SLIME CITY: Grow your own algorithmic slime mold anti-surveillance mask using Scaniverse and Blender

Born from ongoing research into facial recognition, SLIME CITY is a speculative, interspecies collaboration designed to disrupt the unconsensual recording of biometric data. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to design a custom algorithmically designed head covering allowing them to become undetectable in heavily surveilled society.

Using the free mobile app Polycam, attendees will begin by 3D scanning each other's heads. Moving into Blender, they will use a pre-written Python algorithm that simulates slime mold growth directly onto their scanned meshes. With adjustable parameters to tweak the final aesthetics, everyone will sculpt a completely unique, organic algorithmic mask. We will conclude with a practical pipeline for preparation for 3D printing.

This session is strictly beginner-friendly and open to all; no prior code or 3D modeling experience is required. Participants just need to bring a laptop with Blender installed and a smartphone with Scaniverse - I will also provide some head meshes in case this is not possible. They will leave with a foundational understanding of 3D scanning, basic mesh workflow in Blender, and their own unique, print-ready anti-surveillance digital mask file.

Workshop Requirements:
* Phones with Polycam downloaded - free version is fine available here: https://poly.cam/download or on App Stores
* Laptops with Blender downloaded - available here: https://www.blender.org/download/

About Fran Hayes: 
Fran Hayes's practice is slippery. One must grip it by its slimy skin. It slithers between realms: real, digital, physical. It plants its seeds across space-time. Predominantly based in Blender and expanding into video, writing, installation, and computation, she creates speculative landscapes and immersive environments that explore damaged ecologies, science-fiction, and the uncanny through a fundamentally human lens. Studying the Computational Arts MA at Goldsmiths has radically expanded her practice. She is interested in the friction between disparate workflows, software ecosystems, and programming languages. By integrating computation into her existing digital framework, she has gained the technical vocabulary to build what she previously couldn't conceive. Rather than merely scratching the surface of the organic and digital systems her research revolves around, she can now interrogate them from the inside out. Using Python with Blender has allowed her to develop non-traditional pipelines—ultimately pushing the software to its technical limits and challenging standard 3D design paradigms. Since April, she has been teaching for the British Museum’s Young People’s (YP) Digital Artist Cohort, running 3D scanning and Blender workshops. These workshops are designed for the YP to engage with the artifacts in the museum, experiencing them as springboards to design their own worldbuilding environments. Through bringing the 3D scans into the space of Blender, the YP experience them in nuanced ways, playing with scale, texture, and shape to make them their own while making sure to be considerate of the artifacts’ histories.