2022 Archive of RENATURED, Marina Zurkow's Research Blog
ANIMALS, PEOPLE AND THOSE IN BETWEEN
I teach a 7 week class called Interspecies –
David Tracy’s made a deceptively simple array of spider eyes, and has been wearing them enough to be accustomed to seeing behind himself. Umwelt is a tough thing- some compromises as you reach for empathy or understanding.
He says this is his “proof of concept for a project called An Amateur’s Design Guide to Animal Perception.” His post here.
Exciting.
I find the decision to wound the land itself a disturbing response to a massacre by a human. Reminds me of burning animals at the stake as proxies. I’d suggest renaming it: Wounding the Landscape
We’re just finishing a 7 week course at ITP called The Fungus Among Us. It’s an independent project/research studio for 16 students looking at fungus for fabrication, food, as metaphor (eco-systems thinking), and touched on spirituality, network theory (slime mold way-finding and the “wood wide web” even though they’ve been ousted from the Kingdom). We have been growing mushrooms for food, for dye, and working with Ecovative‘s GIY (grow it yourself) inoculated substrate in molds. Students are working on lichen, Co2 sinks, electronics interfaces, material fabrication, pattern sonification… Sue Van Hook gave an incredible overview talk about fungi and Ecovative; Christie Leece talked about her beautiful Gowanus Canal oyster mushroom remediation project; and Corrie Van Sice came and talked about good lab practices around cultivation and inoculation. Students did case studies with a range of “experts.” It was a good trial run, we all learned a lot, and it’s compelling within the context of this program.
Here’s our grow tent
I’m working now on some buoy forms, which I hope will end up embedded with radio controlled LEDs for “the project” in PDX:
And here’s a systems map and catch-all examination of using psilocybin in the health care system for hospice work, therapy, addiction etc, after reading the NY Times article, How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death — on psilocybin / coping with dying trials:
Many good posts on systems, boundary critique, climate.
…where systems thinking really gets interesting is when we include ourselves as part of the system we’re describing. For example, for the climate system, we should include ourselves as elements of the system, as the many of our actions affect the release of greenhouse gases. But we’re also the agents that give some aspects of the system their meaning or purpose – the fossil fuel extraction and production system exists to provide us with energy, and one could even argue that the climate system exists to provide us with suitable conditions to live in, and that ecosystems exist to provide us with food, resources, and even a sense of wonder and belonging. The interesting part of this is that different people will ascribe different meanings and/or purposes to these systems, and some would argue that to ascribe such purposes is inappropriate.
Here: http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2011/02/systems-thinking-for-climate-systems/
Robert Krulwich for NPR writes about cartographer Harold Fisk’s visualization of the river’s historical paths here.
This is a map of the Lower Mississippi’s evolving floodplains, lifted from cartographer Harold Fisk’s 1944 report, Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River.
You can download the report in its entirety, including numerous maps like this one, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers web site (if you’re looking for maps like the one up top, you want to click the link on the lefthand side of the USACE website that says “Fisk 44 Oversized Plates.” (thanks io9)
