I view my research as a collaborative effort with the non-Human entities I touch, caress, grow. Having ‘minds’ of their own, my work explores sculpting forms with living mycelium, and bio-sonification. My fascination with mycelium (the root structure of mushrooms) is compounded by a number of factors: fungi are neither plant nor animal and fungi can clean up ecological disasters. 

Tosca Teran, aka Nanotopia, is an interdisciplinary artist. Her work has been featured at SOFA New York, Culture Canada, and The Toronto Design Exchange. Tosca has been awarded artist residencies with Nes, Skagaströnd, The Ayatana Research Program in Ottawa and The Icelandic Visual Artists Association through Sím, Reykjavik Iceland. Tosca is currently an invited Bio-Artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto in partnership with the Ontario Science Centre. This summer Tosca will further her research in bio-sonification and bio-remediation with local mycologists at Bilpin Australia where she is the recipient of the 2019 BigCi Environmental Award at Wollemi National Park within the UNESCO World Heritage site in the Greater Blue Mountains.

Born in San Francisco, California, Tosca relocated to Canada in 2001. Working with metals, computer coding, and animation since the mid-eighties, Tosca was introduced to glass as an artistic medium in 2004. Through developing bodies of work incorporating metal, glass, and electronics, Tosca has been awarded scholarships at The Corning Museum of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School and The Penland School of Crafts. Her work has been featured at SOFA New York, Culture Canada, Metalsmith Magazine, The Toronto Design Exchange, and the Memphis Metal Museum.

Tosca founded nanopod: Hybrid Studio maker space in 2005. Continually exploring new materials and tools, Tosca started collaborating artistically with Algae, Physarum polycephalum, and Mycelium in 2016, translating biodata from non-human organisms into music. 

Handmade Portraits: Nanopod from Etsy on Vimeo.

Life and how we as Human beings interact with it and respond to it, has always fascinated me. Through my own representational language, be it obvious or obscure, I wish to engage the psyche. By employing that which may be real or imagined, I am suggesting a believable structure, yet one not necessarily rational.

Increasingly my practice employs temporal and narrative explorations of self/identity. Continually exploring new materials and tools alongside my metal-smithing, glass and coding background.
Narrative allows me to show imagined futures, reconstructed or mediated pasts that conjecture the implications technology, science and politics have on self/identity, our shared environment through a multi-disciplinary approach, often combining tactile, sculptural forms, and audio.

Creating immersive environments, unnatural History Dioramas, and performative, wearable structures. My one of a kind ‘jewelry’  often serve as maquettes and experiments towards larger sculptural work.

If we can say that the world of science is synonymous with truth and the world of art with that of fiction, I want to tread a middle ground that is unusual and seemingly beyond belief, yet also familiar.

Toronto studio: www.nanopod.tv

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nanotopia

Mycelium Network Podcast: https://goo.gl/95PdBe