a piece of my mind

This comes from a drawing of an actual slice of an actual brain of an actual person. The Brighton & Sussex Medical School Art Society kindly let me sit in on one of their Dissection Room Drawing sessions. Thank you BMSMSAS, thank you Actual Person, thank you Physarum polycephalum.

I like to think that there is a reciprocation for the Actual Person, that somehow all the jolly colours get transmitted through the past to him as nice thoughts, which of course is bollocks but I encourage that sort of thing in myself as I believe it to be a useful cultural way of remembering to respect the things I interact with.

Dark Matters

Please come to my show! Pictures made to be seen in the dark. Things you can't see, don't often see, things you might not want to look at all of the time: monsters, memories, movement, myths, moths, maths, molecules, microbes, mites, Maggie. With stunning collaborations by the slime mould Physarum polycephalum.

It's at Gallery 3, Art’s Complex, St.Margaret’s House, 151 London Road, Edinburgh, EH7 6AE. Map here , if you're coming by car there's a confusing car park: 

 Booze 'n' schmooze night is 3rd February, 6.00 - 9.30 pm, and the exhibition is open every day after that until the12th February from 10.00 am - 6.00 pm.

Slime mould on drugs

See this is what happens if you don't get your plasmodium to come off your painting in time. Sadly I think it is too late for this little big cell, I have been doing some intensive care but it seems to be thoroughly contaminated.

Luckily I got some of it to form a sclerotium in earlier, happier days. And now I have a persuasive agent to help it decide to come to the safety of the clean things: this slime mould, it seems, will do tricks for tranx. Valerian root - lovely, boiled with the porridge, or just on its own as a snack. (Valium for micro-organisms, or humans, but the cat uses it as an upper and goes off in a drug-crazed frenzy to wage war on cardboard boxes. Slime mould doesn't seem to care for catnip though.) Thanks to Andy Adamatzky, font of Physarum Wisdom for that hot tip, in this paper.