SWARM | CELL | CITY
A collective experiment with Heather Barnett & plan b
(Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers)
working with the slime mould, Physarum polycephalum
Berlin, 23 & 24 September 2017
In the context of the series
NONHUMAN AGENTS, 2017
Curated by Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz
Art Laboratory Berlin
Videography / Editing: Tim Deussen
This 2-day workshop was a participatory experiment in art, performance and biology that preceded the exhibition Nonhuman Networks. The project invited participants to view the city of Berlin through the nonhuman perspective of the intelligent single-celled organism, the slime mould, Physarum polycephalum and GPS tracking.
The slime mould is a bright yellow amoeba that possesses primitive intelligence, problem solving skills and memory. It is highly efficient at forming networks between given points and has been used to map the worlds' transport networks, migration routes and desire paths, most notably in 2010 it accurately replicated the Tokyo rail network. It is also quite beautiful, the branching patterns reminiscent of forms seen at varying scales within nature, from blood vessels to tree branches, from river deltas to lightening flashes. It can learn about its environment, remember where it's been and navigate through complex territories - all without any sensory organs and no brain.
Using the historical and contemporary topography of Berlin as inspiration, we ran a series of experiments and activities, exploring collective communication, cooperation and navigation at different scales - in slime mould and in humans. The events were designed to complement the exhibition Nonhuman Networks at Art Laboratory Berlin (29 September - 26 November 2017), exploring the network ability of simple organisms, such as slime mould and mycelium.
These organisms offer intriguing models to examine collective behaviour: how ideas spread, how group decisions are made, and how communities cooperate. Here the slime mould became a model to look at human systems - urban, social and cultural - exploring how people interact and respond to their environment, how they gather and distribute information; the aim to create a platform for exploring alternative ways of seeing and behaving, individually and collectively.
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