The idea of this works raised with the change of understanding on the coexistence we have with microorganisms. How this systems cross through us. How embedded we are in this hidden links with them, from Lecture “Design x Biology” by Larissa Psthetz. This works also intends to play with the insight given by the lecture of “Time and temporality” by Dr Michelle Bastian and with we understand of reality through different filters, developed in the lecture of “Time and Space” by Chris Speed.
Case of study: a dirty and quick dissection of language in 10
mins.
Thesis. Language is a parasite that is transmitted
(mainly) from parents to children. It teach us not what to desire but how to
desire, therefore we think we are pursuing our own will, but actually we are
helping it to accomplish its aim: to colonize everything.
*Attached to
the end of this blog, is possible to find an interpretation to the ideas from
the referents enounced on this slide. Those ideas where used as tools to
develop this operation.
Because we are way too far
into this loop we cannot tell anymore where language emerged
Because we are way too far into this loop we cannot tell anymore where language emerged
Because we are way too far into this loop we cannot tell anymore where language emerged...
However, we can track the
circles and understand the logics of how it works:
“Language” sends
containers with the simple organisms of life to habitable planets for carbon
based life. Those organisms are codified to follow a complex algorithm:
Organisms use elements of
the environment to modify their structures, become more complex and multiply. With new forms of life emerging,
the next step of the algorithm is a race for evolution. The algorithm finds the most compatible species and creates a gap between its way of
communication and the languages of other species. The
algorithm injects creativity in communication. And from here everything is
screwed-up.
The key point here is to
understand that the contaminated species is ephemeral, because of the short life span they will not have enough experience to
realize that they have been contaminated by a virus. Language keeps developing and growing through
the creation of societies and it also keeps renovating the substratum by the dead of individuals. These
societies grow and create enormous networks of communication. Creativity makes the species believe that it
dominates its environment, and also that it is able to fight against their
mortality. To do so, they go very
deep into technology. At this point, the algorithm triggers the next
step, which is to speed up technology and overload the grow of
societies. At this point the algorithm
will destroy almost everything it has created after it arrived to the planet with
the micro-organisms through a series of cataclisms. The most important step is to make the infected specie believe that their planet has a deadline.
While it reboots the planet through cataclism, the dominant species will try to colonize other planets. After some relevant failures, the
survivors of the fallen species learn that the only way to survive is to modify a distant
planet from the very beginning. They look for a planet habitable for carbon
based life, send a bomb with basic organism that will follow a complex
algorithm that will change the environment in order to allow the fallen species to occupy the planet, but after the bomb is sent the algorithm release the
final step. A disrupting breakdown that deny survivors to get to the place.
The algorithm is closed, it
has modified drastically the planet and then rebooted it to its initial settings,
as if life has never been there. However, it leaves a huge and complex artificial
and automat infrastructure that will keep sending signals amplifying waves and
developing language in a much more complex level. The language does not need
the living substratum anymore, since it already has the artificial tools build by the exctinct spieces to expand the virus through the Universe.
When we look for god, we
look for the origin of everything. Language is fantastic, it has extinguished
every single trace from itself as our creator so we can come up with some fictions. That
is the creativity, another tool used by language to make us feel colonizer rather than colonized.
The Artifact
I would like to start by addressing the reference from the video made for National Geographic by photographer Anand Varma: "Zombie Parasites | Nat Geo Live"
This explain us in 24 minutes how some mind-controller parasite organisms work.
After looking some examples that we can found in nature, I found an interesting paralelism in the shapes from the Oghams (stones with early medieval alphabets carved on them) and the dicrocoelium dendriticum, a virus that can be founded in some snails slims, that affect ants and make the wait in the top of the leaves, waiting to be eaten by cows, so the virus can get into the cows stomach and develop it finall form. Looking at the stone feel, to me, as if nature would be shouting how was the form of this virus once (language)
The piece I developed tries to stablish a parallelism between how
dicrocoelium dendriticum works on insects and how language works on humans. The
central element, the ogham, can be read by touching and feeling the carved
lines on the surface. By touching this piece, the conductive ink tells the Arduino
that the capacitive value is much higher, triggering some servos to move 90
degrees and come back to their initial position. The servos are connected in a
complex and random way to different plastic spiders. The sound from the servos
indicates that something is going on, and if a person keep touching the central
piece, they might start to recognize a small and slightly movement of certain individuals.
The location of the central piece tells about the role of power in this control
game. The piece ticks out of the scale and the roots that connect with the
spiders suggest the infection have reached most of the spiders.
We can visualize this relation through a plain table that contain the
individuals.
Through the repetitive contact with the glass piece, the person in command
stars to realize which lines control which spiders.
This speaks about sensorial language, written language, complex macro-systems,
and how to join this ideas into an academic format.
Many thanks to Ingrid Phillips, who helped me with the main piece of the artifact.
Attached essay
Case of
study: a dirty and quick dissection of
language in 10 mins.
Thesis.
