Nature Labs

I will be disappointed if I miss the last Nature Drawing Lab, since I've gone to all of them so far. The last one is on Mammals, like roadkill I'm thinking. The fish were all in water, imagine that. So were the invertebrates, but the extinct invertebrates were dry, millenniums dry. The birds were dry too, and like the other collections all lined up neatly in tray after tray of species group. All the preserved specimen lost color and became an illusion of color drabbed, except for the bird collection. The colors went on forever, seemed catagorized by color and color variation. When I asked Adam (birds) how many examples of every specimen they needed, he said "oh there could never be enough." A frightening answer. Worse however was the answer I tugged out of him about how they generally obtained most of their specimen... mist nets, then you quickly snap their necks.

So I've been thinking a lot about nature collections and how they're obtained, "in the name of science" goes a long way. Except for the extinct invertebrates, live nature is collected for dead examples. Then you take artists that start with a live subject and end with a dead one, intentionally. In Denmark, a '70's artist Marco Evaristti, had goldfish in a blender to toy with the idea of people pushing the buttons, and they did. Nathalia Edenmont kills mice, rabbits and cats for her work. Can't forego mentioning Damien Hirst, who paid a fisherman $6000 for a live shark, and sold it for $50,000 in a tank full of formaldehyde. Makes me wonder when people refer to my work as 'ready-mades' while researching the likes of Hirst's preserved animals or Pierre Hugyhe's vogue fish tank landscapes.

Animals in art, like animals in nature, or animals in an academic lab collection follow along the lines of art for the sake of something other. The specimen are formally perfect creations of nature, the multitude of trays and shelves that are lined with rows and rows of 'variation' become more of a museum than a library of examples. Not just a museum of different species, but an assemblage of nature as a science, as an art that is meticulously indexed and categorically refined. I might have a hundred photos, which I'll selectively group and edit for my Nature Lab project, resulting in an art work for the sake of something other.

before the new age

Discussion in class today was great, thanks everyone. Rosemarie & I worked on the Robinet influence in the reading, where the scientists were still struggling with the mix of religion and the history of nature. Our diagram could have been simpler, but we had a continuum as an infinite spiraling upward project that Robinet could have suggested. Robinet's idea of evolutionism as a project was a system of principles toward perfection, with lots of rejects along the way. The factory that Katerie suggested suddenly made sense, in this factory there were often the imperfections of variability in mass producing copies of a prototype.

The function of continuity serves to perhaps assert an undisturbed possession of belief systems. The role of continuity plays the part of linking the natural processes, or the connected events of less to more, or small to big, or going from not knowing to attaining knowledge. For example, Adam and Eve did not have the scientific wherewithal that more evolved humans now had, but a step-by-step lineage of progression could explain particular advancements while incorporating all possible mutations within a particular belief system. Along this continuum of combinations and arrangements humans could understand the connection between point A and point B, from the archetypal prototype (Adam & Eve) to the variety of specie copies and derivations. Through observation and beliefs it was continuity that held it together to identify similarities and discriminate differences. Somehow there had to be an explanation of humans and nature evolving at the same time. Through continuity humans remained in intimate contact with nature, a cultural denial of the actual separation (or discontinuity) of humans and nature as populations, cities and inventions grew.

All history IS linear isn't it? Or is it? What are ways of writing about everything before us that is not linear? To create a story that connects us to the past there seems to be a need to have those connections line up or identified as group-able and sensible, such as words in a sentence lining up to connect thought with communication and the sharing of ideas or sources of ideas. Art history tells us that from the beginning humans communicated or expressed what they believed with what they had at their disposal, which in turn led to inventions or mechanisms to practice different methods of expression. This seems to me to be a development of technologies to aid human desire to connect - to others or to nature or to a higher power. Drawing a line from cave paintings to the Impressionist movement for example took some explanation, connecting the dots in order to understand this development. Studying art history perhaps allows students to see patterns and deviations, to spark something new in the old, or to carry on traditions as an institutional convention. After all, heritage is a habit/practice/legend/ritual of instruction.

Studying art history is heavily centered on the progressions through culture and material, through preferences of the times as a system of beliefs. No wonder religion played (plays) such a serious role in human evolution, what humans believe humans do. Maybe it's our desire not to be ever disconnected from nature or from God (Gods, Goddesses, Mother Earth, a higher power), as though our superiority has evolved from the natural processes that point heavenward. There's a need to explain everything, to connect everything, to understand how we got from there to here - that would be linear unless the New Age continues onto the beliefs around alien visitation, Mayan superstitions, or other unnatural orders deemed absurd. But our language is basically linear, until we evolve into 4th or 5th dimensions discovering new rules or systems of expression and communication.

natural histories

Please do the following. Create a diagram (drawing or digital means) of a natural history with a set of plausible examples choosing one from the following models from the later half of the Classification Chapter:  Bonnet, Maupertuis, Robinet. Which aspects of these natural histories seem “reasonable” to you? Imagine and articulate/draw/describe what your choices perfect world might look like or be like.

What is the difference between evolution and evolutionism?

Also try articulate what the relationship is between natural history and language.

Please post to blog so we have a record of it.