"(TV) 'Roy O'Neil, NBC News, Houston.'" "'Now we go from science to what sounds like science-fiction." "'There are reports from Dallas, Texas 'that seven things called "blobs" have been sighted." "'They are shapeless, quivering masses that have been found in backyards." "'The smallest is the size of a teacake, and the biggest is 18 inches in diameter." "'One grew 16 times its original size, and it turned purple when it was poked." "'At least that's what is reported to us." "'But now it appears that most of the "blobs" in Texas are dying, 'and we still don't know what they are.'" "(Birds chirping)" "(Mark) 'Well, I've always liked being out in the woods, like, so..." "'Depending on weather, three or four times a week, say." "'Mainly looking for mushrooms, though, with a sideline of slime moulds." "'Keep track of them as they wander around." "'I usually find quite a few around winter, mainly because there is less fungi 'and I'm spending more time looking in little holes 'and in nooks and crannies and under logs.'" "Ooh, found one!" "You can see those little yellow..." "tiny little balls." "A big patch of them, but they are tiny." "'I'm just a nature lover, really." "'A bit more observant than the standard person." "'I slowly walk through the woods, and just take notice of everything.'" "I'm going to move along to the next patch of dead logs." "'It was your typical yellow blob in the woods, 'like, "What is that up on the side of a tree?"" "'and it was quite a substantial, sort of, patch of the thing." "'So after investigating..." ""'Ooh, slime moulds." "Interesting." "They move?" "Oh, even more interesting."" "'Well, a 20th of an inch an hour." "'They are not quick, but relatively quick compared to fungus that don't move, yeah." "(Chuckles)" "'Fungus don't move." "Slime moulds do move." "'The only thing in common, really, is they both reproduce with spores." "'But other than that, they're virtually completely different creatures, 'different kingdoms, aren't they?" "'They classed it as animal for a while, didn't they?" "'You assume it is because animals move." "'But they're not animal, not vegetable, not fungi.'" "Slime mould." "(Bryn) 'The term "slime mould" was used 'because all of these organisms have this peculiar feature 'of their colonies where they look like slime.'" "They also, like in the horror movies, can move themselves around, so that slime can actually crawl around on surfaces, 'and find new sources of food." "'For that reason they were actually thought at one point to be animals, 'and so the scientific term for the whole group here is called Mycetozoa." ""'Myceto", referring to fungus, and "zoa", referring to animals.'" "Lister, "Mycetozoa"." ""A monograph of the Mycetozoa, being a descriptive catalogue" ""of the species in the Herbarium of the British Museum."" "'We know there's about 1 ,000 species of slime moulds." "'They are probably vastly understudied and under-known, 'so we might expect that the true diversity is much greater.'" "'If you just look at them, you know, with a naked eye, 'you are missed into thinking they are true fungi, 'because superficially, but it's only superficially, they look like fungi." "'As soon as you start looking at them under a microscope, 'they are very clearly different organisms." "'They're fungus animals.'" "(Bryn) 'When they are dormant they can last for a very long time in soil, 'waiting for conditions to change, to become favourable again." "'And I know that there is one case, one documented case of a spore 'germinating in a lab after 60 years." "'So clearly they have evolved a capacity 'to live out very long periods of hostile conditions.'" "And maybe that's why they've managed to survive for 40 million years." "(Heather) 'I think I've always been curious as to how things work, 'and, you know, what happens underneath the skin, 'and why things are the way they are." "'And I think I've always been interested in things that often get overlooked, 'which is I think why I'm interested in the slime mould." "'It's something that most people know nothing about, 'but there are pockets of research and investigation 'from a scientific and an artistic point of view." "'The slime mould is attributed with ideas of intelligence, of primitive intelligence, 'but it is making decisions." "'It is operating a form of intelligence 'on a really simple level." "'It is a material that I can work with, but I can't control entirely." "'In my experiments what I am doing is observing its behaviour, 'and trying to manipulate its behaviour." "'So using repellents and attractants," "'I am seeing how far I can control what it does, 'how it grows, the patterns it generates, the direction it takes." "'It is quite independent, so I can encourage it to do something 'by coaxing it with an oat or with moisture, 'or try to get it to avoid an area with light or a repellent." "'It doesn't like salt." "It doesn't like bicarbonate of soda.'" "But, ultimately, I can't control the final outcome." "So the final visual outcome is controlled by the slime mould itself, and not by me." "So for this one several different blobs of slime mould are placed on a damp substrate." "And I was interested to see how soon it would form a network, and become one mass organism." "In this particular experiment there is hidden food underneath, which spells "physarum"." "And it reveals itself through the film." "'I was interested to see what it would like to eat,' so I found various dead insects, and fed it on that." "So this is the starting point, so a little yellow blob in a Petri dish, with various desiccated insects." "And some time later it's, kind of, encapsulated that moth, and is going towards this dried-up moth here." "I'm not sure, it is not a meat eater, it is a forager, so it's probably more just absorbing the carbohydrate off the dead insect." "So it will just send out a force of little seekers of cells." "And in a similar way to the way that ant colonies behave, it's agent-based." "There's no kind of grand intelligence." "There's no one in charge of the organism." "When it finds good resources, either moisture or food, it will send