Intro
This week was dedicated to the fabrication challenge—a time to design and build artifacts for MDEFest, allowing us to communicate our explorations through hands-on, engaging experiences. Since I was attending the Urban Future Conference during this time, I couldn’t join the challenge in person. To stay aligned with the process, I began developing my prototype and planning the workshop in advance. After returning, I continued working through our shared Miro board, updating my ideas step by step and creating systemic narrative.
Artifact
My activation proposal for MDEFest was an Interspecies City Workshop—a walk with relational mapping from a non-human perspective, where the central artifact would be a petri dish containing living Physarum polycephalum, growing on a 3D printed urban model of Barcelona, as a living framework for layering the relational maps created by participants. The idea was inspired by research on slime mold's network efficiency by Prof. Andrew Adamatzky, the GAN-Physarum simulations by ecoLogicStudio, and alternative mapping practices that reframe space not through technical precision, but through relational, sensory, and empathetic perception.
The artifact process follows a flow from biology to urban space.
Slime mold grows on a 3D printed map of Barcelona, revealing efficient, emergent ecological connections. These are translated into a walkable city route, which participants follow while creating their own relational maps from a non-human perspective. This process connects living behavior, spatial context, and sensory mapping.
The artifact was developed through a combination of biological, digital, and analog methods. Slime mold was cultivated in petri dishes and grown on 2% agar filled between 3D printed buildings of selected part of Barcelona. 3d model was created using GIS data from the city council, modeled in Rhino and printed with Z-suite software.
More details in Miro board and full documentation on hackster.io.
Reflections
This fabrication challenge was quite a time and planning challenge for me, since I couldn’t be present during the actual week of the workshop. I had to organize everything in advance and carefully plan my work for both before and after returning to IAAC. Luckily, I already had a clear vision of what I wanted to prepare for MDEFest, so my main focus was managing the timing of different steps—like 3D modeling, printing, and allowing the slime mold to grow in the petri dish.
Of course, some issues came up—mainly with preparing a proper 3D model for printing—but I managed to fix them in Rhino. One lesson I’m taking from this is that I need to double-check the dimensions and distances more precisely next time. If the spaces are too narrow, it can limit the slime mold’s ability to grow and form its networks.
During the process, I also started thinking about how to extend the experiment. For example, how to integrate agar not only in the space between buildings but also on the buildings themselves—creating a kind of two-layer growth surface. This could allow me to explore the slime mold’s networks not only on a flat surface but also as they interact with vertical structures. Finally, a future challenge might be figuring out how to scale up the artifact and create it on a slightly larger scale—not just within a 9 cm petri dish.
Cognitive Contribution License (CCL)
CCL v1.0 — AI contributed as Drafting Assistant in Research, Documentation and Reflection. All other phases were fully human-led.
AI R1 O1 F1 – v1.0