Using slime molds to simulate gentrification + projection mapping--any advice would be appreciated

[codeinecity]

Hi All,

I am a master's student at Carnegie Mellon University working on a project with a collaborator involving usage of slime molds to simulate gentrification in a city. Both my collaborator and I are complete novices in terms of using slime molds so this site is an invaluable resource. We had a couple of questions about the implementation of our project and would greatly appreciate any assistance:

1) our current plan is to have the slime mold grow over a vacuum formed topology of a city environment, and systematically introduce food sources as certain metrics indicating gentrification change/expand over time. attached is an image of prototype we are testing to see how the mold traverses the vacuum formed material (styrene). next to the sytrene model is the cnc milled wooden model of the same topology--we put a dormant slime mold on there as well and some food just to see what would happen. we are storing both of these models in a dark enclosed box with a cup of water present to provide humidity.

question: is styrene a sub-optimal material for slime mold to grow on? if so, would covering the styrene in agar allow the mold to survive, but gravitate towards the food sources? does the thickness/application technique of agar layer matter?

2) we want to place a projector underneath our model and use projection mapping to show a color map of various gentrification related metrics on the topology, contextualizing the slime traversing the map.

question: given the light sensitivity of physarum, would this be problematic? can we minimize/eliminate this problem by only using light of particular wavelengths/intensities?

we really think this project has the possibility to turn out very cool, and would sincerely appreciate any assistance or advice y'all could give us.

Thanks!!

[Dakota Hamill]

Well it sounds like all the questions you just asked are great hypotheses to test. The best way to learn is by doing.

Try working with styrene blocks with a flat surface area first to see how different agar thicknesses and nutrient spotting changes their growth, then move into a complicated topography. 

You could use molten agar suspensions with no nutrients or very little in a squirt bottle and spray it on like spray paint to,give a uniform layer, then dope in concentrated nutrients.  The nutrients will diffuse into the agar giving a gradient the slime mold should follow.

I'd say start simple, learn how the organism behaves in a simple surface, then build in your complexity. 

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[Strat-o]

Does the topology represent the elevation of the region?  Does the topo model affect the growth at all?  If the topo model does affect growth you could create different topologies to represent different variables like population density, or wealth distribution, to name a couple.

[Nathan McCorkle]

Can you form thin polypropylene instead of styrene? I know PP is pretty bio friendly and at least is used for food storage/shipping as well as for chemicals. If it isn't stable enough, then use it as a cap on your styrene then maybe?

Agar will be pretty diffusive, so if the styrene was offgassing or leaching, it might affect your organism sooner than you'd like.

But it's an experiment, so if materials and prep time isn't too expensive, the start simple and iterate quickly over design ideas. I.e. test styrene, then PP for growth rate or other health indicators, compare and choose one, then iterate on topography changes etc.

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[Nico B.]

Hey!

Awesome project Idea!!! I was thinking of doing something similar at one point as an art project around the gentrification of SF, I'd love to hear about your progress as it comes along!

I've tried cultivating Slime molds on LB, Zero Nutrient agar, 1% nutrient agar, MS+agar, and phytoagar. It would sporulate well on the MS, 1% nutrient agar, and zero nutrient agar, however with LB it wouldn't sporulate too much because it was able to feed on the nutrient content. I'd stray away from any thing higher than 2% nutrient base. Carolina Biological sells kits for culturing with either bottles of pre-made media, pre-poured plates, or the parts to DIY it.

When I had been plotting out my project, my plan was to encase my wooden/PLA molds in acrylic or another resin, then pour a decently thick (2-5mm) layer of agar over the entire surface, placing oats on each of the 'epicenters' within the city. be very careful with contamination though. Physarum is very sensitive to molds and fungi. killed I don't know how many plates before I decided to be overzealous and build a flow hood for culturing.