WEBVTT

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I'd like to introduce you to an organism:

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a slime mold, Physarum polycephalum.

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It's a mold with an identity
crisis, because it's not a mold,

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so let's get that straight to start with.

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It is one of 700 known slime molds

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belonging to the kingdom of the amoeba.

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It is a single-celled organism, a cell,

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that joins together with other cells

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to form a mass super-cell

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to maximize its resources.

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So within a slime mold you might find thousands

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or millions of nuclei,

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all sharing a cell wall,

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all operating as one entity.

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In its natural habitat,

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you might find the slime mold foraging in woodlands,

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eating rotting vegetation,

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but you might equally find it

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in research laboratories,

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classrooms, and even artists' studios.

NOTE Paragraph

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I first came across the slime
mold about five years ago.

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A microbiologist friend of mine

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gave me a petri dish with a little yellow blob in it

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and told me to go home and play with it.

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The only instructions I was given,

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that it likes it dark and damp

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and its favorite food is porridge oats.

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I'm an artist who's worked for many years

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with biology, with scientific processes,

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so living material is not uncommon for me.

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I've worked with plants, bacteria,

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cuttlefish, fruit flies.

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So I was keen to get my new collaborator home

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to see what it could do.

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So I took it home and I watched.

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I fed it a varied diet.

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I observed as it networked.

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It formed a connection between food sources.

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I watched it leave a trail behind it,

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indicating where it had been.

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And I noticed that when it was
fed up with one petri dish,

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it would escape and find a better home.

NOTE Paragraph

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I captured my observations

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through time-lapse photography.

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Slime mold grows at about one centimeter an hour,

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so it's not really ideal for live viewing

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unless there's some form of
really extreme meditation,

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but through the time lapse,

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I could observe some really interesting behaviors.

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For instance, having fed on a nice pile of oats,

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the slime mold goes off to explore new territories

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in different directions simultaneously.

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When it meets itself,

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it knows it's already there,

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it recognizes it's there,

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and instead retreats back

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and grows in other directions.

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I was quite impressed by this feat,

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at how what was essentially
just a bag of cellular slime

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could somehow map its territory,

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know itself, and move with seeming intention.

NOTE Paragraph

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I found countless scientific studies,

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research papers, journal articles,

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all citing incredible work with this one organism,

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and I'm going to share a few of those with you.

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For example, a team in Hokkaido University in Japan

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filled a maze with slime mold.

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It joined together and formed a mass cell.

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They introduced food at two points,

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oats of course,

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and it formed a connection

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between the food.

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It retracted from empty areas and dead ends.

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There are four possible routes through this maze,

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yet time and time again,

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the slime mold established the shortest

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and the most efficient route.

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Quite clever.

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The conclusion from their experiment

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was that the slime mold had
a primitive form of intelligence.

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Another study exposed cold air at
regular intervals to the slime mold.

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It didn't like it. It doesn't like it cold.

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It doesn't like it dry.

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They did this at repeat intervals,

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and each time, the slime mold

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slowed down its growth in response.

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However, at the next interval,

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the researchers didn't put the cold air on,

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yet the slime mold slowed down in anticipation

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of it happening.

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It somehow knew that it was about the time

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for the cold air that it didn't like.

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The conclusion from their experiment

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was that the slime mold was able to learn.

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A third experiment:

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the slime mold was invited

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to explore a territory covered in oats.

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It fans out in a branching pattern.

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As it goes, each food node it finds,

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it forms a network, a connection to,

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and keeps foraging.

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After 26 hours, it established

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quite a firm network

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between the different oats.

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Now there's nothing remarkable in this

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until you learn that the center oat that it started from

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represents the city of Tokyo,

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and the surrounding oats are
suburban railway stations.

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The slime mold had replicated

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the Tokyo transport network

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— (Laughter) —

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a complex system developed over time

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by community dwellings, civil
engineering, urban planning.

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What had taken us well over 100 years

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took the slime mold just over a day.

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The conclusion from their experiment

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was that the slime mold can form efficient networks

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and solve the traveling salesman problem.

NOTE Paragraph

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It is a biological computer.

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As such, it has been mathematically modeled,

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algorithmically analyzed.

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It's been sonified, replicated, simulated.

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World over, teams of researchers

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are decoding its biological principles

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to understand its computational rules

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and applying that learning
to the fields of electronics,

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programming and robotics.

NOTE Paragraph

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So the question is,

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how does this thing work?

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It doesn't have a central nervous system.

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It doesn't have a brain,

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yet it can perform behaviors

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that we associate with brain function.

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It can learn, it can remember,

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it can solve problems, it can make decisions.

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So where does that intelligence lie?

