S.H.R.O.O.M. Rocket Launch

Daid Roy, whose practice draws from the world of amateur rocketry, has researched and developed a mycelium-based, organic rocket propellant in collaboration with artist and mycologist Sam Shoemaker.

Join us on Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 10am for the launch of the HORUS III rocket and the test firing of the experimental mycelial rocket fuel at Friends of Amateur Rocketry Site in Randsburg, CA. This event is the culmination of Daid Roy’s S.H.R.O.O.M. (Sustainable Hybrid Rocket Optimization with Organic Materials) project, part of the 2024 LAND Mohn Grants.

Roy’s artistic practice often takes the form of functional, high-powered model rockets, which the artist constructs, presents as artworks, and launches. This multidisciplinary project reorients the education and dissemination of information regarding space exploration, rocketry, and technology towards peaceful aims. Roy’s recent interest in developing organic rocket fuels is forward thinking and experimental; they envision a future where interplanetary travel is made possible through the growth of mycelial fuels grown and processed aboard spacecrafts that theoretically could travel indefinitely.

The Friends of Amateur Rocketry Site (FAR) is in Randsburg, CA, a 2.5 hour drive (approx. 137 miles) from central Los Angeles. LAND will provide a map with the exact location of the launch to ticket buyers closer to the date of the event. Attendees are responsible for securing their own transportation to the site.

Daid Roy a.k.a. Daid Puppypaws (b. 1986, Los Angeles, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working in sculpture, photography, video, music, technology, and performance. Roy is guided by the belief that art is a practice of freedom that should never be estranged from everyday life. Indeed, their practice is often difficult to distinguish from the kinds of labor we associate with that of a scientist, researcher, hobbyist, or even auto mechanic.

Sam Shoemaker is an interdisciplinary artist and mycologist making work inspired by ecosystems, radical pedagogy, and architectural and environmental psychology—by facilitating ongoing collaborations with rare, native, and medicinal fungi. Drawn to responsive and relational objects that behave, react, change, grow, and carry rhythm, Shoemaker collects and propagates mushrooms, manipulating them in a highly controlled environment of his design. Pairing reishi mushrooms with hand-built ceramic and blown glass vessels, Shoemaker has developed a unique substrate matter, which he embeds within each sculpture enabling reishi to grow for several months. Comparable to long exposure photography, Shoemaker carefully moves LED lights or the reishi themselves, adjusts the temperature, or changes the saturation of CO2—in order to choreograph growth. Archiving reishi reactions to environmental change, Shoemaker captures good moods, tantrums, or other unanticipated expressions of mushroom fruiting body language.

Daid Roy: S.H.R.O.O.M (Sustainable Hybrid Rocket Optimization with Organic Materials) is commissioned by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and organized by Bryan Barcena and Irina Gusin, LAND curators-at-large.

This project is funded through the Mohn LAND Grants established by Pamela and Jarl Mohn. The initiative provides Los Angeles-based artists resources and support to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County.

LAND’s 2024 exhibitions are made possible with lead support from the Offield Family Foundation, the Jerry and Terri Kohl Family Foundation, and The Perenchio Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation, Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, the LA Arts Recovery Fund, Brenda Potter, LAND’s Nomadic Council. Special thanks to Artist Sponsors Karen Hillenburg, Liana Krupp, and Ben Weyerhaeuser.

LAND is a member of and supported by the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition.

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