GMU:BioArt WS15/Azucena Sanchez

Physarum maps

INSPIRATION

Drug dealing is one of the biggest and most important problems in Mexico. It is all about power and it would be really hard to get rid of the problem as a whole. It is all about power.

Many cartels and drug dealing groups have been identified along the whole country.

Drug Cartels in Mexico.

IDEA

My idea is to create a Map of Mexico in which I would identify the most important cartels found in the country. I would put oats in the areas where the cartels are and then let physarum find the food and create the connections among them.

Little by little I would remove food from the most powerful cartel and distribute more oats in the other areas with the hypothesis that this would be a way to attack the drug dealing business in Mexico. The way physarum moved or "run away" once their food in one area would give us an insight of where the people from the cartels would run to.

There are many other things involved in the drug dealing business, even though it is all about money and power, it is also about connections, who works for whom, how many people are involved, what's the amount of land they "own", etc... To me it would be more like an hypothesis and a way of analyzing of how primitive this business can be, compared to physarum, I call it primitive for they "think" but they also act as an instinct.

EXPERIMENTS

I started some little experiments around December to analyze how physarum moves and see if it would give me what I want to achieve with this idea.

First Approach

I made some test from December 23rd, 2015 to January 5th, 2016. I left enough food for them to eat so I could see how they developed. Some of them grew mold and most of them grew very well. I disposed the ones that were contaminated and started other tests.

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I kept some of the cultures I started to grow in December for the developed pretty good. I took pictures all the way through January to see their development. I change some things about their food which is explained in the drawings. I took decisions or a plan to follow, to see if I could work with them through the maps the way that I had been planning.

Subject #1

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Subject #2 The culture had mold in the middle of it so I took it away and replaced it with oats. The progress is in the pictures.

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Subject #3 The arrangement of the oats was in lines with physarum starting from each point, right and left. It also grew mold over the time left alone, I took it away and replaced it with new oats.This was its progress.

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Subject #4

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Subject #5 It was grew from a new, I took some physarum from the cultures I already had and started a new experiment.

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The replacement of food works for physarum, once they have found food if you take it away they can perceive there is new food in other parts from the petri dish that they have already reach and they go to it. I still need to figure out if physarum will grow stronger in the place where they know they don't only have new oats but more oats. We are talking about quality, now I need to figure out if they follow the quantity.

It is better to work with them from one per one oat since they are not really responding to quantity on the first approach or the first time I put them in the petri dish and leave them to grow and find the connections needed.

The process to follow is to create a connection using only one or two oats and make the same experiments of taking away old oats and putting new oats in other locations where the connection has been made, where they already know there is food.