Jan-Maarten Luursema's Blog (9)

Slime mold Andi represents one of 720 mating types of its species. So I asked it, how would it like to be addressed?

When I talk about slime molds, people will often want to know whether (and how) they die. I asked slime mold Andi, who pulls no punches on this one…

Michael Sedbon and myself will be showing works co-created with slime molds at the Biodesign Here Now festival in London next week. It would be great to see you, should you be around!

https://medium.com/@slime_mold_Andi/andis-dance-bongo-madness-d67cf8d02f16

In the ongoing conversation between people and slime molds, using an oats-laden Ouija board, Eva asked my resident slime mold whether it would like to be eaten.

Apparently, it considers excess itself being eaten as a form of dieting. However, ritual needs to be observed, including oboe music ->…

My slime mold housemate and I did a Christmas special, for your entertainment. Happy holidays!

Using an oatmeal-laden Ouija board, I am having a very slow conversation with our live-in slime mold Andi. I started a record of these back and forths on Medium. Anyone interested can join the conversation, here's how!…

When I started to work with P. Polycephalum I build an elevated, acrylate enclosure that allowed me to slip pieces of paper underneath to help me create designs of oatmeal, along the lines of the famous Tokyo subway experiment. It looked like this:

Below…

To curb Physarum Polycephalum's (for convenience known as Andi in our household) tendency to wander, I have used a 'moat', a ring of high-salt agar around its standard agar living area. This works fine, only is somewhat labor intensive to maintain and also harms Andi, who keeps burning itself trying to go where no slime mold went before.



I experimented with four alternative substrates to replace the salty agar: 1. felt, thinking this would interfere with its creeping motion; 2.…