Book Section
Maria Dębińska
The Slime Mould’s Many Bodies, or Modelling Networks with Physarum polycephalum
Fanon with Lévi-Strauss
Networks created by the slime mould Physarum polycephalum have been the object of interdisciplinary studies and artistic interventions for more than two decades. This paper examines different practices of abstracting humans’ and slime mould’s lines of movement into networks and investigates how Physarum networks are used to explore human patterns of movement and vice versa. It argues that, far from anthropomorphizing the slime mould, the effect of these experiments is instead a slimy rendering of the human.
| Title |
The Slime Mould’s Many Bodies, or Modelling Networks with Physarum polycephalum
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| Subtitle |
Fanon with Lévi-Strauss
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| Author(s) |
Maria Dębińska
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
Networks created by the slime mould Physarum polycephalum have been the object of interdisciplinary studies and artistic interventions for more than two decades. This paper examines different practices of abstracting humans’ and slime mould’s lines of movement into networks and investigates how Physarum networks are used to explore human patterns of movement and vice versa. It argues that, far from anthropomorphizing the slime mould, the effect of these experiments is instead a slimy rendering of the human.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
20 May 2025
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| Subject |
Physarum polycephalum
network
lines
slime mould
transportation systems
models
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
109
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| page end |
130
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| Source |
Breaking and Making Models, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Marietta Kesting, and Claudia Peppel, Cultural Inquiry, 33 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025), pp. 109–30
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