some signal back to the rest of the mass cell, and they will migrate and follow." "Their favourite food is porridge oats, but it also likes rice and pasta, so anything carbohydrate-based." "In its natural environment it will feed on rotting vegetation." "So you'll find it if you are walking through the woods and you turn over a log, and in rotting leaves." "In captivity, the tame, and I say "tame" very loosely, slime mould..." "'Yeah, oats are its favourite." "'So I have a variety of oat-based products 'that I use to coax it to grow in certain directions, 'and to do certain things." "'The slime mould is completely innocuous, 'but any kind of food mould will develop after time, 'so it needs to move house on a regular basis.'" "(Bubbles)" "'I have been known to take it on holiday with me before now." "'To keep it going, keep it fed and happy.'" "(Bryn) 'Mostly they feed on the yeasts and bacteria 'that are associated with decay." "'So when you observe them in nature, 'they are associated with decaying plant matter." "'You often find them on rotting logs, or rotting leaves.'" "And that, I think, early on, indicated that they were probably involved in decomposition like the true fungi." "But we now know that they are just feeding on the organisms that are responsible for decomposition." "'Of course, what it is doing is 'it's responding to chemicals in the environment." "'It's called chemotaxis." "'That's their main stimulus." "'They really are picking up signals 'from concentrations of particular chemicals in their environment." "'So chemicals being an indicator of when there's food around." "'Phagocytosis is the mechanism by which it will absorb an organism into its own cell." "'The plasmodium will surround a microorganism, 'and then pull it inside across its own membrane, 'and then seal the membrane back around it 'after that cell has been pulled inside." "'It's sort of like a slimy stomach crawling around on the ground, 'consuming debris." "'It doesn't have a circulatory system, like we do, 'to be able to move stuff around." "'So it has to rely on this simpler mechanism of cytoplasmic streaming." "'Cytoplasmic streaming is a phenomenon that's not unique to the slime moulds, 'but it is particularly an intriguing aspect of the plasmodium." "'because we can see it very clearly under a microscope." "'It typically follows a rhythm of going in one direction for a while, 'and then slowing down and reversing and going in the other direction, 'which it just did right there." "'This is a way that the plasmodium, which is really exploring its space, 'can maintain communication and move nutrients around 'in this large, ever-expanding slimy mass." "'And the cytoplasmic streaming is the mechanism 'by which it can produce new branches, and grow in different directions." "'It's the force.'" "And the cytoplasmic streaming gives this impression of pulsating rhythmic movement." "You can't quite appreciate how much they are almost animal-like, until you get this sped-up time lapse." "(Tim) 'Sometimes the beginning of cinema 'is spoken about, as though it had come from nowhere." "'Obviously, that makes no historical sense." "'Where would the audience be if there hadn't been something before cinema?" "What we have in front of us is a wonderful symbol of popular entertainment from the Victorian era." "This is a particularly elaborate magic lantern." "You can see that it's got three lenses." "So this is a triple-storey projector." "'Into each of these slots, you would put a projection slide." "'And then you could uncover the lens, and project the slide." "'These were, in the days before cinema, 'fantastically popular entertainments." "'It was a very sophisticated form of entertainment." "'No moving pictures, you might think, 'but actually they specialized in making slides which did move." "'Very often the little slides have hand-cranks at the side, 'so you would see animated scenes projected from these machines." "'These were hugely popular, these performances, 'and there is a record of at least one occasion 'on which these showmen had hollow slides, 'and in that hollow slide would be an insect, 'so you would see projected on the screen" "'a giant fly or a giant spider." "'It was a sort of horror show." "'Well, this is the direct antecedent of the first scientific film." "(Tom) 'One of the things that started right from the very early years of cinema, 'even before 1900, 'was that people tried to use cinema 'to slow down, or to speed up the passage of time." "'Percy Smith was an absolute genius at doing this.'" "Percy Smith was an amateur naturalist, 'and he was also very keen on experimenting with photography." "'And right up to about 1920 he was making natural history films." "'Little films about any sorts of aspects of nature 'in his back garden and in his house." "'It was an extraordinary place.'" "In the publicity they used to call it the Southgate Studios of British Instructional Films." "It was just his house and his garden and his greenhouse." "'It's very difficult to imagine a world in which time lapse seemed so magical, 'but try and think yourself back to the Edwardian era." "'Think how extraordinary it must have been 'to see something, which we know to be very gradual, 'to happen in front of your eyes." "We call that technique time lapse." "He, interestingly, called it time magnification." "'So he was thinking about what it's like to look down a microscope, 'or to use a macro lens, 'and he was thinking, 'If I'm speeding something up, I'm magnifying time."" "(Programme theme music)" "(Narrator on film) 'These little growths are called myxies." "'Part of their life they are vegetables, and part of their life they are animals." "'And, probably, they would be minerals too, if they could.'" ""Magic Myxies" is about slime mould." "'This film came out in 1931 , 'and I feel is one of Percy Smith's real masterpieces." "'The types of shots that he is able to construct 'are really very sophisticated.'" "But in a lot of the shots he's not only shooting down a microscope, he is also doing time magnification, or time lapse, at the same time." "'In this film