SPORES_WIP

Spores (2025) explores the relationship between non-deterministic emergence, artificial co-agency, and musical expression by reimagining the controller as an ecological system. The performer tends virtual slime mold colonies on a touchscreen running a real-time Physarum polycephalum agent- based model, seeding new colonies, distributing nutrients, and disturbing the environment. Health, stress, and territorial spread are continuously extracted and mapped to synthesis parameters via OSC and MPE MIDI. No food, no colonies. No colonies, no sound. The constraint becomes visible before it becomes audible. Six sections explore hunger, competition, and abundance across a seven-minute event-based improvisation, each isolating a different ecological condition. The ecosystem itself becomes the interface.