Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the ways the slime mould Physarum polycephalum shapes the field of ethnographic fieldwork as well as the ethnographic research methods by drawing the ethnographer into an already existing multidisciplinary network of experimenters.

Paper long abstract:

Physarum polycephalum is an acellular slime mould, which at a certain stage of its life cycle forms a plasmodium that can span tens of centimetres. The fact that despite its simple structure it exhibits complex behaviours and performs complicated tasks, combined with a relative ease and safety of its cultivation, turn it into an epistemic thing that traverses disciplinary boundaries between biology, art and computer science. Physarum not only travels between science and art labs, but also makes their boundaries porous and prone to contamination by concepts and narratives that are brought in from other contexts.

This paper discusses the ways the slime mould shapes the field of ethnographic fieldwork as well as the ethnographic research methods by drawing the ethnographer into an already existing network of experimenters hailing from various disciplinary contexts. It starts with a recurring first contact narrative that I share with my research participants and goes on to describe my own experiments with Physarum, which lived in my kitchen and was my sole research participant for most part of the Covid19 pandemic.

I argue that cohabitation with the slime mould and the necessity to adjust to its rhythm of growth and movement was a research method in its own right, yielding insights into the temporal and environmental conditions as well as ethical ramifications of slime mould-human relations. It also affected my relation to and position within my ethnographic field by turning me into one of Physarum experimenters.