Author: amp028

Radiolarians are single-celled, individual microorganisms, similar to amoeba, often shaped with radial symmetry that can survive harsh conditions at the bottom of the sea. To help them survive these conditions, radiolarians contain pseudopods to catch tiny prey for feeding as well as silica, which creates the intricate, glasslike crystalline structures. This helps create the infinite diverse forms that gave them their name of Protists, after the Greek God of the sea, Proteus, who can take on infinite forms. Ernst Haeckel was only introduced to radiolarians in his days of studying science as a medical student at university after he found himself bored with superficial structures and dry specimens in the lab. He was raised Christian but also as a scientist, therefore he was torn between natural law/materialism and God/souls. Haeckel struggled to come to terms with both but worked throughout his career to marry the two divergent concepts through art. This was not a popular concept to unite due to the Christian church holding power over science.

One line that I found fascinating and was repeated throughout the film helped Haeckel understand how form and function can be united. “You must, when contemplating nature, understand that there is no outside or within there is only inside out and outside in.” The form itself produces the function, a concept that he arrives at through producing radiolarian art. Similarly, when creating a sculpture, the form serves a purpose; the form is the purpose. I must understand what output (reaction) will emerge form my sculpture while creating it. Although evolution does not occur through a conscious mind, it does produce forms with an efficient and effective purpose, such as the intricate, single celled microorganism that is the radiolarian.

It was fascinating that Haeckel was able to gather as many specimens as he did and completely replicate their form in art with the limited technology of the 1850’s. At that point, scientists believed that the ocean could not be as deep as 5 miles, and yet, Haeckel found specimens from 5 miles below the surface. Therefore his findings emerged at a time that the church ruled and scientific knowledge was limited. All research voyages at that time had a team of scientists (naturalists and chemists) as well as an artist to accurately depict their findings. This is where Haeckel found a calling as an artistic naturalist or a natural artist. He felt like he could grasp nature through his art, which is one implication of the projects for our class. It is a way for us to create form and function through various artistic mediums, which occurs naturally in nature. I am amazed at how painstaking his task of replicating the complex structures of radiolarians. The size and speed he had to work at was exhausting, and yet he drew out about 4000 radiolarians.

Tim Hawkinson

 

He is extremely conscious of how his pieces will have an auditory and visual effect on the viewer. He problem solves to create a mechanism that produces sounds of musical instruments without using complex electronics and without having prior formal engineering knowledge. The pieces evolve as he creates them throughout this problem solving process. For instance, his initial plan for the water droplets was completely abstract- he liked the sound of water droplets. As they dropped he could hear how he could produce recognizable, nonrandom rhythm involving these water droplets. From there he created a structure that encapsulates the viewer/listener and brings them to an enchanted, Dr. Seuss-esque scene of twisted, knotted plastic wrap and the flow of water. He enriches all of the senses at once.

 

Sarah Sze

 

Sarah took pride in and felt strongly connected to the building process of her piece for the highline in NYC. Often she would use a material or some kind of scaffolding originally intending for it to be taken out of the final piece but would be flexible as she had newfound connections to those materials. She was very excited to be able to alter the meaning/physicality of the piece as something new arrives. She felt as though her pieces moved through space due to this quality; it may both be fleeting and permanent, she may never know, but it fluctuates. This added to the meaning of many of her pieces that involved spaces that have been transformed in the past- such as the highline, post shutdown- and yet they still stand with beauty.

 

Pepon Osorio

 

His use of very personal memories in his art allows for self-reflection and the opportunity to learn about himself, but also pulls the audience in with a personal, empathetic connection. This makes the audience vulnerable opening them up to be more accepting of messages of the need for change in his work. He tries to produce a clear mission and understands how to use the displacement of familiar objects and scenes to portray his vision. For instance, he used bright happy, colors and familiar, childhood objects in a room with a large video projected on the wall of a son telling a father how the father’s prison sentence negatively affected him. His work his jarring but very clear due to his intentional use of materials, color and space.

When thinking about the complex idea of consciousness in animals, Nagel focuses on bats. Bats ‘see’ and ‘hear’ in a completely different way than we do, although both populations have evolved very sophisticated perceptive mechanisms over time to suit their needs. Regardless of the this similar complexity, we, as humans, have no sense that is remotely similar to echolocation in bats and therefore cannot truly feel or understand what it is like to use that as a primary sense. I can think about what it would be like for me to be a bat- if I would enjoy it, how I would feel to be nearly blind, what it would be like to hang in a tree… but those are all based on my own experiences as a human. The fact that I am human allows me to understand the quality of another human’s experiences because we are sufficiently similar enough. I have nearly the same basic information processing systems and sensory mechanisms as another human being. We have language to describe our experiences to others and we are able to understand, to a certain extent, how it feels to go through that experience. On the other hand, there is no possible way for me to understand what it is like to be a bat; I can only discover what it is like for Amy Patterson, the human, to pretend to be a bat. Regardless of this lack of understanding, bats must have some sort of consciousness because there is something that it is like to be that organism, which is Nagel’s explanation for consciousness in all organisms.