Friday 27 February 2015

Friday Fungus: Duet for slime mould and piano



Slime mould is pretty weird stuff. But I never saw its musical genius coming:

A duet for slime mould and piano will be premiered at an arts festival this weekend, giving new meaning to the term "culture".

Festival director and musician Eduardo Miranda has put the decomposition into composition: his new work uses cultures of the fungus Physarum polycephalum.

This mould is the core component of an interactive biocomputer, which receives sound signals and sends back responses.

The result is a musical duet between the fungus and Prof Miranda, on piano.

"The composition, Biocomputer Music, evolves as an interaction between me as a human playing the piano, and the Physarum machine," Prof Miranda told the BBC's Inside Science programme. 

I'm sure we'll find out what the slime sounds like in due course.

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