# Physarum / Slime-Mold

**Track:** Simulation & Complexity — Advanced Creative Coding — proposed (50)
**Framework / surface:** GLSL
**Level:** Hard
**Prerequisites:** Autonomous Agents & Steering, Feedback / Ping-Pong Buffers

**In one line:** Deposit–sense–rotate agents on a trail map; emergent networks.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Physarum models treat the slime mold *Physarum polycephalum* as a swarm of minimal agents, each depositing a chemoattractant onto a shared trail map, then sensing it ahead through three offset sensors and rotating toward the strongest signal. Deposit, sense, rotate — iterated over a diffusing, decaying field, the agents reinforce their own paths and spontaneously weave efficient transport networks. Jeff Jones formalized the model in 2010, and Sage Jensen's "mold" studies have made its aesthetic widely known: filamentous webs that braid, prune, and pulse like neural tissue or river deltas, structure condensing out of noise without any global plan or central coordinator.