there's a fantastic sequence, 'where he introduces a small pellet of poison." "'And you see the myxies grow towards it, 'and then to move back from it." "'And because it is in time lapse 'it's as though it approaches it, and it dashes away.'" "Obviously, it was a much smaller process than that, but what you see is the observational amateur historian." "He's saying, "I wonder what would happen if I did this?"" ""Look, everybody, this is what happens" ""when you introduce a pellet of poison to slime mould."" ""This is the sort of response you get."" "'If you think about it, there wasn't going to be a shop, 'which would sell you the machines to do time-lapse filmmaking 'because there were only a tiny handful of people who were doing it." "'So he developed his own apparatus." ""'The principle employed necessitated the subject being photographed in a room" ""'from which daylight was absolutely excluded."" ""'But all green-leafed plants need a certain amount of sunlight for their development."" ""As a first step towards eliminating this difficulty," ""a window was provided with a series of light shutters," ""which could be opened or closed by means of a string."" ""'An incandescent gas burner with a bypass was used as an illuminant," ""'and an electric motor and accumulator arranged to operate these," ""'and also to turn the camera to the extent of taking a single picture."" ""A cuckoo clock with chain and weight completed the outfit."" ""The clock was arranged, so that the weight, as it descended," ""pressed a contact and started the motor."" ""This closed the shutters, turned up the gas, took a picture," ""turned out the gas, reopened the shutters" ""and, pulling the chain, lifted the weight from the contact."" "This is how he's describing the highly sophisticated apparatus he's using for making these beautiful time-lapse films." "(Heather) 'The animations give the possibility 'of speeding up the growth patterns 'because one centimetre an hour isn't going to be live viewing, 'unless you're really patient." "'But I'm also interested in the static pattern.'" "It's this kind of bifurcating pattern we see at so many levels of scale in nature." "So looking at aerial images of river deltas, through tree branching, our own blood vessels." "Even neural networks to some extent, that patterning at scale, that kind of fractal, self-repetitive pattern is something that the slime mould has in abundance." "So what you are looking at, really, is the trail of the slime mould growth in that Petri dish on the agar." "So that area, those gaps, would be where the oats were." "And this is the kind of growth patterns all the way around." "And then when you look at it at magnification, you just get the repeated patterns all the way down." "So it has that fractal component from macro to micro." "The closer you look it maintains that structure, which is quite beautiful." "(Heather) 'A lot of what I'm interested in 'is that line between seduction and repulsion." "'There is a lot of beauty under our skin, within our body." "'We are incredibly complex and beautiful organisms." "'And science and technology enable us 'to understand things better, and to push our knowledge." "'And I want people to engage with that.'" "I was working in a pathology laboratory in Poole Hospital as an artist in residence, and samples from patients came in in little pots and were completely anonymous." "And so I was interested in medical imaging and recognition, and points of what were the limits of representation of self." "And so these wallpapers were the original cellular wallpapers." "And this is called Rosebud." "And this one is Yuletide." "And this one is called Peach Blossom." "So they all have cheesy wallpaper names." "This is my blood." "The purple areas are the white-blood cells, and the pink is red-blood cells." "This is from a cheek swab." "So you can see the individual cell with a nucleus inside." "And this is the one that usually gets the most overt reaction, and is the prettiest, which is from cervical smear." "And, again, you can see the individual cells." "And they are purposefully chintzy and decorative." "So this started off as a very tongue-in-cheek idea on interior design." "You decorate your interior space with your interior space." "(Mark) 'I read a very interesting article the other day where the hypothesis 'is that basically mushroom spores are intergalactic space travellers 'and that's how life has gone from planet to planet 'because they are like extremophiles." "'They can survive in the vacuum of space." "They can survive radiation." "'And they've found them way up high, at 70,000 feet, in the air sample so..." "'Yeah, it's possible.'" "I think that could well be a massive slime mould." "All dried out and gone to spores." "Basically, the remnants of one of its stages of life." "They climb up high to be dispersed by the wind and spread around the forest." "'I believe it is Fuligo septica, the dog vomit slime mould." "'It is the one that people sort of notice quite often, 'and go, "Oh!" "What's that?" "Has my dog been sick?"" "'Hence its name." "'Much easier to see than the millimeter-diameter balls on a stalk 'hidden in a crack somewhere.'" "They grow to such big sizes, relatively speaking, and they're bright yellow." "Bright colours like that stand out in the woods." "Yep, another dried brown patch, spored one." "They are quite common now." "Yeah, you want to have pictures of it before the change, and after the change, and also the habitat of what it is growing on, for example to stand a good guess of what it might be." "'It is only really what it might be." "'Artificial construct, isn't it?" "Classification of species?" "'Species are artificial." "They're not..." "'Nature doesn't define a species.'" "It's us that's called it this." "'Taxonomy, or whatever it is.'" "(Bryn) 'We are the world's foremost repository for fungal specimens." "'So we are the place in the world that people come to 'if they need to consult a reference specimen 'to identify a new fungus or to understand something about its distribution, 'or other aspects of its biology." "'There's