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bioart : Dissecting Kac and Transgenic Art
Posted by horatio on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (21:18:06) (5 reads)
In watching some of the videos and reading some of the articles circulating almost a decade ago over Alba, Eduardo Kac's gfp enhanced rabbit, and also trying to put that into dialogue with the Leonardo's Choice readings and videos from the UCLA event, a number of pressing questions came to mind. In particular, the questions about ethics and rights that were raised by Steven Best and Carol Gigliotti. But even more than that, the underlying question that we tend to ask a lot in my field, which is what work does this project do? With that in mind, I want to explore a few threads relevant for our class.
Carol Gigliotti writes in her opening to Leonardo's Choice that:
Unlike the majority of discussions on biotechnology, whether endorsing or critical, this volume, as a whole, views seriously the disastrous impact of these technologies on animals themselves. Amidst the wealth of human intelligence and imagination invested in the development of technologies, the natural world and non-human beings have been regulated to proprietary roles, even though our technological innovations could not exist without them. Our long-standing pre-occupation with technological outlooks and technological solutions have obscured the reality and agency of the more-than-human world, or what is left of it.
Gigliotti points to three key moments, following Italian philosopher Paola Cavalieri's trail, which have left a historical imprint in the form of a human-animal binary. These are:
The Greek separation of humans and animals in the polis (cf. Plato's city of pigs).
Descartes notion of mechanistic action and the animal autonomata.
The current techno-industrialization (what Haraway calls 'technoscience') of animals in society.
But Gigliotti argues that the biotech revolution is a new 4th destructive moment for animals, in part because it has the potential to undermine the advances in animal rights and concern for animal welfare, as well as the deeper metaphysical changes in public thinking towards animals, by a re-instrumentalization of the animal as object of science. We can see this in a few different places:
"It is also true and needs to be articulated clearly that the current goals of Western science and technology, bound up as they are with entrenched ideas of animals and nature existing solely for our use, are antithetical to these challenges and are still driving the development of “transformative” biotechnologies." (Gigliotti xiv)
"This collection’s central questions revolve around how Western ideas and practices of creative freedom are disassociated from the impacts they have on the non-human world. This disassociation has contributed to shifting an organic understanding of nature to a mechanistic model in which the image of the non-human world is one of an (mere) inert, soulless machine and in which the agency of animals is obscured." (Gigliotti xiv)
"Animals have been conscripted into these technologies to further an agenda of controlling the creation of all life through the manipulation of various manifestations of code. In today’s biotechnologies, animals have become code." (Gigliotti xvii)
This is where I think a lot of the concern over Kac's work really centers. What work is Kac "trying to do" with his art? Well, here's what he has said in the past about the gfp bunny in context:
"Transgenic art, I proposed elsewhere, is a new art form based on the use of genetic engineering to transfer natural or synthetic genes to an organism, to create unique living beings. This must be done with great care, with acknowledgment of the complex issues thus raised and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and love the life thus created."
The "GFP Bunny" project is a complex social event that starts with the creation of a chimerical animal that does not exist in nature (i.e., "chimerical" in the sense of a cultural tradition of imaginary animals, not in the scientific connotation of an organism in which there is a mixture of cells in the body)."
As I read this, he is basically taking a scientific practice build around and upon animal exploitation and trying to claim a liberatory artistic potential by pointing to how it can help to open up "complex issues" and perhaps also foster "care" and a vague and unstated "commitment" to the life under the genetic knife. But I don't buy it, not completely, and not on the most fundamental point--ethics. Nowhere in Kac's writing about Alba, or in his other writings on transgenetic art, do I see a real awareness that his ability to even make these transgenic art projects is premised on the acceptance of both animal exploitation and the violability of animal life compared to the human. Sure, he talks about the love he has for Alba, even if he/she? remains locked up in a French biotech lab, while he is busy making money and fame at the expense of this rabbit, nor does he ever acknowledge his perpetuation of animal experimentation as an acceptable practice, even though he wants to claim awareness of the fact. This was really brought home to me in one line in particular of his, where he states:
"I decided to proceed with the project because it became clear that it was safe...Put another way: green fluorescent protein is harmless to the rabbit. It is also important to point out that the "GFP Bunny" project breaks no social rule: humans have determined the evolution of rabbits for at least 1400 years." (GFP Bunny)
The gfp bunny project may not break any social rules if we assume that animal exploitation and experimentation is the norm (which it is), and we also accept that human manipulation of animals for "at least 1400 years" has been the norm (also true), but this completely misses the ethical question of whether these "social rules" are themselves acceptable. Many would say no, absolutely not. And that's the real rub with Kacs, he wants to have his animal friendly-lovey dovey story--and eat his gfp bunny too. But you can't have it both ways. Either the experimentation and manipulation of animals is ethically suspect, or it is ethically acceptable, and where and how that line gets drawn is precisely what he claims to want to interrogate and have a dialogue about, but at the very moment when his own project asks that question, he avoids it, or rather, he falls back into the old anthropocentric trope of, "well we've done this before, so it must be ok to keep doing it." That is not an ethically defensible position, it is an excuse that precisely avoids having to deal with the ethical problems before you.
