A r t i s t s ’ A r t i c l e
Slime mold and network Imaginaries
An Experimental Approach to Communication
S E l E n A S Av I ´C A n d S A R A h G R A n t
t
C
A
右
t
S
乙
A
Physarum polycephalum, or slime mold, is an acellular organism
extensively studied in scientific experiments and artistic engagements.
Artist and critical engineer Sarah Grant collaborates with architect and
researcher Selena Savi ´c on hybrid bio-networking experiments with
slime mold as an approximation of a computer network. They study
communication as an organic process, rethinking networks’ inherent
technicity through encounters with a living organism. They discuss
network imaginaries situated in the way slime mold forages for food:
at once transmitting and materializing its experiences, constrained and
conditioned by the environment. The results of this work are imaginative
accounts of adaptive network infrastructure and protocols.
This artistic inquiry into communication networks imaginar-
ies aspires to rethink networks’ inherent technicity through
encounters with a living organism. It is informed by Sarah
Grant’s artistic work with the acellular organism Physarum
polycephalum, generally known as slime mold. Over the past
六年, Grant has been exploring slime mold’s capacity to
be a part of hybrid bioelectrical circuits [1] or visceral me-
dia approximations to computer network protocols and to-
pologies [2]. The project presented here weaves Grant’s artistic
实践, which increasingly involves growth processes, 和
communication networks moving information across space,
或者, in the case of slime mold, across the organism’s body. 作为
part of a short residency at Institute Experimental Design and
Media Cultures (IXDM) in Basel, 瑞士, Grant collabo-
rated with architect and researcher Selena Savić, who works
on a project that critically examines the role of technology
in commoning practices [3,4] from an interest in material-
ity of networks. Inspired by the work of political economist
Elinor Ostrom on economic governance and the commons,
commoning is proposed as alternative to the latest forms of
资本主义 [5,6]. 在本文中, Grant and Savić combine their
Selena Savi´c (建筑师, researcher), University of Applied Sciences and Arts North-
western Switzerland (FHNW), Academy of Art and Design, 巴塞尔, Institute of Experi-
mental Design and Media Cultures, Freilager-Platz 1, CH-4002 Basel, 瑞士.
电子邮件: selena.savic@fhnw.ch. ORCID: 0000-0002-1509-6661.
Sarah Grant (artist, 教育家), Kunsthochschule Kassel and Weise7, Weisestrasse 7,
12049 柏林, 德国. 电子邮件: com@chootka.com.
参见https://direct.mit.edu/leon/issue/55/5 for supplemental files associated with
this issue.
voices into a temporary “we,” representing a shared interest in
networking through the lens of slime mold behavior.
SlImE mold And nEtWoRkInG
Our artistic approach to the exploration of slime mold as
networks is characterized by a spatialized thinking setup
with three tectonic planes of knowledge and interest. 这
first plane is the behavior of the slime mold: an amoeba con-
tinuously transforming its body into an efficient network of
nutrients as it seeks food and the favorable environmental
conditions of shade and moisture. The second plane of in-
terest is network infrastructure and its protocols, in particu-
lar the techniques for transporting information. The third
plane of interest is communication: the way preferences or
meaning move across infrastructures, a sort of projection of
organic behavior on networks’ technicity.
Akin to the way ancient Greek mathematician Thales of
Miletus could calculate the height of the Great Pyramid of
Cheops by comparing the length of its shadow to the shadow
of his walking stake, we observed slime mold’s networking
body through the shadow communication cast upon the net-
work topology habitats we created. This mediated approach
gave us access to a speculative account of computer networks’
capacity to self-optimize, inspired by the slime mold’s capac-
ity for reconfiguration. 此外, we experimented with
the slime mold as a proxy to avoid the complexity, 成本, 和
environmental impact of running experiments over ordinary
communications infrastructure.
We created a series of habitats as experimental contexts
using what we already knew about slime mold’s behavior as
a starting point. These experiments included arranging food
sources in different topological configurations and placing
obstacles to approximate scenarios of even and uneven dis-
tribution of both scarce and abundant resources.
We disclose information on two levels: One is the technical
description of our encounters with slime mold, which takes
the tone of scientific reporting. On this level, an objective and
impersonal voice necessarily reduces slime mold’s behavior
462 莱昂纳多, 卷. 55, 不. 5, PP. 462–467, 2022
Published under a Creative Commons International (抄送 4.0) 执照.
https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02248 ©2022 ISAST
从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/55/5/462/2046430/leon_a_02248.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023
to a model or a metaphor of communication networks. 秒-
另一, we recognize that any such effort accompanies the spe-
cific, situated character of our encounters with slime mold,
which requires accounting for our heterogenous and partial
perspectives.
