I'd like to introduce you to an organism: a slime mold, Physarum polycephalum. It's a mold with an identity crisis, because it's not a mold, so let's get that straight to start with. It is one of 700 known slime molds belonging to the kingdom of the amoeba. It is a single-celled organism, a cell, that joins together with other cells to form a mass super-cell to maximize its resources. So within a slime mold you might find thousands or millions of nuclei, all sharing a cell wall, all operating as one entity. In its natural habitat, you might find the slime mold foraging in woodlands, eating rotting vegetation, but you might equally find it in research laboratories, classrooms, and even artists' studios.
今天我想向大家介绍一种生物体: (slime mould)黏液霉菌,一种多头绒泡菌。 是否把它命名为一种霉菌尚存争议,因为事实上它不是霉菌。 在进入正题前我们需要知道这一点。 在已知的七百种黏液霉菌中, 它属于阿米巴变形虫的国度。 它是一种单细胞生物,许多个单一的细胞 相互连接到一起 而组成一团超级细胞, 目的是要做到最大化地利用资源。 所以在一个(slime mould)黏菌中你能看到几千个 或者几百万个细胞核, 它们共享同一个细胞壁, 作为一个整体 在它的自然栖息地运作 你会在森林里发现这些黏液霉菌, 它以腐烂的植被为食。 不过黏菌也同样频繁出现在 研究实验室, 课堂,甚至是艺术家的工作室里。
I first came across the slime mold about five years ago. A microbiologist friend of mine gave me a petri dish with a little yellow blob in it and told me to go home and play with it. The only instructions I was given, that it likes it dark and damp and its favorite food is porridge oats. I'm an artist who's worked for many years with biology, with scientific processes, so living material is not uncommon for me. I've worked with plants, bacteria, cuttlefish, fruit flies. So I was keen to get my new collaborator home to see what it could do. So I took it home and I watched. I fed it a varied diet. I observed as it networked. It formed a connection between food sources. I watched it leave a trail behind it, indicating where it had been. And I noticed that when it was fed up with one petri dish, it would escape and find a better home.
我与黏液霉菌的初次接触是在五年前。 我的一个微生物学家朋友 给了我一个有着黄色小斑点的培养皿 说让我带回家玩玩。 我得到的唯一说明是 这个东西它喜欢阴暗潮湿, 最喜欢的食物是燕麦片。 我是一个艺术家,我做了不少年的 将生物及科学的一些手法融入艺术 所以使用活的素材于我来说不算陌生。 我用到过植物,细菌, 墨鱼,以及果蝇。 所以我颇有些急迫想把这个新的小拍档带回家 看看它能做啥。 然后我就把它带回了家开始观察。 我试着用各种东西来喂它。 我观察到,随着它的联网形成 它在食物资源之间建立了某种联系。 我看到它在经过处留下了痕迹, 那显示出它曾经到过的区域。 我也注意到每当它厌倦了一个培养皿的时候, 它就会爬出去,去找个更好的家。
I captured my observations through time-lapse photography. Slime mold grows at about one centimeter an hour, so it's not really ideal for live viewing unless there's some form of really extreme meditation, but through the time lapse, I could observe some really interesting behaviors. For instance, having fed on a nice pile of oats, the slime mold goes off to explore new territories in different directions simultaneously. When it meets itself, it knows it's already there, it recognizes it's there, and instead retreats back and grows in other directions. I was quite impressed by this feat, at how what was essentially just a bag of cellular slime could somehow map its territory, know itself, and move with seeming intention.
