Resonant Ecologies: Mold, Lichen, and Sensing Stones

11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Public Art Futures Lab

88 Lower Alabama St SW, Atlanta, GA 30303

Free | Open to all ages

Come see, hear, and interact with artworks that grow, respond, and resonate!

Resonant Ecologies: Mold, Lichen, and Sensing Stones is an interactive exhibition at the intersection of art, science, and emerging technology, featuring experimental works by artist-researchers and . Presented as part of the Atlanta Science Festival, this event invites visitors to hear, touch, and move through living and sensing systems that blur boundaries between biology, ecology, and computation.

The exhibition brings together three research-based, hands-on projects:

Lichen Meditations: Materializing Queer Entanglements in Sonic Environments

by Allie Riggs

Lichen Meditations explores the intersections of lichens and air quality within the greater Atlanta area through an interactive interface. Lichens are hybrid organisms—symbiotic collections of algae or cyanobacteria and fungi, and they serve as bioindicators for air pollutants, demonstrating how interconnected ecological communities are affected by toxicity. “Lichen Meditations” explores this relationship through a tangible interactive environment that materializes the interplay of lichen growth and air quality via changes in sound and visualizations.

By enacting embodied movements, participants in the experience are asked to “animate” lichen growth as they move and breathe, in a performative multi-species encounter that illustrates the entanglements of human bodies with non-human organisms. By syncing lichen growth to breath and movement, participants are confronted with a duality: a growing mindfulness of our ecological interconnectedness that is simultaneously juxtaposed against the human-made effects of air pollution on non-human others. The piece is meant to evoke twin sensations of mindfulness and discomfort, navigating the nuances of attuning to the natural world, amid the uneasiness of a changing climate, altered by human activity.

This project is supported by a Georgia Tech Arts Student Microgrant

Sonifying Climate Infrastructures: Sensing Stones

by Heidi Biggs

This interactive installation features hand-built ceramic “stones” embedded with speakers, microphones, microcontrollers, photoresistors, and temperature sensors. Visitors are invited to pick up, move, and arrange the stones, activating shifting soundscapes generated from environmental data.

As participants interact with the stones, changes in light, temperature, and proximity are translated into sound, highlighting invisible climate and infrastructural forces through embodied experience. The work encourages playful exploration while opening conversations about sensing, data, and how communities might engage more intuitively with environmental systems.

This project is supported by Sustainability Next Seed Grant with funding by IPaT (Institute for People and Technology), GT Arts, and Brook Beyers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS).

Mold Sounds: Queering Ecologies in Polyphonic Material Explorations

by Allie Riggs

Mold Sounds is presented through video documentation and behind-the-scenes materials from a two-month research project in which living molds actively shaped sound. In the original work, molds grew within biomaterial circuit components, gradually changing electrical resistance and altering piezo buzzer tones - softening, distorting, and transforming the audio over time as the organisms developed.

Rather than framing mold as toxic or unwanted, the project approaches it through the lens of queer ecologies, emphasizing unpredictability, interdependence, and multi-species collaboration. The documentation allows visitors to observe how sound shifted across different temporal rhythms and how living materials complicate dominant narratives of control, purity, and human-centered design.

Through photography, video, and recorded sound measurements, the installation offers insight into the evolving life of the work, highlighting mold not as a byproduct, but as an active participant in a more-than-human sonic system.

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Together, these projects offer a space to explore:

• Living materials as collaborators in design

• How sound can reveal ecological processes

• The role of sensors, biomaterials, and speculative technologies in future art practices

This event is designed for all ages, the Public Art Futures Lab welcomes families, students, artists, technologists, and anyone curious about how science and art can meet through listening, touch, and experimentation.

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Stay Connected: For more information on this event and future happenings, follow us on Instagram and visit our website PublicArtFuturesLab.com for updates.

How to Find Us:The Public Art Futures Lab (Underground Atlanta, 88 Lower Alabama Street, Atlanta, GA 30303). A simple way to find us is by using the MARTA Five Points Station as your starting point (30 Alabama St SW, Atlanta, GA 30303).

Exit the station and cross Peachtree Street toward the Underground Atlanta Tower. Look for the Underground Atlanta signage and follow it to a stairway leading down to a courtyard. Once in the courtyard, look for the row of glass doors, use the far-right entrance glass door. You’ll see the Public Art Futures Lab directly ahead, and restrooms are located to the right of the space.

If you require ADA assistance to access our space, please email [email protected] or call 770-829-7282 and they will arrange for security to direct you to the ADA elevator on Upper Alabama Street across from the Connally Hotel entrance.

Parking: There is street parking along Pryor Street and Peachtree Street SW and several paid parking decks and parking lots nearby on Wall Street. We suggest carpooling, using a rideshare or using MARTA Five Points Station to reach us. Please check for up to date rider information

Follow Fulton Public Art on Instagram for more info on this event and other upcoming happenings.

About the Public Art Futures Lab: The Public Art Futures Lab is a space to exhibit, experiment, educate and experience the role of technology as it relates to public art. By reducing barriers to creating and participating in this emerging space, the Lab seeks to expand access to cultural enrichment, provide the tools for local artists to thrive and maintain Fulton County's status as a creative cultural capital. The Futures Lab is made possible through the support of our host Underground Atlanta, and our residency partners ATL DTN and MARTA Artbound along with our Knowledge Partners, Spelman Innovation Lab, Georgia Tech Arts, GSU CMII and our Outreach Partner, Orange Barrel Media.

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Host or Publisher Fulton County Public Art Program