All Blog Posts (65)

I took some Physarum to the Margate Photo Festival last weekend and invited visitors to feed it with a variety of substances to establish likes and dislikes. Obvious liking for oats and rice, pasta and flour; distinct dislike for alka seltzer, ibuprofen and bicarbinate of soda; but I'm not too sure about tobacco and chilli powder (it seemed to investigate seriously but not engulf). Worth further investigation, with a closer position...

 

Thanks to all those who fed the slime…

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On 22 March 2011 I am giving a talk about my work with Physarum to a group of artists, designers and biologists at GenSpace, New York's Community Laboratory. http://genspace.org/

We will be looking at the range of research currently being done with slime moulds, my experiments and attempts to collaborate with the intelligent organism and will be making slime mould art.

So watch this space for new postings of oat eating drawings and the…

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http://blip.tv/file/4278791

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For the past two days I've been talking to a wide variety of people about the wonderful attributes of physarum polycephalum; their beautiful growth patterns, my experiments, their attributed intelligence and suggested memory and primitive pulse.



Over 50 people (young and old, but mostly young) took home their own pet slime mould: they each made a felt design in a petri dish, decorated it with oats and oat paste, and lastly inoculated it with slime mould. In the days to come the slime… Continue

My experiments with Physarum polycephalum started in 2008, following an introduction by microbiologist and slime mould enthusiast, Simon Park. I had worked creatively with biological material before (skin organisms, bacteria, seeds) and was initially interested in the idea of a single cell organism working in an organised and cooperative manner. Early experiments offered my pet Physarum different food sources and environmental conditions, and set tasks to test its ability to locate food and… Continue