many points to the collection, 'but the main reason that people preserve material 'is because it's a record of the existence of this individual 'at a particular point in time in a particular place." "This collection here is a stink horn, but this has the common name of the dog's penis." "I haven't spent a lot of time observing dog's penises, but presumably this is somewhat similar." "And so it has this very long stalk." "It would normally come out of the ground like this." "And at the top is where all the spores are produced." "And this kind of green, somewhat metallic-looking area up here would have been really slimy when it was fresh." "And this attracts flies and other insects to it, thinking that it might be a rotting carcass, or perhaps a rotting dog penis." "So it's a pretty clever strategy to get around." "And this one is called Protubera." "But it is also known as Ileodictyon." "And it has this really amazing lattice-like globe, and if you can imagine it before it got dried and flattened, that this was a three-dimensional globe, like one of those toys you can get, where you pull it apart, and it expands and contracts." "That's what this structure is." "And before it expanded like this, it was all held tightly in a little ball, and wrapped in a skin." "And then that skin burst open, like an egg opening up, and this structure, which was all compressed inside, just expanded like a balloon." "'Well, we know that slime moulds are not very closely related to fungi, 'but because they had been classified with the fungi for so long, 'we are still the only people in the world that will ever look at them," "'and consider them and classify them." "'Purely for historical reasons, really, 'we have them in our Fungarium." "'This is the slime mould corner, 'where we keep all of these very strange organisms" "'Unfortunately, we don't have many people looking at them today." "'That's because there aren't very many slime-mould scientists in the world, 'myxomycetologists, if you will." "'And, in fact, slime moulds tend to be kind of the black sheep of the mycological world." "'We do, however, have a very large collection of them." "'They number in the thousands." "'It is certainly an overlooked group of organisms, 'and I think we're lucky enough to be the custodians of them.'" "So I was just randomly opening drawers, looking for one that had some glass-topped cases with some more impressive-looking structures in them." "So this is a drawer of another slime mould called Stemonitis." "This genus has very conspicuous fruiting bodies, and I'm going to open this box right here, and show you a very nice specimen of these fruiting bodies." "They stick up off the substrate, often bark or wood, and they grow in these clusters of little finger-like projections." "All that brown that you see there is the fruiting body that's producing spores." "So there is going to be thousands of spores that are being produced off that thing." "So we've just discovered this collection of slime moulds that I didn't even know existed, because we've never actually had anybody ask about the slime moulds since I came here three years ago." "So people are rarely over in this corner of the Fungarium." "The letter in here is from the person who donated this collection to Miss Lister in, it looks like, 1927." "But the collection here is quite beautiful." "They are all beautifully arranged and very nicely labelled, and a lot of the specimens are in a very good condition." "They've retained their colours and their shapes and quite remarkable features." "And all the collections here come from Luton, so this is one of these citizen scientists back in the early-20th century who made this amazing collection of slime moulds that we didn't even know we had." "(Tim) 'Certainly, up until about the time of the First World War,' there were a lot of very active amateur scientists, and when we think of the word "amateur", it comes from the Latin "amo", to love." "So these amateur scientists are people who do the science because they love it, not because they are second rate, but because they must do it." "(Mark) 'You seem to get strange looks and that off of people, 'so you end up taking pictures of nothing, 'just so that they know you are taking pictures of nothing, 'and not doing something incredibly strange." "'Well, it is strange, I suppose.'" "'I'm looking at where the spotlight is, or where the torch is." "'There's less things to distract me to look at." "'They are quite reflective, some parts of them in certain species, 'so... they kind of shine back, 'and anything that's not green or brown stands out." "'Yellow definitely does." "Orange, red." "'Quite dark in the woods." "'Looking into logs and that, you really don't have much chance of spotting them, 'because they are so small." "'Unless you've got bright sunlight on there... '...you miss them.'" "Ooh, beautiful one!" "Bright yellow." "Yeah, different species, definitely." "You see the slime at the front that haven't actually changed, they're in the process of going into the fluffy shape." "Can spend several hours on a single log." "'I've read a few articles about their being used to study, 'like, crowd flow." "'Designing the most efficient way of getting people through 'from one path to another path." "'And also there is research about them solving mazes and alleged intelligence." "'It might just be the fact that they appear to be intelligent, 'rather than actually are.'" "(Heather) 'There is some work in an exhibition in Rotterdam called Biodesign, 'which is looking at how design is integrating biology, 'either through bio-mimickery, mimicking what biological systems can do, 'or bio-integration, actually working directly with biological organisms." "'And the exhibition there includes the screens of animations, 'and a computer-modelled participatory interactive installation." "'So you're not just looking at the organism, 'you can actually engage with a virtual simulation of the organism." "'This was in collaboration with Jeff Jones 'from the Unconventional Computing Group.'" "Extending that further, how can you get people to engage