Now in fairness to Kac, he does respond to this charge, but I find his defense equally lacking. Here's what he says about his project compared to standard genetics or animal breeding programs:
"GFP Bunny" is a transgenic artwork and not a breeding project. The differences between the two include the principles that guide the work, the procedures employed, and the main objectives. Traditionally, animal breeding has been a multi-generational selection process that has sought to create pure breeds with standard form and structure, often to serve a specific performative function. As it moved from rural milieus to urban environments, breeding de-emphasized selection for behavioral attributes but continued to be driven by a notion of aesthetics anchored on visual traits and on morphological principles. Transgenic art, by contrast, offers a concept of aesthetics that emphasizes the social rather than the formal aspects of life and biodiversity, that challenges notions of genetic purity, that incorporates precise work at the genomic level, and that reveals the fluidity of the concept of species in an ever increasingly transgenic social context." (GFP Bunny)
I grant that his project is not about breeding (whether the French lab maintains that same view is a different story), but again his claim to the "principles that guide the work" being different are hard to square, given the ethical problem just outlined above. As far as procedures involved, as far as I can tell the actual, technical science that occurred to make Alba is exactly the same as any other genetic experiment for breeding or trait selection, it just happens that he was engineering Albe to express the gfp gene, rather than say hair sheen or fur color. But the procedures are identical.
He also makes a clever but deceptive semantic slip here by moving from transgenic experimentation to animal breeding in the same sentence, asking us to see how his process is not like traditional multi-generational breeding programs, but that was never a point of debate. We know he didn't "design" Alba for breeding, so to say what he is doing is not like that is to setup a straw man argument which he can easily knock down. The question is the transgenetic process, not the breeding process, and we should not lose sight of that as he seems to hope we will do. The reason I think he makes this claim is because he immediately wants to say that breeding is usually for "a specific performative function," whereas his project is somehow different. I'm not sure that is a claim he can really defend. If anything, I see a gfp bunny as the ultimate in performative function. After all, doesn't Alba function in a performative framework precisely because the rabbit's functions is a symbolic chimera demonstrating the potential of art and science to be fused? This sure seems to be what Kac is claiming when he says:
"As a transgenic artist, I am not interested in the creation of genetic objects, but on the invention of transgenic social subjects." (GFP Bunny)
Here I have to disagree that Alba has been constituted as a social subject. If anything, based on all of the media coverage and attention around Kac and Alba, this social process seems to further reify Alba as a mute object of Kac's artistic creativity. While he may not be "interested" in creating genetic objects, I would argue that is precisely what he accomplished in the form of Alba. To talk about Alba as a subject is to mythologize what he wanted Alba to be, not what Alba really is. While we can surely argue that Alba as a living and sentient subject should be able to engage as a transgenic social subject in these debates, when it comes to actually observing that process playing out, all we find is an absent referent--a silently glowing albino bunny held captive in an animal research lab--and not a true subject. This reality becomes all the harder to swallow when Kacs says things like the following:
"Integrating the lessons of dialogical philosophy and cognitive ethology, transgenic art must promote awareness of and respect for the spiritual (mental) life of the transgenic animal. The word "aesthetics" in the context of transgenic art must be understood to mean that creation, socialization, and domestic integration are a single process. The question is not to make the bunny meet specific requirements or whims, but to enjoy her company as an individual (all bunnies are different), appreciated for her own intrinsic virtues, in dialogical interaction." (GFP Bunny)
It's pretty language, and sounds great, but the reality tells a very different story. Where is the respect for the spiritual life of a rabbit who is the object of genetic manipulation and the subject of forced confinement, when all the aesthetic talk dies down? And that he misses this very aesthetic fulcrum--the point he tries to make so forcefully about intrinsic bunny value--is the saddest part. When he says that "creation, socialization, and domestic integration are a single process," he seems to be talking about the single process of life as an object of transgenic lab experimentation, not a social subject in its own right. And it is the lack of recognition by Kac that this all occurs as a single process, from lab experimentation to media hype, capturing Alba in the gaze of society as transgenic spectacle, which makes it all the more maddening. How else could you explain an artistic comment like the following not sounding amazingly naive and trite:
"Today, our ability to generate life through the direct method of genetic engineering prompts a re-evaluation of the cultural objectification and the personal subjectification of animals, and in so doing it renews our investigation of the limits and potentialities of what we call humanity." (GFP Bunny)
While I may applaud Kac's creativity and desire to engage in these critical issues, I worry that he does more harm than good in the process. And if his more recent projects like "Edunia" are any indication, I still think he is missing the boat in his attempt at transgenic artistic critique. Similarly, exhibits like Damien Hirst's Away From The Flock seem to be stranded in the same boat as Kac. After all, what happened to Kac's beloved Alba ten years out?
