Richie Johnson
Taking influence from the chrome-coated worlds of the retrofuture, The Host imagines a fictional strand of parasitic fungus, armed with the ability to infect and transform the chairs inhabiting its undiscovered world. Through these fictioned processes the chair’s creatureness, its capacity for life, is expanded, alongside the entities that exist in its orbit. The harsh spike plains and misted rock hills of The Planet are home to these alien specimens, their grotesque cycles of life brought into existence through sculpture, drawing, and text.
"The surface of The Planet is formed from composites in cold, steel grey, and silver tones, its mountainous ranges and pointed stone hills thickly coated with chrome dust. A cool mist hangs close to the ground, pooling in areas with sparse rock - seeing beyond a few metres ahead can be almost impossible without proper atmospheric readjustment equipment. Through the mist you may see The Plains - large open stretches housing hordes of spiked monoliths.These plains are the resting ground of the host chairs, some made surrogates, carriers of The Fungus. Clusters of its reflective spores float above the ground, and drift slowly through the thick air until contact is made, merging through the surface of the chair’s seat and back. Electrical impulses bounce between its hypha, which stretch out in shoots that dig through the chairs' carcass, pushing it outwards in sharp bursts to form its protective
spikes. Its legs extend back, elongating. Hundreds of breakages will occur during the next hours, the resting sclerotia fills the gaps this process creates, slowly replacing the chairs’ internal systems. The Fungus will infect the very essence of the chair, grabbing hold of its molecules and pulling them into new and grotesque structures. These growths will cover its body, connect to each other, and eventually surround The Host in a cloak of fruiting bodies. Soon after the chair will collapse, the breathing mass surrounding the remains of its recognisable features will overwhelm it, fusing into a tangled inflammation from which new spore clusters will emerge."
