Скачать или смотреть Unequal Roots [2025]

The illusion of control

A game is usually played between equal opponents. Unequal Roots, however, is a game staged for two utterly different creatures, living on entirely different time-scales and agencies — a game between mycelium and human.
In Unequal Roots, the goal is to reach the opponent by moving across the game board. The human moves through dice-rolling and strategy, while the mycelium spreads based on a random card drawn each round. If the human loses, they must feed the mycelium with its living supply: flour water. If the human wins, however, they are allowed to carve out portions of the mycelium board and take them away.
Unequal Roots examines the illusion of control. Humans may play this game however they wish, making all the decisions and moves, against an opponent sealed in a container, speechless, moving at a glacial pace. Humans can play fair, or cheat; they can choose to be generous or pitying when feeding the mycelium, mindful or cruel when cutting it. They seem to be in control. But none of these actions can stop the mycelium from its singular purpose — to survive and thrive.
The mycelium’s agency is built upon the human’s agency in this game, but strangely, whatever decision is made in the game only helps the mycelium to live. Feeding it is obvious, but even when the mycelium is brutally cut, the spores contained in the piece can spread further through this action. As long as the game exists, the mycelium will carry on.
As humans, life is a struggle between making decisions and carrying the interpretations of these decisions. It is about wrestling with the search for identity, while our beginnings and ends remain the same. It is to hold agency — and to live within the illusions of control. Through Unequal Roots, we face the flaw in our agencies and witness the ways others live, thrive, and grow with resilience.

Music: "Ambient Tranquility" by Universfield (CC BY 4.0) — https://freesound.org/s/755855/