GMU:DIY Bio: doing things with biology/Antje Danz/Initial idea: Bauhaus Feedback Loop

Initial idea

Recombination of two perceptions of art with an Interactive Slime Mold installation

Set up

In order to create a two-sided communication, there will be a live set up with a couple of petri dishes that invites the audience to send their personal Bauhaus message to the organism by using provided tools. Such as light in different colors, different food sources etc. The changes are tracked visually with a camera installed above the dish. Membrane potential changes will be tracked with an Arduino set up, that translates the voltage change into something perceptible like sound or patterns or changes in the room set up. The sound could be used to effect LEDs to mimic the plasmodial pulsing within Physarum Polycephalum. As we used Bauhaus messages before, it would be the Bauhaus Pulsing interpreted through Physarum Polycephalum. The audience will be able to feel the Bauhaus together with Physarum Polycephalum and receive a whole new feeling of Bauhaus. All the visuals will be projected to the wall. One dish could give visual feedback and another one could give an acoustic feedback. They both do that at the same time and something new emerges. As it is a living set up it is unsure what will happen.

The behavior of something alive is not predictable. We can only guess what it might do. It is also not predictable what the audience will do with the setup. In some cases Physarum Polycephalum is reacting quite fast and visible to the naked eye. But some changes are longer term changes and so small that they can only be observed with a microscope and over time. The things seen under the microscope will be recorded and put together in a growing timelapse, that will run during the whole installation. In the beginning it will be a really short timelapse whereas in the end it could be an hour long, also documenting the whole process. To sum it up again. The whole thing will be recursive and self emerging. Physarum Polycephalum interacts with its environment, with the audience as well as its own feedback and the feedback of the audience. Everything effects everything with a never ending Bauhaus Loop.