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So this is a microscopy, a video I shot,

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and it's about 100 times magnification,

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sped up about 20 times,

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and inside the slime mold,

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there is a rhythmic pulsing flow,

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a vein-like structure carrying

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cellular material, nutrients and chemical information

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through the cell,

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streaming first in one direction
and then back in another.

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And it is this continuous, synchronous oscillation

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within the cell that allows it to form

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quite a complex understanding of its environment,

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but without any large-scale control center.

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This is where its intelligence lies.

NOTE Paragraph

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So it's not just academic researchers

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in universities that are interested in this organism.

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A few years ago, I set up SliMoCo,

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the Slime Mould Collective.

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It's an online, open, democratic network

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for slime mold researchers and enthusiasts

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to share knowledge and experimentation

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across disciplinary divides

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and across academic divides.

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The Slime Mould Collective
membership is self-selecting.

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People have found the collective

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as the slime mold finds the oats.

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And it comprises of scientists

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and computer scientists and researchers

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but also artists like me,

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architects, designers, writers, activists, you name it.

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It's a very interesting, eclectic membership.

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Just a few examples:

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an artist who paints with fluorescent Physarum;

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a collaborative team

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who are combining biological and electronic design

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with 3D printing technologies in a workshop;

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another artist who is using the slime mold

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as a way of engaging a community

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to map their area.

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Here, the slime mold is being used directly

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as a biological tool, but metaphorically

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as a symbol for ways of talking

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about social cohesion, communication

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and cooperation.

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Other public engagement activities,

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I run lots of slime mold workshops,

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a creative way of engaging with the organism.

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So people are invited to come and learn

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about what amazing things it can do,

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and they design their own petri dish experiment,

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an environment for the slime mold to navigate

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so they can test its properties.

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Everybody takes home a new pet

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and is invited to post their results

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on the Slime Mould Collective.

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And the collective has enabled me

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to form collaborations

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with a whole array of interesting people.

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I've been working with filmmakers

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on a feature-length slime mold documentary,

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and I stress feature-length,

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which is in the final stages of edit

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and will be hitting your cinema screens very soon.

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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It's also enabled me to conduct what I think is

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the world's first human slime mold experiment.

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This is part of an exhibition in Rotterdam last year.

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We invited people to become
slime mold for half an hour.

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So we essentially tied people together

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so they were a giant cell,

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and invited them to follow slime mold rules.

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You have to communicate through oscillations,

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no speaking.

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You have to operate as one entity, one mass cell,

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no egos,

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and the motivation for moving

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and then exploring the environment

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is in search of food.

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So a chaotic shuffle ensued
as this bunch of strangers

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tied together with yellow ropes
wearing "Being Slime Mold" t-shirts

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wandered through the museum park.

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When they met trees, they had to reshape

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their connections and reform as a mass cell

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through not speaking.

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This is a ludicrous experiment in many, many ways.

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This isn't hypothesis-driven.

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We're not trying to prove, demonstrate anything.

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But what it did provide us was a way

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of engaging a broad section of the public

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with ideas of intelligence, agency, autonomy,

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and provide a playful platform

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for discussions about

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the things that ensued.

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One of the most exciting things

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about this experiment

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was the conversation that happened afterwards.

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An entirely spontaneous symposium
happened in the park.

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People talked about the human psychology,

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of how difficult it was to let go

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of their individual personalities and egos.

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Other people talked about bacterial communication.

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Each person brought in their own

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individual interpretation,

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and our conclusion from this experiment was that

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the people of Rotterdam were highly cooperative,

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especially when given beer.

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We didn't just give them oats.

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We gave them beer as well.

NOTE Paragraph

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But they weren't as efficient as the slime mold,

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and the slime mold, for me,

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is a fascinating subject matter.

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It's biologically fascinating,

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it's computationally interesting,

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but it's also a symbol,

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a way of engaging with ideas of community,

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collective behavior, cooperation.

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A lot of my work draws on the scientific research,

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so this pays homage to the maze experiment

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but in a different way.

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And the slime mold is also my working material.

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It's a coproducer of photographs, prints, animations,

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participatory events.

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Whilst the slime mold doesn't choose

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to work with me, exactly,

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it is a collaboration of sorts.

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I can predict certain behaviors

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by understanding how it operates,

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but I can't control it.

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The slime mold has the final say

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in the creative process.

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And after all, it has its own internal aesthetics.

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These branching patterns that we see

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we see across all forms, scales of nature,

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from river deltas to lightning strikes,

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from our own blood vessels to neural networks.

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There's clearly significant rules at play

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in this simple yet complex organism,

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and no matter what our disciplinary
perspective or our mode of inquiry,

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there's a great deal that we can learn

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from observing and engaging

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with this beautiful, brainless blob.

NOTE Paragraph

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I give you Physarum polycephalum.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)