The Slime Mould Collective

An international network of/for intelligent organisms

Jan-Maarten Luursema's Blog (9)

Talking with slime molds, the pronoun question

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

Added by Jan-Maarten Luursema on December 28, 2019 at 11:13 — 1 Comment

Do sllime molds die?

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…

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Added by Jan-Maarten Luursema on July 2, 2019 at 21:50 — 2 Comments

P. Polycephalum in London next week, opening Tuesday 18

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!

Added by Jan-Maarten Luursema on September 13, 2018 at 22:09 — No Comments

Q. Eva - Would you like to be eaten?

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 ->…

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Added by Jan-Maarten Luursema on April 20, 2018 at 14:06 — 3 Comments

Christmas special

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

Added by Jan-Maarten Luursema on December 26, 2017 at 16:20 — No Comments

Slime mold Andi on Medium

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!…

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Added by Jan-Maarten Luursema on November 21, 2017 at 19:39 — No Comments

On enclosures

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…

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Added by Jan-Maarten Luursema on July 24, 2017 at 21:00 — 2 Comments

Substrate experiment

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.…

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Added by Jan-Maarten Luursema on July 22, 2017 at 11:00 — 2 Comments

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