me & Slimey's watery lines of becoming

What's left on the new green brain. I'm not getting bored of this.

...and gold for the slime mould

I don't think anyone has done this before. Why would they? (I was accused of being 'original' the other day by someone but I am not foiled by their silver tongue, I know that this doesn't amount to being anything other than an Odd Bugger, at least not until you are making 30K or have a status which you desperately need to defend, neither of which apply to me.)

Anyway that is real gold that is, 23K gold leaf. It's wonderful stuff to work with, beaten so thin it is transparent, beautiful. I like its properties of being actively inert. It seems to have a magical agency, the soul of a moth perhaps, (a thing it has in common with pencil sharpenings, who will flutter everywhere around your bin, but never go into it, preferring eventually to nestle and roost amongst the fibres of your carpet) all it wants to do is to fly away and stick to your eyelashes, or to crumple up into itself like tiny pieces of golden snot. There will be reasons for that of course, electrostatic charges and perhaps aerodynamics trumping gravity or something, none of which need detract from the magic and mothyness of things; in fact quite the reverse. Unless you believe in all that Two Cultures bolloxology and its adherent singular and oppositional narratives, in which case there isn't really anything I can do for you anyway.

I like the idea of making a thing really precious and then giving it to microorganisms to have their way with it. But I'm expecting the slime mould to not want to have anything to do with the gold, given their recent disdain for the copper. Though you never know, what is good as a substrate might not be what you want for dinner, you won't catch me munching on the bike lane, for instance.

Not sure how the gold blobs will survive the dunking either, especially as I've used a PVA size, they could just float off like the smashing orangey bits you work so hard to liberate from your Jaffa cake. I chose PVA as a non-toxic option, I hope...

fluorescent grey...

ways of being and all that

More here of the slime mould plasmodium with all its beautiful ways of journeying, pathfinding, exploring, wayfaring, foraging and generally taking its lines for walks. Marvellous organism.

Slime Mould Pan-Galactic Green

Oh well there you go. Avoiding the copper, climbing all over the ultramarine but not having much of an interaction, a little uptake of the phthalo blue and tucking in heartily to the chromium oxide green.

Actually the plasmodium did send a few fingers out to stroke the copper, sat there for a little while thinking about it, and then scarpered; an approach to life I admire.

a new green brain

A nice new brain for the slime mould. And something empiricalish....

Physarum polycephalum International Blue

Physarum polycephalum International Blue, that should say.

It's the same pigment Yves Klein used, the Dolly Blue, Reckitt's or ultramarine. I think what we have going on here is "I'm not so keen on the seasoning but I'll eat it anyway, to be polite."

Whereas the copper powder is sadly being rejected out of hand.

ancestors

These guys have been swimming across my pictures for about five years now, and I've finally found out who they are, they're my ancestors of course. Glad I got that sorted out.

I suppose they are supposed to be some kind of unicellular and probably flagellated fella but I couldn't say for sure. I just let them happen, however they want to; it is certainly a form of incontinence.

The eye spot is an anthropomorphic or at least animalomorphic touch but it is the painting itself I am anthropomorphising here, I seem to feel that a painting should look back at you....

See these last two pictures from 2008 - before I got the microscope and was able to spend long holidays with diatoms, protozoa, amoebae and all those other delightful people. And before I got interested in the whole business of membranes.

The new ones at the top are about 15mm long, the older ones about 20mm.

diatoms are a girl's best friend

diatoms are a girl's best friend, a set on Flickr.