Nature & Networks by Muskeen Liddar

Nature & Networks imagines mycelium network characteristics through collaborative drawing, highlighting the network's unique abilities to stretch in all directions, decompose natural waste and produce mushrooms.

This is a data visualisation inquiry that invites participants to explore mycelium network characteristics through collaborative drawing and qualitative data collection. Intrigued by mycelium’s ability to stretch in all directions, decompose natural waste, and produce mushrooms, this project experiments with visual approaches to engage with an unfamiliar and ungraspable subject.

The dataset was formed from collecting responses from 100 participants to a drawing workbook, which included qualitative prompts such as “Write three words to describe an underground fungal network” and drawing exercises to embody how mycelium moves, such as “Close your eyes, hold a pen in each hand, and draw 20 lines stretching in all directions. Draw a circle whenever your pen pauses.”

By gathering and presenting these responses, the project examines how drawing processes can generate new visual languages—uncovering emergent patterns, ambiguity, and interpretation within complex natural systems. The final risograph publication presents these analogue, data-driven drawings, highlighting process, methodology, and the layered subjectivity inherent in visualising qualitative data. This study surfaces how expanding visual grammar in data visualisation can offer more flexible ways to imagine and better understand these complex living networks.