Knowing Slime Mold in nature, lab, and artist Studio
Physarum polycephalum is an acellular organism whose life
cycle includes three distinct stages: one in which it looks for
食物, as plasmodium; a second, reproductive stage, 当它
develops sporangia; and a third, hibernate stage, as sclero-
tium. In its feeding stage it resembles a small patch of bright
yellow mucous (如图. 1). The cell contains a multitude of in-
dividual nuclei: its many heads (polycephalum). It can take
many shapes, and the size of a slime mold ranges from several
millimeters to the size of a table.
In nature, slime mold slowly creeps through forest floors to
feed on damp leaf litter, bacteria, fungi, and other microor-
ganisms. Once it locates all nearby food sources, it contracts
back on itself, strengthening the connections between the best
来源, thereby creating an optimal network for digestion and
distribution of nutrients. Traces of extracellular slime, 哪个
function as spatial memory, are left behind (如图. 2). When ex-
posed to heat or light and unable to find food, the plasmodium
enters its reproductive phase and develops sacs of spores called
sporangia. Once environmental conditions are favorable again,
the spores emerge from these fruiting bodies, joining together
to form new plasmodia. The life cycle begins again.
Physarum polycephalum in the lab (如图. 2) exhibits behav-
ior that has been called proto-intelligent or cognizant: 这是
able to solve mazes and determine the shortest paths in a
网络. Scientists studied slime mold’s ability to “learn,”
“memorize” events and routes, “make decisions,” selectively
search for food, and solve a range of complex challenges [7].
A well-known example is the Tokyo railway experiment [8],
which demonstrated how Physarum polycephalum networks,
connecting food sources arranged as geographical locations
of cities in the Tokyo area, reproduced the layout and trans-
port efficiency of the actual rail network. These experiments
are often attuned to suggesting how slime mold can be used
如图. 1. Slime mold in nature. Photo taken 31 一月 2015 in Christchurch
城市, Canterbury, 新西兰. (Bernard Spragg, public domain)
如图. 2. Slime mold in the laboratory shows different parts of the plasmodium:
inoculation of plasmodial culture (yellow disk), the tubule network and its search
正面, and extracellular slime from previous exploration. (© Audrey Dussutour)
to inform designs of new networks and environmental infra-
structure by human engineers.
Information moves across the organism as a peristaltic wave
of information on food availability, traveling by cross-sectional
contraction of tubes in a “feedback loop,” triggered by contact
with a food source [9]. This chemical sensing and signaling,
known as chemotaxis, propels the cell to migrate toward ad-
equate (and move away from inadequate) food sources.
Artistic engagements with Physarum polycephalum extend
the space of its agency: Artists search for ways this living or-
ganism can inform our understanding of social and cultural
互动. Heather Barnett considered a collaborative, 共-
author relation with the slime mold, “a process of negotiation
between an artist and a single-celled organism” [10]. Barnett
engaged in playful pedagogies, such as in her work Nodes and
网络 [11], exploring pollution, 犯罪, or gentrification in
urban contexts. In a different mode of operation, Barnett’s
Being Slime Mould offered a collective experience to address
directly the biological effects of the behavioral rules observed
in slime mold and explore its nonhuman perspective [12].
Media artist Vanessa Lorenzo works with microflora and
fauna to challenge and reflect on our presumed individual-
性 [13]. Lorenzo’s projects also address the invisible diversity
of the contemporary urban environment, interested in the
evocative visual language of bacteria, fungi, and slime molds.
Theresa Schubert used slime mold as an aesthetic catalyst
but also to question her connection with the other (人类
and nonhumans), often through skin [14]. Another relevant
approach is that of Agnes Cameron, who examined the use
of slime mold as a model for network resilience [15]. 凸轮-
eron pursued the interest in self-optimization of networked
communication by using slime mold organisms to model
self-organizing telecommunication networks.
Sarah Grant’s work looks at social interactions’ reconfigu-
ration by the design, 部署, and locality of communi-
cation networks. In Subnodes and You Are Here, she installed
小的, portable, local area wireless computer networks that
acted as geocached digital habitats for social interactions
within a close physical space [16,17]. 最近, 一起
with Colombian artist Juan Pablo García Sossa, Grant has
been developing a wide area wireless peer-to-peer commu-
从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/55/5/462/2046430/leon_a_02248.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023
Savić and Grant, Slime Mold and Network Imaginaries 463
nity network designed to facilitate a lateral, intertropical cul-
tural exchange across great distances [18].