with it more directly, more physically?" "What happens if we tie people together, so they have to behave as a mass cell?" "(Audience laughs)" "We give them a few rules, so they have to behave like slime mould." "How will humans compare to slime mould, in terms of navigation and cooperation?" "So I'll just play... a couple of clips from the human slime-mould experiment." "'I will just keep you for one moment.'" "I'm one of the artists that has contributed to the Biodesign exhibition, the Being Slime Mould exhibit upstairs." "This is Dan Grushkin who for tonight is a slime-ologist, a slime mould-ologist." "The Being Slime Mould exhibit engages with the Physarum polycephalum slime mould, which is an intelligent organism, through three ways:" "observation, simulation and enactment." "The main experiment that we want to run is to create a human slime mould." "We have no idea what will happen, but maybe some interesting emergent behaviour will evolve." "Thank you very much." "Volunteers for human slime mould." "Can you be recruited?" "Would you like to contribute to a human slime-mould experiment?" " (Woman) Slime moulds?" " (Heather) Yes." "A slime mould is an intelligent organism, and we want to see if humans are as intelligent as slime mould." "(Woman laughs)" "OK, you see they are already a human slime mould." "I think we're nearly ready." "Looking good." "So you are already connecting, networking." "I like it." "(Dan) Calling all slime moulds." "Slime moulds report to the dot." "Slime moulds congregate." "So here is the question." "Humans, can you co-operate like a slime mould?" "(Heather) 'Their rules of enactment were they must connect to other cells, 'so they could change their morphology as a mass cell, 'but their motivation was to be attached to other cells." "'They were instructed to have no voice, 'and communicate only through body mass oscillations, vibrations or forces, 'and to use sensory responses to make decisions." "'Now that didn't go that well on the opening night, 'because people had a couple of glasses of wine, 'and they had other things they wanted to do." "'So it was a bit of a rabble on the opening night.'" "(Dan) So first thing." "Let's follow the oat." "This is your food." "Everyone, find the smartest, most efficient network to the oat." "The oat is going to move slowly." "You follow her." "Good job, slime moulds." "Move together." "(Heather) 'It was a bit of a rabble moving around, 'but when they met an obstacle, 'they realised they had to actually problem-solve." "So getting through doors and around stairs, they are following a giant." "(Audience laughs)" "At this point they had to form a network between two oats." "We introduced an extra oat." "Then they had to think," ""We need both these oats, so how do we connect between them?"" "'And then when we were outside we introduced a third oat.'" "And that caused real problems for them, 'because they had to work out how they could clip and unclip, 'and form the most efficient network.'" "(Dan) The slime mould network has decomposed." "Slime mould at the end, the far end, can you connect to the closest slime to the oat?" "(Indistinct chatter)" "(Dan) It's happening." "The slime mould network is working." "Congratulations, slime mould." "You've done it." "You've connected to all the oats." "You are all happy, whole slime moulds." "It is a very Heath Robinson rough-and-ready simulation of how a slime-mould cell behaves." "'But it was interesting, and we did it the next day.'" "Right, so what do we do if we have three people?" "(Dan) We'll have to recruit from the street or the gallery." "I don't see any other option." " Yeah." " And that's OK." "I'm sightly worried that we might not have critical mass of people." "I didn't realise it would be so easy in the gallery." "(Heather) Are you running away?" "'I think the process of today was really interesting." "'We coerced a bunch of strangers off the street and from the museum 'to take part in an experiment." "'They didn't know what a slime mould was." "'We tried to tell them very quickly what it was,' why it was interesting, what we were going to do to compare human behaviour with slime-mould behaviour, 'and then tell them they were going to get a T-shirt and some beer out of it," "'and it'll take a few minutes." "'So this kind of coerced bunch of people said, yes, which is remarkable in itself.'" "And so we had our little troop of slime-mould cells." "'And they went out and then Dan, you took them through their paces.'" "(Dan) 'Ordered them about.'" "And they went for it." "They took the rules on board." "Really, they didn't speak." "They were miming and mimicking to each other to try and communicate." "'There wasn't any kind of funky oscillation behaviour that I noticed." "'And they problem-solved the things that you set them to do.'" "(Dan) 'That's right.'" "But I think as a secondary effect, and maybe what was really a primary effect, was that they bonded, literally bonded and physically bonded, which was wonderful to see." "'Almost spontaneously after the event, 'they wanted to talk about their experience.'" "That was really surprising to me." "'Because if it was just free beer and a T-shirt for them, 'then they would have wandered off immediately." "'But they didn't." "It became something to talk about.'" "(Heather) 'Yeah, the Brazilian guy who was studying urban planning said," ""'OK, yeah, so I see, you're interested in how people" ""'behave within a society,'" ""within a space, and how they work with each other."" ""I'm studying urban planning," ""and we're looking at ways people can take control of their space more."" ""And it's not a top-down plan that is imposed from the urban planners," ""and given to the good people."" ""It is how do you engender power within the people," ""so they can take that space, and make it their own."" "So he was making that connection." "'And all these kind of stories they were telling, 'whether it was from biology or urban planning." "'They all took it from their own perspectives, 'and found their own point of connection with it.'" "And it is about engagement." "It's about