0:00:00.722,0:00:03.737
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[br]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

0:00:14.481,0:00:16.618
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 acting 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.

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I first came across the slime[br]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[br]fed up with one petri dish,

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it would escape and find a better home.

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I captured my observations

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through timelapse photography.

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A 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[br]really extreme meditation,

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but through the timelapse,

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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[br]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.

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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[br]a primitive form of intelligence.

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Another study exposed cold air at[br]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[br]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[br]engineering, urban planning.

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What had taken us well over a hundred 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.

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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[br]to the fields of electronics,

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programming, and robotics.

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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 decision.

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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 a hundred 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[br]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.

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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[br]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 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

0:08:00.036,0:08:02.788
on the slime mold 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)

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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[br]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[br]as this bunch of strangers

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tied together with yellow ropes[br]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

0:09:51.053,0:09:54.085
about this experiment

0:09:54.085,0:09:56.557
was the conversation that happened afterwards.

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An entirely spontaneous symposium[br]happened in the park.

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People talked about the human psychology,

0:10:01.999,0:10:03.696
of how difficult it was to let go

0:10:03.696,0:10:07.255
of their individual personalities and egos.

0:10:07.255,0:10:10.478
Other people talked about bacterial communication.

0:10:10.478,0:10:12.527
Each person brought in their own

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individual interpretation,

0:10:15.304,0:10:17.279
and our conclusion from this experiment was that

0:10:17.279,0:10:20.455
the people of Rotterdam were highly cooperative,

0:10:20.455,0:10:23.831
especially when given beer.

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We didn't just give them oats.

0:10:25.607,0:10:27.439
We gave them beer as well.

0:10:27.439,0:10:29.583
But they weren't as efficient as the slime mold,

0:10:29.583,0:10:31.567
and the slime mold, for me,

0:10:31.567,0:10:33.736
is a fascinating subject matter.

0:10:33.736,0:10:35.593
It's biologically fascinating,

0:10:35.593,0:10:37.417
it's computationally interesting,

0:10:37.417,0:10:39.401
but it's also a symbol,

0:10:39.401,0:10:43.169
a way of engaging with ideas of community,

0:10:43.169,0:10:46.473
collective behavior, cooperation.

0:10:46.473,0:10:48.929
A lot of my work draws on the scientific research,

0:10:48.929,0:10:51.873
so this pays homage to the maze experiment

0:10:51.873,0:10:53.665
but in a different way.

0:10:53.665,0:10:56.113
And the slime mold is also my working material.

0:10:56.113,0:11:01.089
It's a coproducer of photographs, prints, animations,

0:11:01.089,0:11:02.929
participatory events.

0:11:02.929,0:11:04.977
Whilst the slime mold doesn't choose

0:11:04.977,0:11:06.833
to work with me exactly,

0:11:06.833,0:11:09.145
it is a collaboration of sorts.

0:11:09.145,0:11:11.777
I can predict certain behaviors

0:11:11.777,0:11:13.633
by understanding how it operates,

0:11:13.633,0:11:15.473
but I can't control it.

0:11:15.473,0:11:17.257
The slime mold has the final say

0:11:17.257,0:11:19.448
in the creative process.

0:11:19.448,0:11:22.937
And after all, it has its own internal aesthetics.

0:11:22.937,0:11:24.521
These branching patterns that we see

0:11:24.521,0:11:26.921
we see across all forms, scales of nature,

0:11:26.921,0:11:29.721
from river deltas to lightning strikes,

0:11:29.721,0:11:34.117
from our own blood vessels to neural networks.

0:11:34.117,0:11:36.530
There's clearly significant rules at play

0:11:36.530,0:11:38.845
in this simple yet complex organism,

0:11:38.845,0:11:42.277
and no matter what our disciplinary[br]perspective or our mode of inquiry,

0:11:42.277,0:11:44.005
there's a great deal that we can learn

0:11:44.005,0:11:45.829
from observing and engaging

0:11:45.829,0:11:49.077
with this beautiful, brainless blob.

0:11:49.077,0:11:52.165
I give you physarum polycephalum.

0:11:52.165,0:11:53.918
Thank you.

0:11:53.918,0:11:54.880
(Applause)