In her work with slime mold, Grant is interested in cen-
tering the network itself as the subject, observing how it re-
sponds to its environment. She regards the slime mold as
a living manifestation of a communications network that
adapts in real time to dynamic environmental conditions.
This interest motivated the explorations described below.
modElInG nEtWoRk topoloGIES WIth
physaruM polycephaluM
We explored how the growing body of slime mold would
articulate and adapt to its environment in a dialogue with
the different spatial configurations of attractants and repel-
lents. Based on literature and previous experiments, we as-
sumed that Physarum polycephalum would try to overcome
obstacles to get to its most preferred food (honey), 那它
would prefer oats over pasta, and that it would avoid salty
or spicy foods.
We designed and built nine experimental network topolo-
gies to examine how slime mold could be used to model in-
formation flow through a network driven by different food
distribution configurations (如图. 3):
A. decentralized, equal linear distribution (1A)
乙. decentralized, scattered scarcity (2A, 2乙, 2C)
C. 集中, circles (3A)
d. equal field distribution in triangle or square (4A, 4乙)
e. scarcity vs. abundance (5A, 5乙)
We placed slime molds in custom-made enclosures treated
with a ground of agar (如图. 3, 1a–5b). We carefully placed
food sources as attractants and repellents to articulate dif-
ferent network topologies (i.e. centralized or decentralized)
to analyze and speculate upon. We played with spacing be-
tween the food sources and their regularity and painted food
with natural colorings so that we could monitor how the cell
moves information across its body. We observed how slime
mold grew across these configurations.
pREdICt Ably unpREdICt AblE GRoWth
The nine slime mold cells grew by expanding and retracting
in all directions until they detected a source of nutrients.
They often “economized” on movement: If oats were placed
close to each other (关于 1 厘米), the body would quickly
establish a distributed network connecting them. When food
was placed in concentric circles, slime mold first consumed
closer food sources, making “rings” across pieces of pasta,
before exploring the space centripetally. In scarcity scenar-
ios (如图. 3, 2a–c), it grew around densely concentrated food
sources before foraging to meet its other parts. The explora-
tion of equally distributed food sources (如图. 3, 4a and 4b)
worked as expected: Slime mold
moved, exploring farther and con-
suming nearby, gradually covering
the area evenly (如图. 4).
The interaction with honey was
different from our expectations.
We used honey to stimulate Phy-
sarum polycephalum to overcome
obstacles, but it avoided it in large
movements. In a centralized setup,
slime mold explored the dish two or
three times in circles before reach-
ing for honey (如图. 4, 左边). 在里面
setup where we hid honey behind
a “wall” of spice (如图. 5, 正确的), 这
slime mold took a week before
eventually reaching for honey. 我们
consider that the specific food col-
oring could have caused the unex-
pected behavior. We were able to
observe the flow of information
from different food sources marked
by their color: blue honey, red pasta,
or yellow oats (如图. 6). We consider
how this could determine optimal
paths for transmissions in the dif-
ferent setups, including a reflection
on possible spread of misinforma-
的 (例如. repellent honey). We take
this as a demonstration that the
way communication works in a
network is conditioned by several
如图. 3. Nine square dishes with initial conditions: 1A, 2A, 2乙 | 2C, 3A, 4A | 4乙, 5A, 5乙. (© Sarah Grant)
464 Savić and Grant, Slime Mold and Network Imaginaries
从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/55/5/462/2046430/leon_a_02248.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023
如图. 4. The growth of three experimental scenarios:
3A, 2C, 4乙. (© Sarah Grant)
如图. 5. 蜂蜜: the dislike and eventual
consumption, scenarios: 1A, 1A, 5A.
(© Sarah Grant)
were metabolized, the slime mold retracted, and abandoned
nodes depleted of nutrients. Once there was no food left, 这
slime mold was found to retract in on itself, forming a hard,
dehydrated scab as it entered the sclerotia phase. Thinking of
this behavior in network terms, we recognize that different
types of networks would require different kinds of adapta-
tion to a lack of resources. 例如, with wireless sen-
sor networks (WSN), which are used to monitor physical or
environmental conditions in the wild, the main challenges
in design and deployment are network energy consumption,
interaction of nodes, and capacity for self-configuration [20].
Could a sensor in the network send a signal to its nodes to
enter a low power mode to preserve network integrity, 在
extreme cases even temporarily abandoning some nodes?