我通过延时摄影 拍下了我所观察到的。 黏液霉菌的生长速度大概是每小时一厘米, 所想要看实时变化可不容易,因为这个速度实在是有点慢, 除非观察者能做到某种极度的静心入定。 不过凭借延时拍摄, 我能够观察到一些非常有趣的行为。 比如,喂给它一小堆燕麦片, 黏液霉菌就迅速开始繁殖, 并同时往不同方向伸展以探索新领域。 当它碰到自己另一部分的时候, 它知道同伴已经在那里, 它能识别得到。 于是停止那个方向的继续生长,而是掉头 从另一端生长。 黏液霉菌的这个本事很让我叹为观止。 这不过是一袋黏液霉菌细胞, 可它居然有本事开疆扩土, 能够识别自我,而且似乎是带有目的性地在行动。
I found countless scientific studies, research papers, journal articles, all citing incredible work with this one organism, and I'm going to share a few of those with you. For example, a team in Hokkaido University in Japan filled a maze with slime mold. It joined together and formed a mass cell. They introduced food at two points, oats of course, and it formed a connection between the food. It retracted from empty areas and dead ends. There are four possible routes through this maze, yet time and time again, the slime mold established the shortest and the most efficient route. Quite clever. The conclusion from their experiment was that the slime mold had a primitive form of intelligence. Another study exposed cold air at regular intervals to the slime mold. It didn't like it. It doesn't like it cold. It doesn't like it dry. They did this at repeat intervals, and each time, the slime mold slowed down its growth in response. However, at the next interval, the researchers didn't put the cold air on, yet the slime mold slowed down in anticipation of it happening. It somehow knew that it was about the time for the cold air that it didn't like. The conclusion from their experiment was that the slime mold was able to learn. A third experiment: the slime mold was invited to explore a territory covered in oats. It fans out in a branching pattern. As it goes, each food node it finds, it forms a network, a connection to, and keeps foraging. After 26 hours, it established quite a firm network between the different oats. Now there's nothing remarkable in this until you learn that the center oat that it started from represents the city of Tokyo, and the surrounding oats are suburban railway stations. The slime mold had replicated the Tokyo transport network — (Laughter) — a complex system developed over time by community dwellings, civil engineering, urban planning. What had taken us well over 100 years took the slime mold just over a day. The conclusion from their experiment was that the slime mold can form efficient networks and solve the traveling salesman problem.
我发觉有无数的科学研究, 研究论文啦,期刊文章啦, 都提到用这种微生物所进行过的令人难以置信的研究, 这里我要分享一些给大家。 比如,日本北海道大学(Hokkaido University)的一个团队 用黏液霉菌填塞了一个迷宫。 它们互相融合组成了一个细胞团。 研究人员将食物放在两个点上, 当然,食物依旧是燕麦片, 黏液霉菌在两点食物之间 组建起了关联。 当它遇到空区或是死角的时候会自动缩回。 这个迷宫有四个可行通道, 而随着一次次的尝试, 最终黏液霉菌建立了最短 并且最有效率的一条路径。 真机灵。 由这个实验所得出的结论是 黏液霉菌有种初始形态的智能。 另一项研究是:按固定的间隔时间,定期将黏液霉菌暴露在冷空气里。 结果它不喜欢。它怕冷。 它不喜欢被吹干。 研究人员按照之前的间隔时间规律重复做了这个实验, 每一次,黏液霉菌都会 减慢生长速度作为响应。 然而,在下一个间隔来到时, 研究人员没有开启冷风, 可黏液霉菌仍旧减慢了速度,似乎 是预期此时冷风会来。 不知它怎样办到的,它知道时间到了, 它讨厌的冷空气会来到。 刚讲到的这个实验最后所得到得结论是: 黏液霉菌具有学习能力。 第三个实验: 黏液霉菌被邀请 去探索一片被燕麦片覆盖的区域。 它以分枝结构扇形展开。 每当它在经过的地方发现食物点时, 它就会建立一个网络,一个连接点, 然后继续觅食。 经过26个小时,它建立起 一个比较稳定的网络架构 链接各处的燕麦片。 这看起来没什么了不起的, 但如果你知道作为中心起点的燕麦片 其实是代表了东京市, 而周围的这些燕麦片对应着东京市郊的火车站,你一定会觉得它了不起。 因为黏液霉菌居然复制出了 东京的交通网络。 (观众笑声) 建立一个复杂的系统需要长时间的努力, 包括社区住宅,土木工程,城市规划。 人类用超过100年才能完成的事情, 黏液霉菌只不过花了一天多一点就完成了。 这项实验得到的结论是 黏液霉菌能够建立起高效路网, 解决那些在路上的业务员们的苦恼问题。
It is a biological computer. As such, it has been mathematically modeled, algorithmically analyzed. It's been sonified, replicated, simulated. World over, teams of researchers are decoding its biological principles to understand its computational rules and applying that learning to the fields of electronics, programming and robotics.
它是部生物计算机。 如我们所看到的,由数学模型建立起来 进行的算法分析。 人们对黏液霉菌的活动进行超声波观测,复制,和模拟。 全世界的研究团队们 都在试图解析它的生物学准则, 以理解它的计算运行规则 并将之运用到电子, 编程和机器人领域中。
So the question is, how does this thing work? It doesn't have a central nervous system. It doesn't have a brain, yet it can perform behaviors that we associate with brain function. It can learn, it can remember, it can solve problems, it can make decisions. So where does that intelligence lie? So this is a microscopy, a video I shot, and it's about 100 times magnification, sped up about 20 times, and inside the slime mold, there is a rhythmic pulsing flow, a vein-like structure carrying cellular material, nutrients and chemical information through the cell, streaming first in one direction and then back in another. And it is this continuous, synchronous oscillation within the cell that allows it to form quite a complex understanding of its environment, but without any large-scale control center. This is where its intelligence lies.
