The Physarum Experiments

This portfolio presents a body of work created with a classic model organism - the slime mould Physarum polycephalum. Within a studio setting, the slime mould is staged within novel environments and its growth trajectories captured as it navigates: calculating routes, making decisions and responding to encounters. Through the representation of emergent growth trajectories and behavioural responses to given interventions the work aims to ‘draw out’ fundamental processes of life as a relational exercise. Imaging technologies – specifically macro and time-lapse photography – mediate between spatiotemporal subjectivities, amplifying slime mould behaviour to human scale.