The Creeping Garden

Slime mold does not seem a promising subject for a feature-length film, but the documentary on this subject, The Creeping Garden (2014) is certainly compelling -- indeed, the fact that the film is so interesting and, even, moving is crucial to the picture's central theme.  Simply put, slime molds are wonderful and the sense of wonder is integral to what it means to be human.  In fact, as the movie shows us, the emotion of pure wonder is itself a powerful incentive to the human imagination and its activity in the world.  (The picture is the work of UK filmmakers Tim Grabham and Steve Jaspar.)

For most of history, slime molds have been regarded as a kind of fungus.  In fact, they are  completely different from fungi, sharing only the characteristic that they are propagated by spores -- depicted abstractly in this movie as little amber-colored cubes spinning in a black void.  The molds were once thought to be animals because they move with apparent intention, even, intelligence.  The molds expand as networks of moist yellow or pink or white cells creating delicate lattices or strange alien-looking protuberances on tiny stalks,  In some forms, the molds become globular, reddish or yellow tumors the size of softballs growing on dead wood or under logs.  The molds have a peculiar circulatory system that flushes fluid through tiny capillaries in both directions, the flow reversing every four or five seconds.  They are in constant motion although this activity is invisible to the eye -- the film is principally shot in time-lapse photography so that we can see how the molds throb and throw out translucent slime tentacles as they search for food.  Slime molds are exceedingly efficient in developing pathways between objectives -- they minimize energy use by selecting the most direct and efficient route to nutrients.  (In the laboratory, they eat flakes of oat meal.)  The path-optimization characteristics of the mold cause their networks to closely resemble human-made roads -- also structures that optimize connections between points.  (One shot shows a slime mold superimposed over a map of the United States with major cities marked by bits of oat-meal -- the mold approximates the freeway system in the U.S.(in fact, the path from Chicago to Seattle angles across Wisconsin, through Minnesota and, then, courses west exactly on the route where Interstate 90 runs.))

Very quickly, it becomes apparent that enormous realms of human endeavor can be considered in light of the humble slime-mold.  It turns out that the early time-lapse films made even before 1900 were devised to depict the curious pulsing and tentacular growth of these molds.  (This part of the film shows us ancient time-lapse films and how they developed from magic lantern nature lectures.)  The molds are too inconspicuous and, seemingly, inconsequential to have inspired much interest by professional scientists -- accordingly, the picture also provides a discourse on amateur or citizen science:  most of what we know about these molds is the result of study by people simply poking about in the woods, an activity that we see from time to time as a hobbyist (with a disconcertingly heavy rural English accent) searches a tangled thicket for these entities.  The fractal growth of the slime molds can be used for bio-computing -- in other words, the slime molds can be used as a kind of circuit board for conveying information.  This application leads the film into episodes in which the growth of the molds triggers certain electrical signals that can play a piano and, indeed, compose music -- since the mold's growth is not chaotic but follows certain clearly defined patterns.  Weird-looking human heads, lifelike mannequins, are hooked to the slime-mold samples and, then, make singing sounds through rubber or plastic lips -- this is all very eerie and in keeping with the interest that some artists have shown in using slime-mold growth patterns as templates for abstract paintings.  It is suggested that the way slime-molds grow may be an emblem for "grass-roots" political activism -- that is, organization from the bottom-up as opposed to hierarchies dictated from above.  In one sequence, human test subjects are persuaded to mimic slime-mold behavior, forming affiliative links through tethers between people and, then, must attempt to navigate mazes without use of verbal cues.  The crowds of people tied together don't do materially better than the molds in running through labyrinths.

The theme of the film emerges only in the documentary's final minute or two.  A scientist notes that slime molds play no known role in the ecologies in which they exist -- if all molds suddenly vanished from the earth it's not at all clear that we would notice the difference.  Unlike fungi, the molds don't break down organic matter and aid decomposition -- they merely graze on the bacteria on the surface of decomposing organic matter (if anything slowing decomposition).  Nothing seems to depend upon slime molds.  So what are they for?  Here the film implies a leap of faith that is anthropocentric (but necessarily so since all of our thought is by definition man-centered.)  The film seems to suggest that slime molds represent a pure "gift" to humanity -- they have no known utility, but are beautiful in their own right; they are a wholly gratuitous aid to the human imagination inspiring wonderful art and artifacts (the bio-computers) -- we don't need them except as impetus for remarkable flights of the imagination, of which the film is one example.  We don't need slime molds, but, then, don't need Mozart either.

In form, The Creeping Garden is an ecstatic documentary of the kind pioneered by Werner Herzog in his films about cave art or volcanoes or Antarctica.  The human specimens on display in the film are odd-looking people, far less attractive than the molds that they admire, and they are often filmed from peculiar and unflattering angles.  Of course, the time-lapse imagery of the molds themselves is alien, grotesque, and beautiful.  (The extras on the CD are worth exploring.  One short film is called "Activating Memory" and it is extraordinarily moving.  The film is about bio-computing in that a group of four paralyzed men and women are invited to compose musical themes using their eyes alone and their brain-waves. These themes can be woven together to interact with a live string quartet.  The resulting composition called "Activating Memory" itself is quite beautiful and affords an occasion for people who are wholly "locked-in" to work cooperatively to create a thing of beauty, the musical composition that is performed for an audience at the Royal Neurological Hospital. This film is very short but it is majestic.  This film dovetails with the themes in the feature-length documentary suggesting that humans exist to explore their world and create beauty in their interactions with it.)