Language is a parasite that is transmitted (mainly) from parents to children.
It teach us not what to desire but how to desire, therefore we think we are
pursuing our own will, but actually we are helping it to accomplish its aim: to
colonize everything.
I would like
to start on this Cartesian principle. Rene Descartes hold that we can doubt
about everything, that there might be a veil imposed by a malefic genius who is
teaching us to learn as true what could actually be false: from 2+2 is 4 to the
epistemology of belief, there is no way to be sure those are truths. The only
thing that is for sure is that “I think” therefore “I exist” even if my body is
a total assumed lie, my thoughts exist, and therefore I must exist. Let’s stop
here for a second. We should not focus on the performance of thinking. The action
of having that though does, in fact, give us enough evidence of our existence.
The interesting part, however, is the performativity (Buttler J.) of enouncing
“I think”. The action of structuring that specific phrase: “I think”, the fact
that I can use words to think “I think”, the ability to join those specific words
in that specific order, is our most elementary weapon to realize that we exist.
Through the reflection of the performativity of the phrase “I think” we can be
even more specific and claim, “I can do language, therefore I exist”
How we think?
Through language, mainly (?)
Emanuel Kant
reinforced this idea with the platonic notion of numen and phenomena, the
philosopher announced that human understanding is structured by “Concepts of understanding” and how
we constantly contrast them with previous experiences in our minds. Those
concepts are, either based in what is filtered and apprehended by our senses (phenomena) and the understanding of the intelligible
objects “the thinks itself”, neumena, Ding an sich.(Macmillan, 1967,
1996)
In which our phenomenological experiences
make sense when they are placed under this categories of thought, Hence we can
understand and explain what is reality.
Structuralism
developed a real deep and neat surgery to explore language and reality. Ferdinand de Sassure, through his analysis of
language, allow us to understand that culture is embedded into a overarching
system of language that embed all the things that humans do, think and feel. We
produce and perfect that system through interaction with others. Constructivist
go even further and reveal that reality itself is a collective construction, it only exist in relation to observers
who understand their perceptions through social interchange (Barthes, 1967) Even scientific knowledge is constructed by a constructed community,
who applied agreed constructed models to explain the world. So the world was
scientifically plain while the scientific community stood that idea. Reality is a complex human and social
construction that again is thought and learn through specific ways of using
language.
This bring us
again to the idea of the malefic genius (Descartes). If that malefic genius
happens to be the language, we are in a big trouble, because we use that tool
to stablish consciousness. Or is the tool using us?
On The
Ticket That Exploded (1962) William Burroughs revealed a
hidden nature of language “It is now a parasitic organism that
invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to
achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting
organism that forces you to talk.” (Burroughs W. 1962) Burroughs teach us that
Language is a virus that use humans as substrate, it has a great resilience
capacity and has evolved really fast
British evolutionary theorists Mark Pagel and Quentin Atkinson suggested a parallelism between the
evolution of languages and evolution of species, proposing they might follow
similar rules: "It’s an interest of
mine to treat language as a discrete evolving system, like genes," Pagel
told Science newsletter. "We’ve been pretty successful in
reconstructing phylogenies of language groups on the basis of vocabulary genes,
just as one might use genes to reconstruct the family tree of species." Taken
from Keim B., 2008) we can see the similarities on the representation of both
sides. We can see the spurts to new niches where language is transformed and
developed. From very basic spoken limitation, at its beginning, language have
found a way to become much more extensive and complex. In its evolution we can highlight
two specific moments where language found reach niches to grow: the development
of writing and the global network communication, the “www/world wide web”
Unlike in the study of humans evolution, we have the fantastic moment
when the “missed link” is identified, the key part of the evolution of language
that shows how it succesed to become the most spread virus. Through the
analysis of several experiments on the 17th century, Noam Chomsky
pointed out that the features that allows language get separated from another
animal languages is
Bibliography.
- Barthes R., (1969) The dead of the author.
-BRANDON KEIM., Evolution of Language Parallels Evolution of Species, BRANDON KEIM SCIENCE, DATE
OF PUBLICATION: 02.01.08.02.01.08
-Burroughs W. (1962). The Ticket That Exploded Olympia Press,
United States
-Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble. New York: Rout ledge
-Chomsky, Noam (1966). Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the
History of Rationalist Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University , Press
-Descartes, René (1644). Principia Philosophiae. (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lHpbAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)
-O. K. Bouwsma (March 1949). "Descartes' Evil Genius". The Philosophical Review. 58 (2)
- Macmillan , The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967, 1996) Volume 4,
"Kant, Immanuel", section on "Critique of Pure Reason: Theme and
Preliminaries", p. 308 ff.
- Macmillan, (1967, 1996) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Volume 4, "Kant, Immanuel", section on "Pure Concepts of the Understanding". P.311
-Zbigniew Janowski (2000). Cartesian Theodicy: Descartes'
Quest for Certitude. Springer. pp. 62–68
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