Physicists use electrical signals from slime mould to make music
Baku, December 20 (AZERTAC). Using the electrical signals generated by slime mould to make music creates an instrument musicians can `play` by zapping the creature with light.
Physarum polycephalum, better known as slime mould, is a single-celled creature that has attracted considerable attention in recent years for its ability to compute in unconventional ways. Various research groups have watched in barely disguised amazement as these single cells have solved mazes, recreated national motorway networks and even anticipated the timing of periodic events.
Now this extraordinary creature has added another skill to its box of tricks-the ability to make music, or at least to create sound in a controlled fashion.
Physarum grows by creating a network of protoplasmic tubes that stretch from one source of food to another. Much of this creature`s computing power comes from its ability to optimise the properties of this network.
Today, Eduardo Miranda at the University of Plymouth in the UK and a couple of pals say they`ve grown a Physarum cell in a petri dish lined with six electrodes, each topped with an oat flake to attract the protoplasmic tubes.
Miranda and co then measured the electrical activity at each electrode every second as the tubes grew across them, a process that took about a week to cover all the electrodes. They then plotted the results against time to compare the activity in different electrodes.
To create a sound, Miranda and co used the signal from each electrode to control the frequency of an audio oscillator. With each electrode controlling a different range of frequencies, they then added the outputs from all the oscillators to create a complex sound that represents the activity of the Physarum.
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