On a somewhat related but different not, something which Steve Best mentions in his essay, how do these debates change when the animals in question die or are dead, like in Jessica Joslin's mouse bioart sculptures?
Links:
GFP Bunny
Natural History of the Enigma (Kac's transgenic Petunia exhibit from 2009)
Making Edunia
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DIY Bio : DIY Bio - The Art and Science of Fungi
Posted by horatio on Friday, February 19, 2010 (05:04:21) (16 reads)
An Introduction:
Project Name: DIY Bio - The Art and Science of Fungi
Project Description: This project seeks to bring the scientific field of mycology and the artistic practice of experimental design together into an edible and aesthetic art project. The basic outline for this proposal is to create a series of organic sculptures which can serve as the basic scaffolding into which inoculated spawn can be inserted and fruited. The primary sculpture materials to be used are recycled corrugated cardboard, brewed coffee grounds and natural burlap bags. These three materials will serve as the primary substrate into which the inoculated spawn will be added and grown. The process from initial grow room setup to final mushroom harvesting will be documented at every step and combined into a finished video and photo documentation project as well as a series of mushroom culinary presentations.
You can learn more about this project here.
How it all works
Here you can see a few of the first pictures from this project, mostly just cardboard at this point, but eventually they will look really cool!
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Our Official Blog : entangled nature
Posted by horatio on Saturday, February 13, 2010 (03:30:50) (23 reads)
So my parsons class this week dealt with food as our main topic, something which i had already reflected on slightly in my last post on hybridity, largely responding to some worries about gmo's and the precautionary principle in science that were sparked by the Outlaw Biology conference videos.
We had a rather wide-ranging and at times overly vague conversation about a number of topics, but a few things stood out as noteworthy. The one I want to explore a little deeper here relates to my own research interests and academic work, as well as my own personal interests. Simply put, it's the long-standing debate about what distinguishes natural from artificial, especially if we assume that man is a natural creation, and therefore anything man made is also natural. This was one of the lines of argument that was being advanced in class, and which I was specifically refuting in my limited comments. Here I want to try and draw that debate out further, flesh out some core concepts that must be dealt with, and try to work through some of the implications of these various positions.
3 Basic Arguments:
a) man vs nature - The Cartesian Duality
This first position argues that there is an important and clear divide between humans and other animals and nature, and that this is most clearly seen in areas like culture, technology, language, consciousness and higher-order logic and reasoning. While we may all be "animals" in the most general sense of living, breathing, mating and dying organisms, all the comparisons stop after those basic functions. As Descartes argues in his famous Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason (1637), animals are like automata, only capable of pre-programmed response.
| Quote:: |
| [Animals] have no reason at all, and that it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs, just as a clock, which is only composed of wheels and weights is able to tell the time more correctly than we can do with all our wisdom...there is none which is more effectual in leading feeble spirits from the straight path of virtue, than to imagine that the soul of the brute is of the same nature as ours... {Discourse pt. V, 39-40} |
Similar to the claim about animals, there is also a qualitative divide between the social relations that could be observed in nature (lion prides, schools of fish) and the techno-cultural creation of complex cities and infrastructure (castles, bridges, aqueducts, highways, skyscrapers). All of these features distinguish the "man-made" from the natural.
b) man is nature - The Gaia Theory
This second position, while not as easily delineated as the first position, has a constellation of related ideas enough that we can sketch out at least a basic philosophical framework like above. In essence, this position holds that man is not separate from nature, but rather deeply enmeshed in the living world around us, regardless of whether we think this to actually be the case. We have simply fooled ourselves into thinking that we are superior through a long history of violent domination and disconnection from the land in every facet of our lives (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual). Lovelock described this idea as:
| Quote:: |
| ...a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet. {Gaia Hypothesis, 10} |
While we are intrinsically connected to nature by cause of our being a part of it, we have also created a false separation that has become manifest in such a way that we actually believe the myth of Descartes to be real, and have attempted to force nature to conform to this duality. This effectively creates the illusion that we are separate and superior to nature and non-human animals, but as many argue, the costs of maintaining this illusion are increasingly exposing themselves (global warming, species extinction, mass toxicity of water and soil, deforestation, global conflicts, etc). Unless we begin to acknowledge these realities and work to restore a balanced interaction, things will continue on a downward track to mass global destruction.
