This diplo­ma the­sis deals with the ques­tion to what extent it is pos­si­ble to trans­fer gen­uine prop­er­ties (and their para­me­ters) of a slime mold, Physarum Poly­cephalum, from a nat­ur­al-bio­log­i­cal to an arti­fi­cial-cre­ative sys­tem? This ques­tion will be answered in two sec­tions.

In the first sec­tion, a lit­er­a­ture review is used to describe what data visu­al­iza­tion and growth algo­rithms are. Dif­fer­ent types of growth algo­rithms are high­light­ed and a his­tor­i­cal overview of them is giv­en. In addi­tion, two art­works that have been cre­at­ed by data in the broad­est sense are described in more detail. These are Mal­warez by Alex Drag­ules­cu and Pro­le­gom­e­na by Louis Bec. The work by Louis Bec will be exam­ined in some detail, as it con­tains valu­able insights for this the­sis. In the work Mal­warez, the source codes of com­put­er virus­es are visu­al­ized as three-dimen­sion­al fig­ures. In the work of Louis Bec is also a man­i­festo includ­ed, which deals with the appear­ance of arti­fi­cial life. This is then inter­pret­ed by the author of this work.

In the sec­ond sec­tion, the growth behav­ior of the slime mold, Physarum Poly­cephalum, is trans­ferred from a bio­log­i­cal-nat­ur­al sys­tem into an arti­fi­cial-cre­ative sys­tem by means of Touchde­sign­er and the pro­gram­ming lan­guage GLSL. In the process, the deci­sive para­me­ters for the visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion and their set­ting val­ues are found out. These val­ues are then changed in order to influ­ence the result as much as pos­si­ble and to move it away from the orig­i­nal visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion. It turns out that the val­ues with the most influ­ence are the sen­sor angle, rota­tion angle and sen­sor off­set dis­tance. Using these three para­me­ters, the behav­ior could be manip­u­lat­ed very exten­sive­ly. Since these para­me­ters are changed beyond their ini­tial val­ues, it is pos­si­ble to obtain results that are far from the visu­al source mate­r­i­al.

The result is a the­sis that uses the­o­ret­i­cal lit­er­a­ture and prac­ti­cal approach­es to answer the ques­tion of dig­i­tal data visu­al­iza­tion of nat­ur­al bio­log­i­cal sys­tems.

- Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences 2021 — St. Pöl­ten