Trees get all the attention in the climate movement. But what makes trees even possible? Fungi: Fungi are nature’s unsung heroes. They essentially run the world: Nine in ten plants on Earth survive from being connected to vast underground networks created by fungi. They limit global warming by drawing massive amounts of carbon underground. But fungi are not beloved like trees. They’re hardly even understood, even feared, which leads to zero protection of their habitats and value. To fight climate change, we need people to start getting to know and respect the power of fungi immediately. With the Fungi Foundation, the world’s first fungi-focused NGO, as our partner, we set out to help people fall in love with the world beneath our feet.

At the preeminent tech and culture festival, SXSW, in 2023, we premiered Forager, a first-of-its-kind, immersive 4D experience where humans and the fungi kingdom converge. In Forager, participants intimately experience the entire lifecycle of a mushroom in a way that’s never been seen before, starting as a spore. They merge with its endless underground network, connecting nearly every plant in the forest. As they explore hyper-real closeups of mushrooms, they witness the most accurate portrayal of nature ever created in a virtual experience, made with the world’s first time-lapse photogrammetry technology. Returning back to a spore, the audience has felt wind and thunder through synchronized haptics, smelled mushrooms through olfactory design, heard music sampled from fungi, even tasted mushrooms themselves, all within a structure of mushroom bricks. Finally, a foraging map invites participants to learn about the Fungi Foundation’s mission to protect the ancient kingdom critical to our climate.

Forager represents the world’s first-ever volumetric timelapse inside of a game engine, making it the most accurate representation of nature ever created in the virtual space. We developed a proprietary multi-camera photogrammetry rig to fully capture the lifecycle and growth of hundreds of mushrooms - from spore to mycelium to fruiting body to decay - over the course of nearly 14-months. In addition to our 3D scanning hardware, we further developed software that allowed us to iterate and create a comprehensive library of mushrooms growing over time and play them back as hyper-realistic textured point cloud animations in Unreal Engine 5 - the same engine used to create Fortnite and so many other virtual worlds. We wanted to push the limits of UE5 to deepen one's sense of believability and immersion inside the headset.

It was important to the Forager project to be sustainable where possible. All components of the project were upcycled, re-used, recyclable, and/or compostable. The heroes of the production were mushrooms, and hundreds of locally-sourced edible mushrooms were used, always being composted or consumed after being used in the timelapse photogrammetry rig. At the SXSW launch, the Forager 4D experience took place in a unique, immersive spiral structure built of mushroom bricks, making the entire installation both re-usable and compostable. Travel was minimized throughout, takeaway materials were biodegradable and compostable, and even electronics used in the project will be recycled when Forager completes its 2023 tour. Lastly, the message of Forager is global but care was taken to localize the focus of fungi in the location of the experience; At the SXSW launch in Austin, Texas, participants received custom maps to old-growth forests near Austin to encourage real-life connection to the fungi kingdom.

Environmental context: Fungi are fundamental to rich and sustainable ecosystems. But in the U.S., they are not explicitly protected by law, leading to dangerous loss and overlooked destruction. The Fungi Foundation, the world’s only fungi-focused NGO, recently led a successful campaign to recognize and protect fungi in all conservation legislation in Chile. They’ve since expanded their efforts globally, and, with the Forager project, they bring their important work and message to the U.S.. The Fungi Foundation has also launched free-to-access educational programming for people of all ages, and the Forager project’s immersive storytelling is an extension of that.

Cultural context: On top of fungi being mysterious to most Americans, fungi are also currently negatively portrayed in famous TV shows like “The Last of Us” and news headlines about dangerous fungal infections on the rise in U.S. hospitals. This creates a more challenging audience mindset to overcome.