c) man equals nature - The Postmodern Schizophrenia
This third position best characterize the modern world of wise-use environmentalism and techno-utopianism, and is an attempt by a commodity and use-value dominated world culture (ie: neoliberal capitalism) to impose market-based technical solutions to ecological systems--an effort that those in the gaia camp argue is impossible. This view sees the world from a Cartesian duality (mind/body or nature/culture), and ranges from open acknowledgment of inter-related systems to outright denial of anything except human use-value. Alex Epstein, writing for the Ayn Rand Center, expresses some of this logic in his discussion of cloning debates and the human-nature-god philosophical nexus:
| Quote:: |
| The one truth in the anti-cloning position is that cloning does represent "the desire to exert our will over every aspect of our surroundings." But such a desire is not immoral--it is a mark of virtue. Using technology to alter nature is a requirement of life. It is what brought man from the cave to civilization. Where would we be without the men who "exerted their will" over their surroundings and constructed the first hut, cottage, and skyscraper? Every advance in human history is part of "the technological project," and has made man's life longer, healthier, and happier. These advances are produced by those who hold the premise that suffering and disease are a curse, not to be humbly accepted as "God's will," but to be fought proudly with all the power of man's rational mind.. {Ayn Rand Center, The virtue of "Playing God"} |
This position argues that man is a part of nature, somewhat in opposition to Descarte's view, but then inverts the Gaia claim about human interference and manipulation of nature into one of active intervention and design as our obligation (a Biblical steward mentality). If humans are a part of nature like everything else, they argue, then anything we do or create must also be natural. Therefore arguments premised on some action or technology being "unnatural"--for instance genetically modified organisms (gmo's)--are seen as arbitrary and not based on any measurable distinction between nature and non-nature. Anything we do is already natural, and therefore out actions, following a very utilitarian logic, should seek to maximize the good impacts and minimize the negative ones, but only within a certain logic of values.
Paradoxes in Positions
While the above positions are extremely thin sketches of complex and shifting positions, they at least give us some conceptual terrain to begin walking around on for this question of nature and man. At the core is this question of perception and its implications for how we think and act in the world. In other words, what is the difference between seeing myself as an internal part of an all-encompassing entity called "nature" vs seeing myself as an external part of a constructed entity called "nature"?
One importance implication between the two views is the responsibility and relationality attached to the notion of nature. For example, if I believe in the Cartesian duality and view nature as an external thing, out there in the woods where the salamanders and bears are--in opposition to the concrete world of Brooklyn, NY and the L train where I live--it is very easy to lose track of how this "human city world" interfaces with that "natural animal world". I can essentially go along with my day however I please with no awareness or concern for potential impacts from this world and lifestyle. I am never forced (or in many cases even allowed) the chance to examine or consider the implications of my actions. Where does the garbage go when I throw it onto the curb. Where does the water go when I wash the dishes or take a shower. What powers my computer or charges my iPod? None of these factors need to be considered in relation to our daily reality, because we have already separated ourselves from nature, simultaneously externalizing and internalizing it as a concept. It is only when the power goes out or the garbage union goes on strike, that I even have to stop and think about these semi-mechanical routines.
But if we start from a different premise than a Cartesian dualism and rather view nature as something we have constructed, and which can be traced historically through a series of practices and discourses--a la Foucaultian genealogy or similar methodology--then we can begin to point to the places and techne which emerged to legitimate a discourse of culture as distinct from nature, or human as distinct from animal. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida has done an extensive tracing of this process in the philosophical ideas of Western thinkers and their claims about the question of the animal, and many of his claims have since been taken up and expanded within the field of critical animal studies, animal behavior studies and related fields of inquiry.
Similarly, the fields of ecocriticism, deep ecology and ecosophy/ecotheology have developed parallel discourses on the concept of nature and the philosophical threads of thinking about ecology and humans. The Norwegian philosopher < a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_N%C3%A6ss">Arne Naess, who is credited with the concept of deep ecology, is one well known example where these ideas have been traced and developed, but the core of these ideas is an understanding and belief that humans cannot remove themselves or their actions from their ecological surroundings. In other words, everything we do has an impact and ramifications in the web of life, and we should attempt to take a full account of our actions prior to acting in order to minimize harm. In this sense, it is very much a philosophical analog to the precautionary principle in science I discussed earlier.
