GMU:Different Worlds/Jesse Lucjan Stegmann

Homunculus Cinema

21.5. A friend in need is a friend indeed

Assorted leftover lab equipment provided by a friend arrives straight from the Biolab of HU Berlin, with a detailed description on how to use it. I have no Slime Mold to call my own yet and get to organising the adoption of one. Meanwhile work on the concept, which is expanding quickly. The different Ideas are too interconnected to prioritise, at least at this point.

Synopsis

The Work consists of two parts: The physical environment, the „cinema“, the darkened box in which the slime molds will be permanently placed, if possible grown into a humanoid shape by means of a „skeleton“ consisting of wire and oat flakes and eventually subjected to screenings of Paul Sharits' „Word Movie“. The second part consists of an extensive study, part examination of the experiments, part essayistic interpretation of the project and diary of the researcher. The scientific nature of it will be fictional, a „documentary fiction“, which means the writings will ultimately be literary, though staying true to the form of a scientific study. Additionally, a shortened version of this concept will hint at the implications of the work (alchemy, pseudo- and protoscience, questions of perception and the self, irrationality) which are not directly spelled out in the study.

Put even simpler: 1: a group of slime molds will be cultivated onto a human-shaped „skeleton“, 2: those figurines will be examined, each watching a different part of „Word Movie“ in a darkened room on repeat, the relationship of the observer to the figures will be described in the context of the „homunculus“-concept, 3. Their reaction to the film sequences will be examined in a fictional study, which will also discuss the cultural and philosophical implications of the homunculus, literally and metaphorically, the perceptiveness of slime molds, and the attempt to communicate to them via film.