Physarum’s living networks take different roles in science and art
Physarum polycephalum’s tubes linking food sources serve different purposes in biology, network research and bioart. Maria Dębińska’s peer-reviewed history and philosophy analysis follows the choices involved in turning that living body into nodes and lines. Comparisons with human networks preserve selected properties while leaving some behavior and environmental interaction outside, changing what the organism represents across disciplines.
Science··Midday
A living body becomes a graph
Physarum polycephalum is a single-celled organism that builds tubes between food sources. Representing those tubes as a graph lets researchers compare length, connectivity and robustness. Maria Dębińska’s peer-reviewed history and philosophy paper, published on 5 November, studies the choices behind that conversion. Its subject is how biological networks move between disciplines and practices, using three cases rather than announcing a new intelligence experiment.[1]
The calculated network leaves behavior outside
One case follows biologists in Toulouse, France, working with an internet startup. Food positions and the removal of a connecting node shape their arrangements. Images of tubes become simplified links, with manual checks. Behavior such as leaving the dish can fall outside the calculated network. A further case examines roads and settlements in unconventional computing, where the comparison serves another research purpose.[1]
Artists make connections tangible
Bioartists Sarah Grant and Selena Savić form the third case, making living connections visible and material. Nutrient movement can stand in for data flow, while the underlying physical processes differ. Dębińska treats the organism as a boundary object linking biology, network science and art. Similar shapes can support a comparison without establishing identical origins, consciousness or a necessary blueprint for human networks.[1]
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