November 2021 Blog Posts (6)

Whilst monitoring the growth of my physarum polycephalum culture, I noted the formation of an unidentified green mold. It does not seem to be impacted the growth of Molly (the physarum polycephalum) however is visibly apparent. Attached is a photo. Does anyone know what kind of mold this is and any information on it?…

I did this commission working with slime mould and food coloring about a year ago and I realized I never shared it on this page! So here it is for anyone interested: https://www.nuriarovira.art/nr-physarum-and-maths (it's the result of a small digital residency with a maths magazine)…

This week's bout features Maizie the Physarum polycephalum against Larry the Lichen (heritage unknown).  Larry is the heavyweight and the younger of the two at a mere 250 million years but it's thought the agility and experience of Maizie (600 million years) will win through.  This could turn nasty.    

Ding ding!…

There is a paper detailing how a slime mould can be guided by loading it with ferromagnetic particles and steering it with magnets, but I was wondering whether an un-modified physarum could detect a magnetic field.

I ran a set of 4 time-lapses using a strong magnet (top of picture) and starting conditions as shown in the photo so heading towards the pole would give it a guaranteed food reward.  I would expect the slime to preferentially set off towards the pole if it 'learned' that…

Just starting off another time lapse.

I mentioned before that the Physarum seemed to take a long time to get going on the art paper substrate I was using.  It did speed up after a bit and I was wondering if it had begun to disregard an unpleasant substance in the paper.  The experiment I've just started is to see if this may be the case.

Slime mould A is from the previous run on the art paper.

Slime mould B has only been exposed to clean kitchen tissue.…

This is my Physarum Polycephalum exploring its Petri dish over the space of 3 days.  One second of video time equals 30 minutes of real time.

Maizie's Travels.