Mutated L-system is the physically grown L-system algorithm. Starting from a software origin as an L-system rule, it migrates into the physical world. Through mutation and development of situational architectural structures, it adapts to its new spatial environment.

Biologist Aristid Lindenmayer designed L-systems in 1968 to model the behavior of plant cells. Lindenmayer later revised the L-systems to model entire plant organisms.

On the one hand, L-systems are used to explore “principles that seem to unify seemingly disparate phenomena” (https://algorithmicbotany.org). (This explicit agenda of unifying the diversity of plant growth processes shows how reductionist L-systems are by nature.) On the other hand, L-systems are an important tool in the practice of creative coding for synthesizing images of plants in an often naturalistic approach. They provide an important interface for transferring phenomena described as “natural” into the realm of the “artificial.” L-systems have therefore gained great popularity in the creative coding community. And as one of the most common practices in biology and media informatics for modeling plants used in simulations, computer games, and CGI-driven films, L-systems also have a strong influence on how plants are represented in the media and thus also on how we perceive them. Mutated L-systems subversively recurs on these formalization processes by reversing and reifying them.

The substrate of the kinetic sculpture consists of a carbon frame and plastic joints arranged according to this L-systematic rule, which dictates how each branch should form two new branches that are rotated around two axes and bent at 89.8 degrees:

'F' ⟼ “Fx[-z-xFx][+z+xFx]”

According to this rule, the L-system spreads out and additionally forms spontaneous support structures. These support structures contradict the rules on which they are based, but are necessary to make the physical L-system as stable as possible.

Muscle cables are clamped from joint to joint to give the sculpture its mobility. These muscle cables react with contraction to heat induced by transistor cards with approximately 12 volts and controlled by a microcontroller.