Within cybernetic systems theory, as well as in chaos theory, and increasingly in quantum physics, there is a growing awareness of the complexity of life being far more dynamic and interconnected than we had ever imagined, and far more than we are able to model with even the most sophisticated computer simulations. From mycorrhizal associations between fungi and trees, to the complex relationships between mirror neurons and visual processing of external stimulus in the cortex, we are barely skimming the surface of understanding the complex way that the world around us functions.
But this knowledge has not stopped us from blazing full speed ahead in manipulating our natural environment. So a major problem becomes how we take certain values and translate them into actions. If we truly believe that we are an interlinked species in a complex web of life which we both impact and are impacted by, what changes in how we think about and interact with our surroundings might seem appropriate or necessary? To take a simply example, if we wanted to improve the aquatic systems in the Hudson River, what actions would we need to take to realize this? How would we measure changes, and what would the implications be of an improved aquatic ecosystem for the future of the Hudson River Valley?
So the challenge becomes one of asking, how do we go about changing the political value structure which underlies our modern economic value structure? I think one of the answers lies in the creative work of artists, but I'll leave that for a later essay.
As a parting thought, here's a thought on the techno-future from a different angle, in this case Shaviro's amazing blog on the movie Gamer.
| Quote:: |
| That is to say, there is no going back on the network and its circuits of celebrity and control, and reverting to a supposedly clearer and more honest state of affairs. The only way out is the way through. The only possible oppositional strategy is one of embracing these control technologies, generalizing them, and opening them up. This is the very strategy that Neveldine and Taylor adopt in Gamer, by fully embracing the very logic of entertainment and involvement that they are satirizing, and making an “exploitation” film whose hope is to draw audiences in, rather than “alienating” them. In the twenty-first century, cognitive estrangement doesn’t work any more as a subversive strategy (if it ever did); what’s needed is rather a strategy that ups the ante on our very complicity with the technologies and social arrangements that oppress us. |
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Our Official Blog : hybrid meditations
Posted by horatio on Thursday, February 11, 2010 (03:12:11) (34 reads)
The last few days I have been thinking a lot about possible projects and research ideas for a Parsons class I am taking called Hybrid Worlds Nano+Bio+Art. The class was framed in part through a recent conference called Outlaw Biology which was held at the California NanoSystems Institute.
The speakers from the main panel, as well as some discussion video, were posted and I have been watching them, trying to get a sense for what was going on there. What is really interesting is the spin they took on the event, which had series of sub themes that included: Citizen Science | DIY Biology | Nano Hacking | At-Home Clinical Research | Recreational Genetics | Synthetic Biology | Open Source Science | Ars Synthetica | Genetic Art
We also read an essay from the event by moderator Chris Kelty called Outlaws, Hackers, Victorian Gentleman, and that is what really sparked my interest. But there is a certain disconnect I see in the ideas in this essay and others linked on this event, and the videos from the keynote speakers. To put it very crudely, I see it as something akin to "scientific myopia" or what wikip describes as seeing "near objects clearly but far away objects appear blurred." And this is exactly the feeling I was left with after watching many of the speakers. And perhaps most surprisingly, the one that left the worst taste in my mouth was the one I am probably most sympathetic to otherwise, Meredith Patterson, who was talking about biopunks, hackers and diy science [video here].
What left the bad taste was one comment in particular that she made, suggesting that the "precautionary principle" is counter to scientific development and actually a huge problem that we should address--in essence the precautionary principle stifles creativity and is the evil of all things sciency--that was her main point. This struck me as incredible ignorant, and a classic example of the shortsightedness and inability to see the big picture of many in the world of science R&D.
I jump to an ecological and food security perspective immediately whenever I hear someone mention the "pp" word, because that is where I have waged the biggest battles over this issue. A simple case in point: genetically modified organism, better known as GMO's.
GMO's represent both the cutting edge of scientific/technological plant genetics today, and one of the most important fronts for fighting against the homogenization and destruction of global biodiversity of both flora and fauna. Monsanto's Terminator seeds and Round-Up Ready crops are just a few of many examples of where GMO battles are being fought right now. So what's the link between the pp and GMO's? Simply put, it's about who controls what and how, and if some things should be left untouched.
