A Kingdom of Mushrooms, Five Senses, Infinite Wonder and You. That's the name of the show, and in this immersive participatory experience at Melbourne Fringe Festival, audiences are invited to journey through five distinct installations, each transforming a single sense into a mushroom-fuelled world of discovery.
Jasmin Lefers, one third of Off The Spectrum, felt compelled to translate this small,
seemingly simple organism into something so immersive after an introduction to a Dutch pioneer in the world of food and design. "It all started with late-night/early-morning educational sessions over Zoom," she explains. "Aaron, one of the trio involved in putting this together, introduced me to one of the pioneers in food design Marije Vogelzang. From there I put myself through a few courses such as Food & Design Dive. Being in the Netherlands the class times were anything from midnight to 4am. It was bloody incredible. Eye-opening, mind-blowing, and tiring."
"But one
question asked during the course was if you could be one food, what would it be? Maybe it was the late-nights/early-mornings and the
sleep deprivation, but mushroom immediately came to mind. I thought about why mushroom, and
the more I delved, the more I realised there is nothing a mushroom can't be or do. Medicinal, clothing, decomposing plastics ... the list is endless," she says. "Yes, they are delicious but there is far more to them than simply taste and smell. I wanted to introduce this to people in an
approachable, entertaining, and interactive environment. Using what I had learnt and the visions I had, I
went off to convince a couple of others that it was a fab idea to bring to life. So to answer your question, I would say that I didn't so much as
approach the mushroom as the mushroom approached me."