所以问题是 这个东西它是怎么工作的? 黏液霉菌没有中枢神经系统, 没有大脑, 却能完成 我们需要大脑功能的协助才能完成的行动 它能学习,能记忆, 可以解决问题,也可以做决策。 它负责智能的部分藏在哪里呢? 这是显微镜下我拍到的一组影像。。。 放大了约100倍, 快进了约20倍。 在黏液霉菌体内, 存在有节奏的脉冲流, 一个脉管状结构把 细胞内含物,营养物质和化学信息 传输到细胞各处, 先朝一个方向流动,然后再向相反方向回流。 而正是细胞内的这种连续,同步振荡 让它得以建立起 对所处环境的一个相当复杂的认知理解, 而不依赖任何大规模的控制中心。 这就是它的智能所在。
So it's not just academic researchers in universities that are interested in this organism. A few years ago, I set up SliMoCo, the Slime Mould Collective. It's an online, open, democratic network for slime mold researchers and enthusiasts to share knowledge and experimentation across disciplinary divides and across academic divides. The Slime Mould Collective membership is self-selecting. People have found the collective as the slime mold finds the oats. And it comprises of scientists and computer scientists and researchers but also artists like me, architects, designers, writers, activists, you name it. It's a very interesting, eclectic membership. Just a few examples: an artist who paints with fluorescent Physarum; a collaborative team who are combining biological and electronic design with 3D printing technologies in a workshop; another artist who is using the slime mold as a way of engaging a community to map their area. Here, the slime mold is being used directly as a biological tool, but metaphorically as a symbol for ways of talking about social cohesion, communication and cooperation. Other public engagement activities, I run lots of slime mold workshops, a creative way of engaging with the organism. So people are invited to come and learn about what amazing things it can do, and they design their own petri dish experiment, an environment for the slime mold to navigate so they can test its properties. Everybody takes home a new pet and is invited to post their results on the Slime Mould Collective. And the collective has enabled me to form collaborations with a whole array of interesting people. I've been working with filmmakers on a feature-length slime mold documentary, and I stress feature-length, which is in the final stages of edit and will be hitting your cinema screens very soon. (Laughter)
并不只有大学里的学术研究者们 对这个生物感兴趣。 几年前,我设立了一个 SlimoCo项目, ---Slime Mould黏液霉菌团队。 这是一个在线的,开放的,民主的网络, 给黏液霉菌研究者和爱好者们用以 分享 跨学科范畴 和跨学术领域的知识和实验。 黏液霉菌团队的队员都是自行选择加入的。 来到团队的人们就像 找到燕麦片的黏液霉菌。 它包括有科学家, 计算机科学家和研究人员, 也有像我这样的艺术家, 建筑师,设计师,作家,社会活动家,什么样的人都有。 我们的成员构成不拘一格,非常有趣。 我举几个例子吧: 有用染了荧光的绒泡菌属作画的艺术家, 有将生物学 和电子设计 与3D打印技术相结合的协作团队, 还有位艺术家用黏液霉菌 绘制社区地图, 作为参与社区的一种方式。 这里,黏液霉菌被直接用作 一种生物学工具,但是也象征性地 成为在 社会凝聚力,沟通 和合作上的一种交流方式的标志。 至于其他的公众参与活动--- 我办了很多黏液霉菌研讨会, 用这种创新方式研究这种有机体。 人们受邀请来到研讨会,了解 它的神奇之能, 他们设计自己的培养皿实验, 安排一个新环境让黏液霉菌去探索 以测试它的各项属性。 他们每个人都带了黏菌这个新宠物回家, 我们邀请他们将各自的实验结果 发布在黏菌团队的网页上。 这样一个集体让我能够 和一大票有趣的人们一起 协同工作。 我已经和一些电影工作者合作, 共同制作一个关于黏液霉菌的长篇纪录片, 我要强调是长篇, 现在已经在后期制作过程, 应该很快就能在院线上映了。 (观众笑声)
It's also enabled me to conduct what I think is the world's first human slime mold experiment. This is part of an exhibition in Rotterdam last year. We invited people to become slime mold for half an hour. So we essentially tied people together so they were a giant cell, and invited them to follow slime mold rules. You have to communicate through oscillations, no speaking. You have to operate as one entity, one mass cell, no egos, and the motivation for moving and then exploring the environment is in search of food. So a chaotic shuffle ensued as this bunch of strangers tied together with yellow ropes wearing "Being Slime Mold" t-shirts wandered through the museum park. When they met trees, they had to reshape their connections and reform as a mass cell through not speaking. This is a ludicrous experiment in many, many ways. This isn't hypothesis-driven. We're not trying to prove, demonstrate anything. But what it did provide us was a way of engaging a broad section of the public with ideas of intelligence, agency, autonomy, and provide a playful platform for discussions about the things that ensued. One of the most exciting things about this experiment was the conversation that happened afterwards. An entirely spontaneous symposium happened in the park. People talked about the human psychology, of how difficult it was to let go of their individual personalities and egos. Other people talked about bacterial communication. Each person brought in their own individual interpretation, and our conclusion from this experiment was that the people of Rotterdam were highly cooperative, especially when given beer. We didn't just give them oats. We gave them beer as well.