When you talk about GMO's, you are usually talking about patents, TRIPPS, proprietary research, GIRTS, biopiracy and agro/biomedical research--in effect, who gets to "own" a slice of life. While some may not object to Monsanto or Dow or ADM "owning" the right to a seed they have genetically bred and modified in their labs, the problem comes when those experiments leave the confines of the lab and enter the real world. Suddenly, a closed system is exposed to a dynamic and open system, with absolutely no controls or guarantees as to what will happen. This is the beauty of ecological evolution and biological mutation, anything goes and hybridity is the name of the game. But GMO's insert a problem into the equation, they halt this process by forcing certain pre-designed plans--seed sterility, disease resistance, etc. While this may not sound so bad, the implications are the real "proof" of the pudding. If a GMO plant crosses with a wild or native plant, and that GMO gene crosses, the risk of a permanent loss of genetic material instantly manifests.
And that's exactly what the pp is all about: limiting acceptable risk. You don't introduce a sterile fish that can kill every other fish into a pond just because you can. You have to consider the long-term risks--that's the core of the pp. If you're not sure, don't just guess and hope it all works out ok. That may be fine for a 10th grade geometry problem, but it can spell permanent and irreversible destruction in the real world looking at something like plants or animals. And what Meredith's comments brought home to me was this utopian scientific view that all progress must be good, and anything which holds it back is bad and dangerous.
While this is a powerful and useful example for issues like open source software and hardware, some of the issues she primarily works on, it is a dangerous model to transpose onto living systems. If you wipe out a particular variety of plant or animal--make it go extinct--no amount of engineering will bring it back. You can't reverse engineer an organism the same way you can a piece of software code. And it's this full speed ahead, ra-ra modernity mentality that worries me in the scientific-art-social overlap. Just because it is cool or new, doesn't mean it is good.
At some point, the lab stops being a useful model for the real world, and I think there is a danger in romanticizing outlaw biology for exactly this reason. Designing a nano installation that can create a smiley face under a scanning microscope is surely neat, and perhaps has aesthetic value in and of itself, but are the full implications of these developments really being explored in all the excitement of the moment. That's my real worry, and why I feel so hesitant to embrace this outlaw biology and hacker model as really as liberating as it feels. But I'm still holding the door open to see, albeit somewhat more skeptically.
{thanks to shtig corp for the graphics}
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Our Official Blog : the art and science of food
Posted by horatio on Tuesday, February 09, 2010 (20:16:05) (13 reads)
Maybe you should be the new food prep person, he laughingly told me, after our discussion about a weekend meal. Have you thought about coming back here and being a sous chef, she asked me, commenting on a picture of the latest pizza creation. Maybe I should have gone to the Pittsburgh culinary arts school, I mentioned to my roommate over a meal, wondering what would have happened had I taken that route. But maybe one of the reasons that it is so fun to cook is because you don't have to do it for a job, the young woman suggested, as we were talking about the therapeutic value of cooking on both of our lives. Food, food and more food. I even made a picture gallery on facebook just for collaborative cooking projects recently. Pizza, bread, cookies, casseroles, etc.
{featured here: a rasta challah for the Bob Marley One Love party}
I've always loved to cook. In fact, I think I pretty much grew up cooking. I remember being very little and part of our chores every week, in exchange for a minor allowance, was to help cook some of the weekly meals. I never thought about it that much, but I guess that was really the beginning of my informal "cook-in-training" lifestyle. But I'm not entirely sure it really stopped there, as my grandparents also cooked a good deal, perhaps more on my paternal side that I recall, although the maternal side takes the prize for everything cold and tasty.
Even in junior high school I cooked a fair bit, a mix of different dishes, not just rice and potatoes and steak, although there was a fair bit of that as well. And over he years this became more of a way of life for me. Living on a small quasi-farm outside Athens, having grown up with gardens as a youth, and having kept gardens as an adult, food has always been a huge part of my life. There is something about cooking that just makes the world better, brighter, and without doubt, tastier.
And so lately I have been thinking a lot about food and the future, food and science, and food and technology. Whether it is in the context of GMO crops and plant engineering, food security and slow food, back to the land movements, or food in the context of animals and meat and the ethics of industrial slaughter, it seems that I have the food bug lately. I've been watching food videos on YouTube. I've been trying new recipes, new styles of old food prep, and new food styles all together. And it's been fun. And so the next step seems to be how to bring all of these things into a project, perhaps for a class, but definitely into a more productive dialogue and process that keeps me learning and moving ahead with this experiment, but without losing any of the the fun or joy in the works.
My next tentative culinary project: edible mushroom art.
