WEEK 4
The readings this week discussed the Physarum polycephalum slime and its connections to ideas of emergence. What I found interesting about these readings was the behavior and description of the slime, especially in connection to my keywords in the first assignment: network. The Tero et. all reading describes the physarum slime as an “amoeboid organism that forages for patchily distributed food sources” (paragraph 3), using its own body to create a network of direct connections, growing outward based on the resources it finds. In order to understand this fully, I looked up a video of the amoeba to see this behavior in action. The organism appeared to be almost fluid, the description of “slime” used being accurate in my opinion. The use of this slime in Sutela’s art pieces clearly displayed a form of intelligence to me, as it navigates through mazes and creates different forms based on its environment. I’d call it a low level of intelligence, but intelligence nonetheless. When connected to the idea of emergence discussed in the Pearson reading, it’s clear this low level of intelligence produces “organized complexity” in its behavior and appearance.
It was an interesting display of my keywords: physical networking and cellular connections, rather than mental networks from logical connections. There still is a level of “mental” networking that happens with the amoeba, though I use that definition loosely. I simply mean that there’s a level of understanding that it needs food, understanding what is food for it, and understanding when it has found a food source. It searches blindly until it’s found what it needs, and then builds a stronger network around it, before branching out further in search of more.
