VISITOR: A STUDY IN APPLIED INTERBEING

During the winter of 2024, I began experimenting with slime mold in my studio. Slime molds have gained notoriety recently because they handily disrupt the edges of what humans can understand. These billion-year old single cell organisms have over 700 sexes. One engineered a plan fpr the Tokyo subway system in only 26 hours (humans worked on it for decades). Speaking of mapping, NASA simulates them to map the dark matter holding the Universe together.

Slime mold sporangia (fruiting body) with spores erupting. Likely Trichia decipiens var. olivacea.

Image used with permission from Science Source.

In addition to their engineering and algorithmic abilities, slime molds have the profound capacity to shift states of being. Under optimal conditions (moist, cool, your typical healthy forest floor) a slime mold is an individual amoeba. Under adverse conditions - when the forest floor dries out and nutrients are scarce - the individuals aggregate. They shift into a unified cognition and transform themselves into a single large being. This new superorganism moves and eats as one, is capable of solving mazes and distributes its resources for the good of all its parts. Then, when conditions improve, it begins anew as individual cells on their individual journeys. They switch from one / to many / to one.

Possible self portrait of erupting spore.

WORKING WITH A FORCEFIELD

Even though we can’t fully understand them, we have already learned a great deal by observing them. What might we discover if we could ask a slime mold to instruct us rather that inspire us? Other artists have collaborated with slme molds as physical participants in their studios to astonishing ends. What I wanted to experiment with, however, was slime mold consciousness. What would happen if I tried to connect with slime mold as an energetic pattern—a living forcefield—even when no slime molds were anywhere near?

BRAIN FLIP

On a Tuesday I sat on my studio couch and asked, aloud, if slime mold would come and create with me. I quickly became interested in the forces they use to eject spores, and dedicated a chunk of studio time to sketching, sculpting and making videos around sporulation. It was great fun, but not outside the realm of typical studio work. Simultaneously, however, I was impelled to make large patterns of bilateral marks using Copic markers and drawing on my glass tabletops. That was something new. I was profoundly absorbed in drawing and made bilateral marks for days. Then I woke up one morning and my hand dominance had switched. I spent an entire day left handed which was came with a euphoric energy  (it was short lived. My right hand dominance returned in my sleep that night).

SCHOOLD BY A SLIME MOLD

I knew something was happening but was uncertain if slime molds were involved. One afternoon, however, I sprayed solvent on a bilateral marks drawing, walked away and returned to find… a spore. Or, at least, a more spore-looking image that I could draw. I carried on and more and more spore ‘drawings’ emerged. The euphoric energy remained.

I started asking , however, if this was interspecies collaboration or a fluke? Shortly thereafter I received not only a spore but an entire fruiting body (below). I still can’t conjure how my drawing led to drawing their drawing, but I suppose that’s par for the course with slime molds. They are well ahead of us. As a note, the drawing had animations. It lasted for almost two hours and individual spores floated upward slowly, popping out the top of the fruiting body all the while.

Typical pattern of bilateral marks from my studio work in 2024. Copic marker on glass.

I truly wonder what we learn if slime molds took us on as students and if we made ourselves availble. Could they guide us away from ego-separation and the fundamentally unsustainable, siloed existence that disconnection perpetuates, ushering us home toward an awareness and embodiment of a richly integrated dynamic intelligence? I have no doubt they could. And, it appears, they can provide an illustrated guide of how to get there.