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Dear Diary : 33 years and counting
Posted by horatio on Saturday, February 06, 2010 (21:21:16) (11 reads)
~33 for Bashō~
33 years and counting
life continues to be a whirlwind with no landing site
but i find myself less worried about that
and more engaged with the spinning whirl
of the here and now
and learning how to enjoy tasting the moment
for the moment, rather than as a mere appetizer
for the eternal moment of future becoming
being embodied in one's body
and comfortable in one's skin
seemingly mundane things
yet amazingly not at all
i'm a nerd underneath, she said
or was it inside, i can't remember
either way we embraced our inner glow
our radiating circuits, as she put it
even without having to speak in code
C++ = PhP / MySql
{if/then} becomes probability
instead of functionality
utility yields to aesthetics
aesthetics melts before beauty
beauty mirrors nature
in watery reflecting pools
and slowly unfolding maidenhair ferns
entangled with cinnamon wooly bears
and the smell of cedar and pine needles
what is this feeling of being
this eternal return to a desire to understand
something hidden yet completely revealed
visible yet invisible, transparently opaque
glimmering like a stained-glass mirage
before the all seeing minds-eye
familiarity and cognitive dissonance
a house of nacre mirrors and cobalt prisms
perfectly faceted and stitched together
into polygonal wings of a flying serpent
that speaks only in haiku
古池や 蛙飛込む 水の音
cgc | 2.6.10
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Dear Diary : phantasmagoriaporiasma
Posted by horatio on Monday, February 01, 2010 (03:24:45) (16 reads)
floating somewhere between a lost past and an unknown future
the little child rocks back and forth
cradling a small crystal terrapin between his legs
running his fingers over the carapace crevices
tracing a destiny unfurling
like a virgin frond of the maidenhair
black and green, mirroring his heart
overhead a dragon glides by
lost in the aerial heights and thinning oxygen
snorting flames and dissolving clouds of myst
hermes trismegistus with leathery skin
and cinnamon slit eyes glowing and pulsing
tigers eye, carnelian, hematite, lapis, emerald, amber
tears of dragonsblood resin drip off
crystal mana sap from heaven
floating on the windscent of pine and conifer
is this the life i dreamt when i awoke in the limestone cave
or when i burrowed under the ancient sycamore grove
or in my nest of rhododendron tentacles and lycanthropic lichens
gleaming, panting, howling
feral dreaming in stereoscopic vision
of transgenetic bunnies glowing green from bioluminescent bacteria
and foxfire brunches after the chickweed buffet ran out
when the turtle stepped out of his shell he died
but for a moment he had exquisite dreams of freedom
stretching out clawed appendages to the heavens
to trace the crest of the moon overhead
as the fox sang a song of mushroom dreams and rotten logs
sweeter than the first pregnant violet full of spring dew drops
but it tastes salty and bitter, said the turtle
that is because you are dying, replied the fox
as he pulled the trillium shroud closer
sweetness cannot exist in this world, whispered the fox
without the bitterness and the chaos
i don't understand, choked the turtle, his eyes blurring
charcoal streaks across his beak
your song is so beautiful it kills me
it is not my song, replied the fox
the song is rather your heart
blown from the throat of the spring peepers
and rippling across the cat tails and water lilies
come to set your inner desires free
give of yourself freely, or give nothing at all
but the little turtle didn't understand
he had spent his whole life living in a shell
closed off from the world, safe, hidden
layer upon layer, sharp claws and quick eyes
always moving slowly in calculated steps
he had never heard his own heart beat
between calcium ribs and crystal plates
and yet he thought he was happy
until that day he stepped out of his shell
and traced moonbeams and danced with wolves
ah the ecstasy of it all
wordless, worldless
and the dirt smelled of liberation and hope
as miniature claws carved tortoisian heiroglyphics
across the canvas of the forest floor
and when it was all over
the fox pulled the shroud closer
and the turtles eyes
one red, one yellow
shone brighter than a million suns
as the fox smudged the shell one last time
and asked the raven and the hawk
the dragon and the wolf to look out for
the little traveler
knowing that he was called home
and the little boy rocked, all alone
a crystal terrapin in his lap
his head filled with the smell of sage
and the sound of drums...
echoes
black
echoes
green
echoes
gone
cgc | 1.31.10
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Dear Diary : catching up
Posted by horatio on Friday, January 29, 2010 (23:00:58) (12 reads)
Life really does have a way of slipping ahead of you when you're not watching, and sometimes even when you are, and then reaching back to bite you in the rear. Maybe that's not the best analogy, but that's the gist of how life has felt lately. Always a step behind, trying to stay a step ahead, hoping that when it all evens out and adds up, you'll at least me swimming above water. Who knows, some days it works, others, not so much. It seems like lately it has been more of the not so much, and less of the mostly.