saying to the public, "This is an interesting organism."" "'People are looking at it, 'asking all these different questions of this one little organism." "'And you start to have conversations with the public 'through putting something on a screen or in a gallery, 'or running an event or running a workshop or giving a talk, whatever it is, 'and people start to uncover it, and ask questions and engage with it.'" "(Indistinct chatter)" "(Heather) 'You know, it has no organs, no brain, 'so any intelligence it has is within this vein structure inside it." "'And so communication is really key.'" "(Andy) 'In 2006, Soichiro Tsuda posted me a sample of sclerotium,' and told me that I should play with it, and I could see how marvellous growth could be could be developed." "'And then I waited six months, put it on the filter paper, and it started to grow.'" "My first impression was that slime mould imitates road networks." "'We were representing major urban areas with oat flakes, 'and inoculating slime mould in the capital of the country 'and then letting slime mould grow." "'Slime mould grows, connect oak flakes with protoplasmic tubes 'and then we compare them with motorways." "'And we found that the degree of matching is very high, 'about 60%, 70%." "'So we demonstrated that slime mould 'imitates the development of human-made road networks 'with a high degree of accuracy.'" "In the case of Germany, we found that slime mould built two connected graphs, which imitate motorways in Western and Eastern Germany, but in many cases didn't build any connections between these two parts of Germany." "So slime mould actually suggested separation of Germany, which happened in 1947, or something." "Slime mould imitated development of Roman roads in Italy." "Perfect match." "In the Netherlands, in experiments with slime mould, we actually physically flooded some parts of the Netherlands with water, and then recorded which parts of Europe slime mould escaped." "And we found that mass exodus will happen towards Belgium and Germany, indeed." "Eventually, this paper was published in Advances in Complex Systems, but was rejected in some other journals before, because the editor-in-chief wrote that if people will take these results seriously, then mass panic will start." "So we said, "Probably in future now we should start our papers with the words:" ""'Don't take our results seriously."'" "'Then I thought if slime mould can imitate road networks, 'we could probably do some other type of computation.'" "And I found that slime mould is very efficient, not in terms of time, but just in terms of implementation of a biological computer." "'It was the start, essentially, of my work with slime mould." "'Every person has their own definition of unconventional computing.'" "But from my point of view unconventionaI computing is a way to find new algorithms, paradigms of computation architectures implemented in nature." "For example, computing in chemical systems, physical systems or biological systems." "'Why are we doing this with slime mould?" "'" "This is a way to do computation with organic substrates, with living substrates." "Not with silicon." "(Klaus) 'Anything that's alive is an information processor." "'I would actually define life by systems, 'which persist over time through information processing." "'In my opinion, information processing is absolutely fundamental to living systems.'" "So I found a paper by someone I knew, Yukio Gunji from Kobe University, where they talked about using slime moulds to make logic gates." "And I thought, "Well, logic gates are quite boring."" ""I think one could do much more interesting things with it."" "But the idea of using slime moulds I found interesting." "So I got in touch with Yukio Gunji, and he invited me to come to Kobe." "This is now just a little bit of historic broken parts, which we just keep." "But that was the first slime mould-controlled robot we made." "This is a newer version where the slime mould can be integrated into the robot." "And what we have is a chip that has a large number of electrodes all around the slime mould, and we can make measurements all of those electrodes." "'The organism is basically like in a virtual reality situation." "'It's just doing what it normally does, 'but it gets inputs which are provided by us, 'and we pick up the outputs, its behaviour, and we map it back onto the robot." "'So all the slime mould here does 'is decide whether the robot should walk straight or change randomly direction." "'Certainly, it would be a lot easier 'to use just a little microcontroller chip to do that." "'So that's not really the point that it could do anything better 'than what an electronic circuit can do." "'The interesting part is that what we have here is a circuit board 'where we don't just have the conventional electronic component." "'We have now a circuit board where one component is a living organism 'built into the circuit, built into the complete system design, 'and that's a challenge: how do we work with components which are autonomous?" "'But there's a complete other world of information processing, 'which is ignored largely by the field of computer science." "'In computer science we are at that stage where we see the birds, 'we see the slime mould, we see there is something radically different 'from our conventional computer on the desk, 'but we still don't understand what's going on." "'So we are not yet at the stage where we understand the aerodynamics, 'and then can design a big airplane." "'So we are still at the stage where we sort of glue feathers on us, 'and try to jump off a hill with the information processing of the slime moulds, 'but by playing around with this, eventually someone will find out what's important," "'and then we will go onto into a different development of information processing that probably leads to things, which are as different to a slime mould as an airplane is to a bird." "(Andy) 'Yeah, we tried to apply slime mould to all kinds of research.'" "We managed to make slime moulds to control robots." "With Greek collaborators, we imitate escape routes for