The Physarum Experiments

The Physarum Experiments: various studies 2009-2018

Artist, Heather Barnett, works with the slime mould, Physarum polycephalum, as material, model and metaphor, investigating the organism’s navigational abilities and seemingly intelligent behaviours. For a single-celled organism without a single neuron to its name, this yellow amoeboid blob can solve complex problems, transfer learning and anticipate events. It is also quite beautiful, the dendritic growth patterns reminiscent of forms seen at varying scales in nature, from blood vessels to tree branches, from river deltas to lightening strikes.

Barnett’s films, studies, installations and participatory experiments work with the underlying mechanisms that enable this simple organism to make complex decisions. Her artworks are the product of a negotiation over creative control and authorship with one of the earliest forms of life, and invite us to question our definitions of agency and intelligence across scales.

This collection of time-lapse studies reveal some of the fascinating behaviours of the slime mould as it navigates unfamiliar environments, encounters other species and fuses with another of its kind to improve its chance of survival.

Resilient Topographies #1: the peninsula of Paljassaare
A film by Heather Barnett (working with Physarum polycephalum) in collaboration with ecoLogicStudio.
Commissioned for Anthropocene Islands, bio.Tallinn (Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2017).
Duration: 2:45

The true slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a nomadic information system. As it creeps across its terrain it makes continuous micro-decisions about surrounding atmospheric conditions and resource distribution. With no brain or sensory organs, this amorphous cellular mass computes the complexities of its environment through chemical signals. It is a highly adaptive biological barometer.

In Heather Barnett’s film, made as an artistic interpretation of the modelling concepts of ecoLogicStudio, the slime mould interacts with the informational landscape of the peninsula of Paljassaare, Tallinn. It is a symbolic response to a reimagined landscape, the slime mould adapting to the changing topography. Small plasmodia fuse together to form a critical mass, thereby improving its chances of survival through collective cooperation. Pulsing and flowing across the landscape, we follow the superorganism as it computes efficient routes and calculates dynamic networks. This is a tale of adaptive resilience, of biological strategising in a changing world.

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Exhibited as part of THE FACTORY OF LIFE «MUTATIONS / CREATIONS 3»

Discover an archeology of life and artificial life in an exhibition that presents in a prospective way the recent works of about fifty creators as well as researches from scientific laboratories. Its material itself is evolutionary, some works being involved in a process of growth or degeneration. A hundred or so projects are on show, including several designed for the occasion

Annual Laboratory of Creation and Innovation at the Center Pompidou, "Mutations / Creations"questions the links between arts, science, engineering and innovation. The cycle brings together artists, engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs, all the protagonists of the sensible and the intelligible, who inflect and transgress our present. For its third edition, the event brings together the visual and digital arts, design and speech, through a collective exhibition "The Factory of the Living", the first solo and monographic exhibition in Europe of the Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti, as well as the third edition of the Vertigo forum, led by IRCAM.

Curators: MA. Brayer and O. Zeitoun

• Organisation