I've been healthy most of my life. I was one of those kids that prided themselves on having a perfect, or damn near perfect, attendance record at school. Not really sure why in hindsight, but at the time it seemed like it was important. Somehow I managed to maintain that throughout most of my life, and really didn't ever have an even somewhat serious illness until early in college, and even that was fairly minor. But since this past summer, it seems I hopped on the roller coaster of autoimmune death at some twisted carnival corpus.
I won't bother with all the nasty details, except to say that it began with a wicked case of shingles (basically adult chicken pocks) that taught me a new lesson in the meaning of pain, and which passed through various stages including plaque dermatitis, infection, inflammation, and hopefully now ending with reactive arthritis--a painful and particularly annoying problem that basically threw off the entire left hemisphere of my body since early December. Needless to say, my autoimmune system has been nearly non-existent, and I've probably spent more time in bed the last month and a half that I have in the last 5 years. Not fun...not that I don't like lounging in bed, but laying in bed and finding every movement painful is not my idea of a good time. And it makes for an even worse vacation.
But one of the upsides of this all is the feeling that I have taken too many things for granted, in this last case my health generally--and mobility specifically, and the value in enjoying them mixed with the danger in taking them for granted. Overall, a powerful reminder to reflect on our own mortality and fragility as a species, but perhaps more importantly, a good chance to think about how to do things differently.
One of my resolutions out of all this is to do more writing, blogging, journaling, etc. and get back into the habit of using my brain and my idea and my...pen?...keyboard...more productively. So with that in mind, look forward to more regular writings here in the months to come.
yeah!
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Our Official Blog : Growing Pains
Posted by horatio on Sunday, December 06, 2009 (07:22:31) (44 reads)
Life has a way of sneaking up on you, or so I feel lately. Blink and it seems like yesterday was a lifetime ago, and things that made sense last week seem oddly unfamiliar tomorrow. The well of ink on my lifedesk is miserably empty, leaving me to try and scrape out slivers of inspiration with a sharp blade. If you're not careful, the knife slips and, before you know it, the blood starts to replace the ink in the storytelling that is life. My journals are all empty or old and full of memories, some of which are best left in perpetual storage. Like the pictures in the shoebox, they tell a thousand and one tales of daring, adventure, love and loss.
2009 was a great year, and an awful year, punctuated in the middle like a carnival balloon animal mid contortion, ephemeral, destined to fly away and leave only a crying child holding the empty strings and happy memories. But the balloon never comes back, even if you write your name on its heart. And like the circus, life picks up and moves on to another place, another time, another world.
And while I've been crowing and hurting, i've also been learning. Right now my head feels like an over-ripe watermelon, verging on internal rupture. But I can't say it is a completely bad thing. I love learning, and this has been a particularly rewarding fall as far as new learning, new ideas and academic growth is concerned. Exciting horizons lay in front of me, if I can only ride off into them before the sun sets. Some days it seems so close, other days more like a mirage, always receding as I reach out to grasp hold of it. But I've always been a scrapper, so I just keep brushing off the dust and pulling my boots on tighter.
Where is all of this leading; I haven't a clue? I wish I did. All I can do is wait and see.
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Dear Diary : clutter
Posted by horatio on Sunday, November 22, 2009 (17:53:24) (54 reads)
Clutter in my mental gutter
the backpressure finally builds up
and comes crashing over the vinyl walls
meant to keep everything in working order
but this diluge is too much for restraint
too many summers and too many falls
of leaves and decayed mental matter
has gathered in mt house of usher
and now the maddness is growing
louder than any crow of Poe
or rattling bars of yellow wallpaper cages
Somewhere a man is praying
and Leviathan is laughing
laughing at the absurdness of the world
the depth of the oceans darkness
and the shimmer of decadent moonlight
refracting like diamonds on its oil slicked surface
I discovered recently that the fuzzy floor
which I had for so long now been rubbing my toes on
was actually an accumulation of dirty socks and hairballs
pretending to be a rug for the sack of discordant playfulness
but i can't really feel too upset about it
as I suspect I would have done the same in their place
although I am sure I would have eaten at least a few
of the books left on the floor like snacks for floor snakes
sliding amongst the dark cracks and folded paper gaps
But now that the shine of the waxed wood floor
has been restored in all of its glory
i see the dark shadows creeping back and forth
across the floor of my moonlight room
and i wonder if they were always there
hiding between the books and dirty socks
plotting a silent coup against academic pretensions
and theoretical investigations into the essence of sense
or the sense of the se or the e of y-e-s like si
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