humans in case of fire." "Therefore, we built a three-dimensional model in the department of computer science, and inoculated slime mould in several positions, and then we put oat flakes, attractants at the position of the exits." "And slime mould calculated perfect routes for the evacuation in case of fire." "We're also trying to make nano wires by loading slime mould with conductive nano particles." "We're making photosensors, and tactile sensors with slime mould." "We made so-called slimy whiskers." "To make slimy whiskers we have two electrodes, we put real human hairs in the agar blob, and inoculated slime mould in both blobs." "Slime mould occupied, partly one of the hairs." "If we touch the hair a little bit, then slime mould reacts to this tactile stimulation, and, therefore, we can use slime mould as a railroad tactile sensor." "(Jeff) 'In recent years, there has been a lot of work 'in developing what we call bio-inspired algorithms 'which are computers, which take some inspiration from biology." "'I'm trying to model slime mould as a pattern formation mechanism, 'which can be used to do useful computation." "The wonderful thing about slime mould is that unlike normal computers, which have very specialized component parts, 'with slime mould, the control of its behaviour 'isn't located in any specific part of it." "'It's distributed within the whole material itself, 'which is why it can survive damage, 'it can survive cutting of individual tubes." "'It can even be cut in half." "'One of the goals of the project is to reproduce computational materials, 'which have those same properties." "'The complex behaviour that you see in slime mould 'is just as a result of very simple interactions." "'So we're trying to reproduce that in computer software and in robotics devices." "'The model slime mould that we've made 'is incredibly simple individual particle behaviours." "'On their own, these individual behaviours don't result in anything, 'but when we have many thousands of these particles interacting together, 'we create or generate emergent behaviours." "'Emergent behaviours are behaviours, 'which were not specified in the original description of the model." "'Furthermore, they can't be described 'by the simple components of the original model." "'And we can treat this material then as a kind of virtual goo." "'We can play with it, and we can provide it with external stimuli." "'As it grows and it forages and it feeds, 'it forms a transport network... '...which is actually its body." "'It is an amorphous body shape." "'As well as being able to witness it as a spatial pattern,' we can try and infer some of its behaviour based on its electrical signals that it is giving off." "'So it is a very primitive, I wouldn't go as far as to say language, 'but we're able to infer the type of behaviour the slime mould is doing 'by its electrical recordings.'" "To sonify slime mould we record oscillations of electrical potential, and then convert it to pitch and attack, and depending on the physiological state of the slime mould it will produce different sounds." "So in this experiment we had eight electrodes, and it was recording during nine days of slime-mould life." "And at first we can hear that the slime mould is happy because it propagates along agar blobs." "There is plenty of food, plenty of humidity." "It's a very happy melody." "Then at some stage humidity starts to drop, and there is no more food to eat." "And then slime mould goes into the panic stage." "And then slime mould starts to think what to do." "No food, no humidity." "Shall I escape, or shall I go into hibernation mode?" "Now you hear the state of panic." "Slime mould making a decision." "In few seconds, slime mould will make a decision." "The decision is made." "I go to hibernation state, and then go calm, oscillations reduced and I go to sleep." "Sclerotium formed." "(Etta) 'Well, the thing about slime mould is that it is very, very easy to look after, 'so if you are a computer scientist 'and you want to start looking at biological machines, 'which I am going to call them, life, as a biologist would call it," "'or biological computers, as a computer scientist would look at it." "'It's a way to do experiments with something 'that doesn't need too much biological knowledge." "'Because a slime mould is a very simple version of the same type of life that we are." "One of the fascinating things about it is that it's a very, very simple piece of life." "It is single-celled, but it is capable of learning and memory and habituation." "'So some of the experiments you do with slime mould 'could translate to higher order creatures." "'So it's a nice test organism.'" "'We took slime mould 'and put it on something called a multi-electrode array, 'and the slime mould was to crawl across it, 'and we tried to measure 'whether there was an electronic change associated with that.'" "And because it seems a normal thing to do in the lab, we were listening to this." "(High-pitched oscillation)" "'Because the human ear is a very well-attuned instrument, 'and it can hear all these different sounds, 'you can hear patterns in data." "'We could hear what was happening to the slime mould, 'and how it was responding from the sound." "(High-pitched squealing)" "'And then we're using the robot head to emote that." "'Interpreting the data as emotions... '...really, this is moving from science to art." "'Then when we exhibited it, the public just understand emotions." "'They get it straight off the bat, 'without ever actually saying," ""'At this point the slime mould was under a negative stress,"" "'and "At this point it had food, and was quite happy."" "'They can learn what the sounds mean just by looking at it." "'He's really, I suppose, acting, 'but I should be clear 'that it is not that slime mould experiences this emotion in any way, 'it is just another way of understanding the data." "'It was discovered that a lot of people find him a bit creepy, 'but children tend not to." "'There is another one I can show you." "'This is the previous robot head, 'but she's a bit old and a bit past her