Another example to consider is backbone networks that tie
diverse networks together. The main issues in their perfor-
mance are congestion and interference, addressable with
topology control, which essentially reroutes network routes
to reflect the current pattern of traffic demands [21]. We pro-
如图. 6. Observation of food particles moving across the slime mold body under
a digital microscope. (© Sarah Grant)
Savić and Grant, Slime Mold and Network Imaginaries 465
factors simultaneously: distances and preferences, 也
unpredictable factors. The body of the slime mold organism
“computes” and “distributes” information (and resources,
食物) in ways “optimal” for its survival but telling of com-
plex entanglements of motivations that are more interesting
to observe than to resolve.
rethinking networks with Slime Mold
We set out to imagine how network protocols could emu-
late some of the organic processes that we observed in our
实验. We recognize that some of the decentralized
networking technologies, such as mesh networking, already
incorporate aspects of this organicity. Mesh networks gained
prominence in ad hoc networking situations, such as disaster
恢复. Often used as alternative, independent modes of
information exchange in political struggle (Athens Wireless
Metropolitan Network in 2015 or Occupy.here in 2011), mesh
networks are praised for their resilience and low planning re-
quirements. 例如, a device running the B.A.T.M.A.N.
open mesh networking protocol [19] constantly broadcasts
messages alerting nearby nodes of its existence and seeks to
connect with them, thereby increasing network resilience.
Comparable to mesh networking, slime mold actively
seeks food sources, fanning out and retracting. This behav-
ior is already incorporated in the design of mesh networking
protocols: They actively seek other nodes in order to dynami-
cally extend the network. Thinking further with slime mold,
we imagined extending these network protocols to include
metadata about the current state of the network, taking a
cue from the slime mold’s capacity to chemically transmit
environmental conditions and the location of an attractant
or repellent across its entire body. Possible information in-
cludes bandwidth usage, energy levels, and responsiveness of
network nodes, or environmental conditions.
We considered slime mold’s capacity to adaptively recon-
figure its network of food nodes. As nodes in its network
从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/55/5/462/2046430/leon_a_02248.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023
pose to consider how slime mold capacity to articulate the
environment in terms of preferred food sources could serve
as a model for rerouting.
Adjacent to this idea is the art project The Solar Protocol,
recently released by Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, and Bene-
detta Piantella [22]. It features a network of small solar-pow-
ered servers set up in different locations around the world,
routing traffic through nodes with the most available energy.
The slime mold enters its reproductive phase when there is
scarcity of food coupled with exposure to light. 什么会
it look like for a communications network to enter a “re-
productive phase”? We imagined a network of servers that
initiates a process for bringing up replacement servers when
the network suffers critical damage such as disk failure or
power outage.
ConCluSIon
Slime mold has been extensively explored in science as an
“informant” on network design and traffic routing because
of its capacity to avoid obstacles, solve mazes, and compute
shortest paths. We propose to open this relationship to me-
diation and let slime mold tell us about networking in an
open-ended way. Our interest in slime mold is driven by an
ambition to challenge the conceptual similarities and practi-
cal differences between the way slime mold’s growing body
articulates a network and the way this is interpreted in sci-
ence and art.
Our discussion on rethinking the networks demonstrates
a way to create and share imaginaries of network behavior
through situated observations of a living, resilient organism.
As artists, we have direct access to this organism and can
model scenarios in which we study the behavior of slime mold.
Rather than working with expensive proprietary hardware and
software for running sophisticated network processes, we pro-
pose speculations that normally occur in engineering labs,
available and accessible to an artistic practice.
In our explorations of the different scenarios, 我们不
seek predictions or optimizations of real outcomes. 在-
terest in the way slime mold computes and communicates
signals a practical, situated scope of this work. With the
discussion on experimental outcomes and network imagi-
naries, we demonstrate the ability to move between the real
world and its abstraction in a productive manner. 就像
Grant’s work is aesthetically determined but unconstrained
to a single artistic or engineering domain, we work with and
observe how slime mold articulates its environment. 在这个
勘探, we simultaneously read the performativity of
life-supporting processes (foraging for food) and the perfor-
mance of the environment that conditions “efficient” strate-
gies for slime mold.
acknowledgments
We would like to thank Vanessa Lorenzo for providing us with samples
of Physarum polycephalum to work with. Sarah Grant’s residency within
the Thinking Toys for Commoning project at the Institute Experimental
Design and Media Cultures (IXDM) was financed by Swiss National
Science Foundation project grant 175913.
references and notes
1 Sarah Grant and Bengt Sjölén, “Introduction to Biocomputing
with Slime Moulds” (2018): www.criticalengineering.org/intensives
/2018/#biocomputing (访问过 4 四月 2020).