我想这也使得我能进行, 大概是世界第一例人类模拟黏液霉菌的实验。 这是去年鹿特丹展览的一部分, 我们邀请人们来扮演黏液霉菌大概半小时。 我们就是需要把大家绑在一起, 这样大家就变成了一个巨细胞。 我们也要求大家要遵守黏菌的生存法则, 只能用震荡来沟通, 不准说话和交谈。 必须作为一个整体,作为一个细胞团来行动, 没有自我。 进行移动 并摸索周边环境情况的动机, 就是寻找食物。 随之而来的是一片混乱,一群陌生人 穿着“黏液霉菌”的黄T恤,被黄绳子绑在一起, 在博物馆的园子里游荡。 当他们碰到树的时候,就不得不改变队形, 象个团细胞一样 悄然无声的的完成变形。 这是一个非常好笑的实验,从各种方面看都是。 它不是因假说驱动的。 我们做这个实验不是为了要证明或是证实任何事情。 但是这个实验确实提供给我们了一种途径, 去引发广泛的公众思考: 关于智能,关于机构,关于自治。 它也给我们提供了一个好玩的平台 去进行 后续的讨论。 关于这项实验, 其中一个最令人激动的事情是 实验结束之后所发生的讨论。 人们完全自发地在公园里开始了研讨。 大家谈到人类心理学, 发现大家很难 放下各体的自我和个性。 其他的一些人们谈到了细菌的沟通。 每个人对这次实验 都有他们各自的个性解读。 而我们由这次实验所得到的结论是, 鹿特丹的人们具有高度的合作精神 特别是当供应给他们啤酒的时候。 我们不止给了他们燕麦片, 我们也提供了啤酒。
But they weren't as efficient as the slime mold, and the slime mold, for me, is a fascinating subject matter. It's biologically fascinating, it's computationally interesting, but it's also a symbol, a way of engaging with ideas of community, collective behavior, cooperation. A lot of my work draws on the scientific research, so this pays homage to the maze experiment but in a different way. And the slime mold is also my working material. It's a coproducer of photographs, prints, animations, participatory events. Whilst the slime mold doesn't choose to work with me, exactly, it is a collaboration of sorts. I can predict certain behaviors by understanding how it operates, but I can't control it. The slime mold has the final say in the creative process. And after all, it has its own internal aesthetics. These branching patterns that we see we see across all forms, scales of nature, from river deltas to lightning strikes, from our own blood vessels to neural networks. There's clearly significant rules at play in this simple yet complex organism, and no matter what our disciplinary perspective or our mode of inquiry, there's a great deal that we can learn from observing and engaging with this beautiful, brainless blob.
不过他们没能做到象黏液霉菌那样高效率。 黏液霉菌, 于我而言 是种令人着迷的研究物质。 生物属性上它让人着迷, 它的运算特性也让人感兴趣, 但同时它也是一种标识, 关乎社区意见, 集体行为,和协同合作。 我的很多作品都借鉴了科学研究, 所以这个实验是在以另外一种方式 向之前谈到的迷宫实验的致敬。 黏液霉菌也是我的工作素材。 它是摄影,印刷品,动画片, 及互动活动的合伙制作人。 黏液霉菌并没有选择 要和我合作,而确切地说, 这是某种合作。 我可以预测到某些行为, 因为我理解了它是怎么操作的, 但是我控制不了它。 黏液霉菌在创作过程中 有最终的表达。 毕竟,它有自己的内在审美观。 我们看到的分叉图案 我们所看见的所有形态,天然的性状, 从河三角洲到闪电弧, 从我们的血管网络到神经网络。 这个简单而又复杂的生物 有着非常清楚的规则可循。 不管我们从什么学科角度出发或者是用什么方式研究 我们都受教无穷,我们 从观察和运用 这些漂亮的,没脑子的斑点身上可以学到很多很多。
I give you Physarum polycephalum.
这就是 (Physarum polycephalum)多头绒泡菌。
Thank you.
谢谢大家!
(Applause)
(观众掌声)