GMU:DIY Bio: doing things with biology/Antje Danz

Polycephalum Feedback Loop

Exhibition Republic of Spirits

In April 2019 I was part of "republic of spirits". An one night only exhibition project for the founding day of the Bauhaus 100 years ago. My setup was experimental and hands on. I wanted to share my passion and knowledge with all the people passing by. So I created a lab like environment with basic stuff you would find normally in a community lab. Easy for everyone to use. I took Polycephalum,* Euglena and Pyrocystis fusiformis with me and let people discover it, ask questions and take PP home.

music by Bastian Körting

Concept

We are surrounded by small worlds we can barely see or even guess they are there. What if there would be a possibility so get in touch with those small species. What if we send them a certain message they would reply to. This installation tries to create a feedback loop to connect two beings that don’t speak the same language and try to communicate those two perceptions of defining art. And I invite those two beings to collaborate on the idea of Bauhaus. The human being and the slime mold Physarum Polycephalum. We as human beeings sending the idea of how we see Bauhaus, its shapes, its colors, to Polycephalum and receiving direct feedback of how the Slime Mold perceives it in its own small world. Maybe we can find things in common which will be combined in the Bauhaus Being. Seeing the world with two different point of views and in the end put it together. Getting a new vision or idea of how art can be defined, not only from a human point of view.

* Physarum Polycephalum

Polycephalum is semi-intelligent organism that can remember things and paths it took. He reacts directly to stimuli from the outside by making movements or changing in electric potential within the membrane. This electric potential can be translated into sounds or any other form of art. Drawings, patterns… It also can find the shortest path to the most preferable food source and communicate it to members of the same species. We’ve been experimenting with different food media and one of the colonies painted pink traces in the potato-oat media we cooked. The traces disappear after some time. Everywhere Physarum Polycephalum moves it leaves those chemical slime tracks so it remembers where he has already been in order not to move back to the same place twice. This is a so called external spatial memory it creates. And it also communicates its experience with other colonies in the same area.