2 Sarah Grant, “Visceral Systems: Approaches to Working with Sound
and Network Data Transmissions as a Sculptural Medium,” 34C3
(2017): https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9290-visceral_systems (访问过
4 四月 2020).
3 Selena Savić, “Delegating Management, Augmenting the Mind:
What Could Be the Role for Technology in Commoning Practices?”
Proceedings of free/libre Technologies, Arts and the Commons (Nico-
是: University of Nicosia Research Foundation, 2020) PP. 81–87.
4 Selena Savić et al., “Toys for Conviviality. Situating Commoning,
Computation and Modelling,” Open Cultural Studies 4, 不. 1, 143–153
(2020): https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2020-0015.
5 Grant and Sjölén [1]; Savić [3]; David Bollier and Silke Helfrich, 编辑。,
Patterns of commoning (纽约: Common Strategies Group, 2015).
6 埃莉诺·奥斯特罗姆, Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions
for collective action (纽约: Cambridge Univ. 按, 1990).
7 Andrew Adamatzky, 编辑。, Shortest Path Solvers. From Software to Wet-
器皿 (占婆: 施普林格, 2018).
8 Atsushi Tero et al., “Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network
设计,“ 科学 327, 不. 5964, 439–442 (2010).
9 Karen Alim et al., “Mechanism of Signal Propagation in Physarum
polycephalum,” 美国国家科学院院刊 114,
不. 20, 5136–5141 (2017).
10 Heather Barnett, “Many-Headed: Co-creating with the Collective,”
in Andrew Adamatzky, 编辑。, Slime Mould in Arts and Architecture
(丹麦: River Publishers, 2019) p. 14.
11 Heather Barnett, “Nodes and Networks: The City as Superorganism”:
www.heatherbarnett.co.uk/work/nodes-and-networks/ (访问过 21
行进 2021).
12 Barnett [10].
13 Vanessa Lorenzo, “Hybridoa: hybrid designer, researcher, & artist.
Human/nature/culture entanglements through speculative design
方法论, experimental media art mixing technology and biol-
ogy”: www.hybridoa.org/ (访问过 28 十月 2021).
14 Theresa Schubert, “Teresa Schubert makes art that is . . . .”: 万维网
.theresaschubert.com/ (访问过 5 可能 2020).
15 Agnes Cameron, “Slime Moulds”: www.agnescameron.info/slimes
.html (访问过 5 可能 2020).
16 Sarah Grant, “Subnodes” (2012): www.subnodes.org (访问过 4
四月 2020).
17 Sarah Grant, Dan Phiffer, and Amelia Marzec, “You Are Here”
(2016): www.youarehere.network (访问过 16 行进 2021).
18 Juan Pablo García Sossa and Sarah Grant, “Futura Tropica” (2021):
www.futura-tropica.network/ (访问过 26 四月 2021).
19 “B.A.T.M.A.N. in Berlin”: www.open-mesh.org/doc/batmand/Berlin
Experience.html (访问过 16 行进 2021).
466 Savić and Grant, Slime Mold and Network Imaginaries
从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/55/5/462/2046430/leon_a_02248.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023
20 John Heidemann and Ramesh Govindan, “Embedded Sensor
网络,” in Dimitrios Hristu-Varsakelis and W.S. 莱文, 编辑。,
Handbook of Networked and Embedded Control Systems (波士顿:
Birkhäuser, 2005).
21 S. Smys, G. Josemin Bala, and Jennifer S Raj, “Efficient Topology
Control in Wireless Networks Using Minimum Backbone Updates,”
在 2010 Second International Conference on Computing, Communica-
tion and Networking Technologies, 1–5 (Karur, 印度: IEEE, 2010):
www.doi.org/10.1109/ICCCNT.2010.5591703.
22 Tega Brain, Alex Nathansan, and Benedetta Piantella, “The Solar
Protocol” (2021): www.solarprotocol.net/ (访问过 16 行进 2021).
稿件收到 1 六月 2021.
selena saVIć is head of the MAKE/SENSE PhD program at
Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM),
FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel. She was a post-
doctoral fellow in the Architectural Theory and Philosophy of
Technics department at TU Vienna after receiving her PhD
in architecture from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lau-
sanne (EPFL, 2015).
sarah Grant is the Visiting Professor of New Media at
Kunsthochschule Kassel and is a member of the Weise7 stu-
dio in Berlin. She received her master’s degree in interactive
telecommunications from New York University (NYU, 2008).
从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/55/5/462/2046430/leon_a_02248.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023
Savić and Grant, Slime Mold and Network Imaginaries 467
