelling.”
The festival has brought together Indian and international artistic experimentation, technological innovation, and scientific research to help audiences experience the intelligence of Nature. It asks humans to slow down, listen and experience how the natural world senses, communicates and responds.
