Being Slime Mould
Being Slime Mould: a participatory experiment exploring collective intelligence
Being Slime Mould sets out to test human capacity for communication and cooperation in comparison with a single celled organism, the slime mould, Physarum polycephalum. Whilst it has no brain or central nervous system, the slime mould demonstrates primitive intelligence and an impressive capacity for collective action.
Being Slime Mould is a participatory experiment inviting groups of people to engage with non-human notions of collective intelligence. Originally devised by Heather Barnett in collaboration with Daniel Grushkin, the experiment was first tested on a group of random strangers visiting the BioDesign exhibition at the New Institute in Rotterdam in September 2013. The experiment prompted spontaneous collective action and rich conversations about social agency, bacterial communication and human psychologies… amongst other things.
The emergent process has since been adapted to suit different participants, contexts and environments, each variation generating new behaviours and interpretations of the collective body. By following some simple biological rules we can observe complex behaviours emerge.
Writing on Being Slime Mould…
Barnett, Heather. Being Other Than We Are… in PUBLIC Journal #59 Interspecies Communication, Summer 2019. Editors: Meredith Tromble and Patricia Olynyk. [download essay]
Barnett, Heather (2019). Many-Headed: Co-creating with the Collective in Slime Mould in Arts and Architecture (ed. Andrew Adamatzky). River Publishers. [download chapter]
As a creative communication workshop or team building exercise Being Slime Mould can be adapted to suit different group and organisational needs.
Contact Heather to discuss how embodying the behaviour of an intelligent single-celled organism can enhance human communication and cooperation.
Being Slime Mould is adapted to suit different groups and contexts.
These are the experiments to date:
2019
Crossing Kingdoms: Co-creating with Nonhuman Others, Shared Campus, Zurich
Being Slime Mould, 21st Century Common Sense, NESTA, London
The Physarum Experiments, Artist and the Machine, Barbican Centre, London
City Superorganism, York University & University of Toronto, Canada
Being Other Than We Are… Multispecies Storytelling Conference, Vaxjo, Sweden
2018
Into the Mountain: A Meet, Tramway, Glasgow
Fluid Rhythms, Open Set, Amsterdam
Reimagining Munich, City as Superorganism, Munich
Playful Learning Conference, Manchester
2017
Nonhuman Agents Conference, Art Laboratory Berlin
Crowd Control, collective behaviour experiments, arebyte gallery, London
Experiments in Elasticity, keynote speaker for ELIA Conference, Central Saint Martins
Being Biological, Scratch Night, Coney and Theatre Delicatessen
Systems Games Nights, arebyte gallery, London
Biodesign Challenge, Central Saint Martins, London
2016
Systems Games STEAM workshop for educators (via roaming robot), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Systems Games Night open workshop, Qlab, New York
Social Evolution Field Course, Rockefeller University, New York State
Collective Motion Conference, Uppsala, Sweden
Slime Mould Boot Camp, Central Saint Martins, London
2015
The Conference, Malmö, Sweden
The Lab Project Symposium, London
Open Embodiments Conference, Tucson, Arizona
Flatpack Film Festival, BOM, Birmingham
2014
FT Innovate Conference, London
2013
BioDesign II, Museum Park, Rotterdam
BioDesign I, New Institute, Rotterdam
