*Lunchtime talk with snacks*

KERN CENTER, MEETING ROOM 202, 12-1pm

UK artist Heather Barnett works with the slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, as material, model and metaphor, investigating the organism’s navigational abilities and seemingly intelligent behaviours. For a single-celled organism with no sensory organs or a single neuron to its name, this yellow amoeboid blob can solve complex problems, learn, remember and anticipate events. It is also quite beautiful, the dendritic growth patterns reminiscent of forms seen at varying scales within nature, from blood vessels to tree branches, from river deltas to lightening flashes. 

Barnett’s films, studies, installations and participatory experiments work with the underlying mechanisms that enable this simple organism to make complex decisions. Her artworks, a negotiation of creative control and authorship with one of the earliest forms of life, invite us to question our definitions of agency and intelligence across species and scales.