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Space Matters is a sculpture installation functioning as a biological computer searching for order in emergent material crystallization processes in zero gravity.
It deploys scientific data and unconventional computing to relate novel insights into our understanding of life, intelligence and consciousness.

Space Matters uses as its source a series of experiments conducted in the Directional Solidification Insert (DSI) of the Device for the study of Critical Liquids and Crystallization (DECLIC) launched in 2009 aboard the International Space Station (ISS) uses transparent alloys to observe microstructures that form at the point the material solidifies. These alloys solidify the same way metals do and form the same microstructures in the process. But because metals are opaque, researchers have to analyze the process of solidification after the fact. Only with the transparent alloys can they observe solidification as it happens in real time. Also, at zero gravity, it is possible to observe states of matter impossible to achieve on earth.

The cells and dendrites of transparent alloys that form during solidification sometimes adopt surprising behaviors. For example, for certain growth parameters, the three-dimensional cellular structures moved or oscillated as they grew, expanding and contracting rhythmically much like lungs do during breathing, according to the underlying pattern they form. These breath-like oscillations can split cells if they expand too much or cause them to disappear if they contract too much, demonstrating an emergent system of adaptive behavior.

Material scientists calculate the shortest path possible between cells to find organization in emergent phenomena as a tool for understanding their interactions. When complex enough, organization in cells can blur the boundaries that define life. Organization between matter is the interface of life, no matter the primal material composition.

Using original images from DECLIC of transparent alloy at zero gravity, Jorge Ramirez developed a new method of visualization in collaboration with material scientists from the Institut Matériaux Microélectronique et Nanosciences de Provence in France, and experts in biomechanics and evolution in crawling and swimming locomotion at Hokkaido University in Japan.

Ramirez analyzes images taken from DECLIC aboard the International Space Station using computer vision to determine the morphological distribution of the material cells.
The images were then transformed into 3D models later printed and casted in glass to represent lattice structures as topologies. Finally, to compute the organizational structure of the cells, Ramirez uses Physarum Polycephalum, or slime mode, a living organism, to calculate the shortest path possible between cells.

In order to find food, slime mold grows along the shortest path as a technique for survival, a natural algorithm developed by evolution over millions of years. Like deep neural networks used in artificial intelligence research, slime mode often come to correct answers, but they often solve problems differently than humans would.
Slime mold has neither a brain or neurons; its primordial intelligence is defined by its capacity to find order.

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