best." "(Chuckles)" "(Eduardo) 'I would say that the meaning of intelligence' perhaps needs to be redefined here a little bit." "Human intelligence is something, and Physarum intelligence is something else." "Computer intelligence is something else completely different, as well." "So I would separate these things, but have them together making maybe a higher concept of intelligence." "'I'm interested in interacting with machines, 'so to get machines to provide me ideas for things." "'It is a tradition in music, since John Cage, for example who is very famous, 'for throwing dice and making music from chance, and so on.'" "So I'm following that tradition, but looking for something more than just chance." "'Some form of intelligence that would interact with me, 'provide ideas for my music, 'and then this interaction results in a creative process.'" "We got a sound there," "'So one of the things that we are interested in 'is to convey information about Physarum behaviour through sounds, 'but we also are developing a method, 'which we refer to as musification, rather than sonification, 'which is to add a little bit of art." "'Can we be an artistic interface between data and information?" "'Can we have something richer to convey this information?" "I wanted to investigate the potential of this data, the potential of this behaviour to give me something that other systems don't." "Here we've got the Physarum." "We use live wires as electrodes." "We record the electrical potential from the Physarum." "And this goes into a box that digitises the information and feeds into a computer." "The computer then maps this information into the software we designed, that translates this information into sound, and then we relay these sounds through the electromagnets, which then vibrate the strings of the piano." "Effectively, the piano is acting as a very large loudspeaker for the Physarum." "'So we carefully programmed, 'so that sometimes we get some more harmonics or less harmonics out of the strings, 'according to the behaviour of the Physarum.'" "(Piano keys being played)" "(Ed) 'We want the Physarum to do something for us, 'so it is very important when you compute with unconventional mediums 'that you design what you are using around the process that is performing." "'So in this respect, we designed growth environments 'for the Physarum to forage around which consists of zones, 'and as the Physarum populates each zone, 'we record the level of electrical potential in that area, 'and then relay that to trigger sounds.'" "(Eduardo) 'So I'm interacting with now, real intelligence." "'Perhaps not as powerful as the models that I could do with AI, 'but what we have here 'is intelligence that is outside my brain 'that collaborates, and gives me behaviour and interacts with me." "'I can interact and interact back." "'It gives an aspect of intelligence 'that is I think almost impossible 'to model with AI techniques.'" "(Plays piano keys)" "(Eduardo) 'The kind of goal that we have 'is to feed back the music into the Physarum 'to see if the music can change its behaviour." "'So at the moment we have a one-way system:" "'Physarum, music, people listen." "Nice, OK." "'But now imagine a situation where we have Physarum, music, we listen, nice, 'but Physarum also listens, and it changes its behaviour in a way or another." "'So can we do that, can we use music as the driver 'for certain behaviours in the Physarum 'that could translate into some form of computational behaviour 'that may be translated into performing a task?" "'We don't know." "'People say "harnessing the intelligence of the Physarum"." "'I prefer to say "harnessing the behaviour" to help me with my creativity." "'That's what I'm interested in.'" "And I use the word "intelligence" here, but perhaps it's not the right word." ""'Behaviour" perhaps is more compatible with the way I think of these systems.'" "(Bryn) 'I would argue that what we are observing in a slime mould 'is not behaviour, per Se." "'It is mechanistic responses to environmental stimuli.'" "And so it can do that in complex ways, or what we might think of as complex ways, which is really our own projection of our presumptions about the simplicity of these organisms, and being surprised by their ability to do more than we expect of them." "'They're responding to chemicals, light, temperatures and Ph in their environment 'in ways that will allow for their persistence, 'allow for their survival and reproduction." "'I don't think there is a slime mould that has been shown 'to play a key role in the environment.'" "That's not to say that they don't." "It is just we don't recognise if they do." "In other words, if the slime moulds were eliminated from the planet, we might not ever notice." "(Mark) 'I think Leocarpus fragilis is probably my favourite one." "'Yeah, they form nice shiny like Christmas bauble shapes, 'or like a pear shape." "'They move around and form plasmodium, 'and they form a pattern, like a pretzel pattern." "'Yeah, probably them.'" "(Mark) 'Life is life, isn't it, really?" "'It might be small and insignificant to most people, 'but it still plays a vital role in the environment, whatever that might be." "(Chuckles)" "(Heather) 'I am not an avid forager." "'I love being outdoors, and walking in the woods, 'and there is always a part of me when I am walking through woodland, 'there is always a part of me looking." "'You tune into things that you normally rush past." "'Just turning leaves and looking under things." "'You're zooming in and slowing down." "'And it just, yeah, takes you into a different time frame." "(Heather) 'I am really excited." "'It's the first time I've been properly foraging, 'and it's, you know, with success." "'So, yes, I'm going to go and introduce, hopefully, a new extended palette 'to my slime-mould artistic endeavours.'" "(TV) 'Earlier this week, we told you about a reddish blob 'that was growing in a Texas backyard." "'Some people suggested the growth was mysterious, 'maybe even from outer space." "'Today the mystery was solved." "'A Texas biology professor said the blob was nothing more than a fungus.'"