There are a lot of things you learn when working on a new project and this has overwhelmingly been the case working on 'Computational Art' pieces (or am I a 'New Media' artist now?) The correct functioning of all the parts, for example, is something which you might take for granted - I've acquired this component, I've read about it a bit, everything will be fine. This is probably the first notion which one should dispel, but it is certainly a trap I've fallen into during the making of my current piece. For example, as per previous posts - assuming that my fairly basic program would would work just fine on the raspberry pi (it didn't). Then there are all the other building niggles which inevitably crop-up - which depending on the complexity of your project are either minor and easy to overcome, or catastrophic in the sense of 'shit how do I even build this'. It all of course comes with experience - how much you scale a project depending on time, capabilities etc.

The current problem concerns a key player in this project - the slime mould itself. In my earlier test, just growing it in the takeaway box, it grew just fine and quite quickly. One thing I hadn't counted on though was that it might be affected by IR light; something which is essential for the proper functioning of the night-vision camera which was intended to record the slime mould's growth. I had the camera set up to take time-lapse photos all of last night, and checking back this morning the slime mould sample which I'd introduced at the beginning of the previous day hadn't really changed one bit. I've set up another one which will last for six hours and I've tried to reduce the intensity of the light a bit by sticking some tracing paper over the bulbs. Without any slime mould footage available though, this project simply will not happen. So really just keeping my fingers crossed on this one!