Jonah King


Jonah King is an interdisciplinary artist exploring human/nonhuman relations and speculative futures. Their multifaceted world-building create immersive experiences to examine how ecological intimacies influence individual and social identity.

About

Film
Immersive
Lecture/Workshop
Performance
Sculpture
Web
Writing

Exhibitions

Image View




Jonah King
Projects:

Virtual Reality Experience & Installation

2024 

Honey Fungus is a sci-fi Virtual Reality installation that invites audiences to expand their sensory connection to the greater ecosystem. A sentient ecological presence—manifested as an omnipresent mycelial entity—guides participants on a journey through an entangled ecology.

Through a series of interactive vignettes inspired by the fungal reproductive cycle, users are invited to shape and transform the virtual environment. As they progress, they encounter spores that speak in poetic passages generated by AI, trained on a unique blend of Smithsonian field research and amateur erotica. In these spaces, the scientific merges with the sensual, unveiling the earth’s queer erotic potential and opening new possibilities for ecological stewardship and mutual care between human and non-human life.

This VR world embraces the idea that each of us possesses more than a singular, isolated body. As scholar Daisy Hildyard suggests, we have a 'second body'—one that exists through our interconnectedness with the world around us.

Completed October 2024


Exhibited as Work In Progress:
Bolivar Gallery, Lexington, Kentucky
Hesse Flatow, Expo Chicago
Myclological Film Festival, SVA Theatre, New York
GBA, Brooklyn
Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Urban Soils Institute, LMCC Arts Center, Governor’s Island, New York
RealMix 2022, Hyphen Hub, Colombia
Moss Arts Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
NEW INC, NewLab, Brooklyn
VISUAL Carlow, Ireland

Producer
Alex Darby, Hybrid.Studio

VR Production
Pariah Interactive

Audio
Reading: Helga Hansen Logan
Sound Design: Frank Sweeney
Vocals: Anna Roberts-Gevalt
Mixing Engineer: Daniel Neumann
Contributing Writer: Sue Huang

Supported by
The Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon
Stevens Institute 
Science Sandbox - Simons Foundation
NEW INC - New Museum

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council




2D Extract of VR Experience


Cyborg Ecologies

Article

2024

In Focus: CGI / Digital Art - Visual Artists’ News Sheet

“ Traditionally, my creative process involved

collaboration with actors and non-actors, drawing on methods from filmmaking and theater that were collectively devised. However, the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 lockdown forced a shift in my practice. Unable to engage in physical collaborations, I turned to 3D software to simulate my production model. This transition led me to explore artificial intelligence, virtual reality, motion capture, and digital avatars—emerging technologies that offered new dimensions for my work ...”


Comissioned by Visual Artist Ireland
Read Full Article
Print Version .pdf

Honey Fungus: Specimens

Digital C-Print Series; 12x12”

2022

HONEY FUNGUS SPECIMENS comprises nine digital C-prints (each a single edition).
Each specimen is an inflated body processed via 3D software and placed in a virtual glass specimen box. These fungal avatars are captured mid-dance, contorting to their unique rhythms.
The mycelium network's ecosystem is at the core of Honey Fungus, which nourishes, feeds, mates protects and spreads like a living internet. As viewers explore the underworld of spores and their soundscape, they encounter fungal specimens moving through a viscous liquid. These sensual specimens are an AI-generated amalgamation of erotica and exotic fungi, resulting in a colourful and complex hybrid body that is part human, part mushroom.

Made in collaboration with Sue Huang.
Available through GBA.family


Watch Video

Exhibition
Guilty By Association, Brooklyn


Honey Fungus: WebVR

WebVR

2022

A Social VR interpretation of Honey Fungus created by RealMix 0.2 - Art in Escadão.

This is a virtual event of the District Institute of the Arts - Idartes organized by its Line of Art, Science and Technology and by the Planetarium of Bogotá, which aims to recognize and encourage technological creation and experimentation through projects of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Realities (MX).

Supported by Hyphen-Hub, Newrona, Planetarium of Bogotá, Idartes.

Watch Walkthrough


Screen capture of WebVR.

Unfathomable Intimacies

Essay

2020

Every egg a person carries forms inside their ovaries while they are still in the womb of their mother. In that way, my mother was once inside my great-grandmother’s womb, and I spent time in the womb of my grandmother. My grandmother is fast asleep right now, in the creaking bed that she was born in. Her giant black collie dog is snoring on the floor beside her....

This text forms the basis of Honey Fungus and Tongue the Sun

Full Text