Macro and micro embodied networks

Typus Sympathicus Microcosmi cum Megacosmo: Oedipus Aegyptiacus: Athanasius Kircher

In the image above, the body's organs are shown, along with zodiacal and planetary symbols. The dotted lines are labelled in Latin with the name of the body parts they point towards. The outer ring names various plants, diseases and foods. The image reflects a desire to link everything together and it suggests that various correspondences exist between humans and the environment they exist within. This reminded me of the fact that when we begin to look at other species beside ourselves, they nearly always exist within a niche, for instance insects that feed on the various plant species, tend to have a very specific relationship with the plants they feed on. They have evolved to fit perfectly in the world they inhabit, but outside of that environment they would soon die. If an insect were therefore to be able to show us the relationship between itself and its world, it too would probably produce a diagram showing how its own form reflects the make up of the world it inhabits. 

Robert Fludd: The cosmic macrocosm within the body microcosm 

Several cultures at different times in history have come to a conclusion, that there is an analogy between the human body and the structure of the cosmos. In European traditions the head is analogous to the coelum empyreum or highest heaven which was supposed to be occupied by the element of fire. The chest to the coelum aethereum which is occupied by the planets and wherein the heart is analogous to the sun and the abdomen to the coelum elementare; the legs to the dark earthy mass (molis terreæ) which supports this universe. The nice thing about drawings is that they can at the same time be illustrations and diagrams, therefore they can hold two positions at once. You can focus for example on the shape and form of the human body and think about how it stands in relation to the surface it is depicted upon. On the other hand you can switch your attention to a diagram of the cosmos. The scale of one being totally at odds with the scale of the other, and yet even so, in your minds eye you can reconcile the two ideas and hold them together, because analogy stems from finding a likeness and this likeness forms a powerful and meaningful connection. 

I have been trying to combine some of my images based on interoceptual experiences, with those made from observation, so have returned to life drawing, but with a different intent, trying to imagine feelings of interiors at the same time as seeing an exterior form. 

Perceiving insides and outsides at the same time.

I've also been reading two texts at the same time, as an attempt to support a more holistic understanding of what I'm trying to get at. One is exploring the 'molecules of emotion', an examination of how for instance neuropeptides are secreted by immune system cells, demonstrating therefore that communication with the brain and stomach is via a network and is not one way. The peptides integrate the immune system, (spleen, bone marrow, lymph nodes and white blood cells), with for example areas of the skin, in order for the body to react when we are wounded. In the defence of the realm, (the body) good communications are therefore maintained, and as with all communication networks, you can use communication theory to help think about what is going on. 

Internal and external flows of information

An act of communication is the transferring of information from one thing to another thing. Every communication involves (at least) a sender, a message and a recipient, or a starting point, a movement between and an end point.  Communication includes the medium used to communicate and the location of the communication. There are several communication theories that are available to help us understand how and why a system might work, and each theoretical lens allows us to think about the effects of the communication in slightly different ways. See this Handout that describes the main communication theories, the cybernetic transmission theory being the one that most clearly fits this situation, but other theories that stress the very human nature of communication can also be used. 

Chinese representations of the trunk and its organs (c.13th century)

The other text is a history of Chinese medicine and it explores the mythic relationship between the human body and the cosmos, and it focuses on ways of thinking that were developed over 2,000 years ago. I am revisiting this text because it allows me to think visually about the body as an image that can hold an inner and outer reality together and at the same time conjoin two vastly different scales, the size of a body and the size of the universe. The images above are entitled  'neijing tu' a term that translates as 'internal view, inner landscape, inscape' and as images they were intended for people who practised the inward visualisation of the internal organs. The images in their original form, were accompanied by a text about inward contemplation. 

The Neijing Tu

The Neijing tu depicts a human body as a microcosm of nature; an "inner landscape" with mountains, rivers, paths, forests, and stars. 

An interoceptual landscape

Exploring how various scales as well as interior and external narratives can be conjoined

In my visual research, I've been looking at how some things that we think of as beginning with perceptual external experiences, eventually become physical, inner body realities, such as an experience that becomes embodied as a chemically induced feeling. For instance I was knocked down by a car before Christmas and since then, every time I need to cross a road, I have a heightened sense of anxiety and I feel this within my stomach. 

The body scan

I was taken to hospital and had to have a full body scan and the whole experience left me with an embodied set of feelings that are now part of me. I have had a steep learning experience and as I therefore approach a road to cross it, my body issues a chemical warning and in order to do this, my body is secreting extra neurotransmitters such as epinephrine and norepinephrine. This has led me to develop a series of drawings centred on images of whirlpools, in particular tales of the Moskstraumen or Moske-stroom that sits adjacent to the Lofoten Islands off the Norwegian coast. As a teenager I had read 'A Descent Into The Maelstrom' by Edgar Allan Poe and this illustrated imaginary experience, even though 60 years ago, is also an embodied memory, something that still causes me to have a slight anxiety, especially when I bring to mind Poe's written description, alongside Harry Clarke's illustration. Going into the scanner, felt as if it was something akin to entering a whirlpool. My body scan print above, structurally echoing the idea of being sucked into a vortex. 

Harry Clarke: Illustration to 'A Descent Into The Maelstrom' 1919

I was also reminded of an idea I had some time ago of a decent into the gut, where I drew the slide down a throat and the journey into the intestines; a place where bits of old food floated about; visualised as a sort of Jonah and the Whale or Geppetto and Pinocchio inside the whale story. The nearest I had come to actually using this idea though in the past was as an illustration for the Nest story. 

Kay Nielsen: Inside Monstro the Whale: Pinocchio (1940)

From: Nest

This is how Edgar Allen Poe described the situation; 'Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us a great distance down the slope; but our farther descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept—not with any uniform movement—but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards—sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, was slow, but very perceptible. Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and staves.' E A Poe

This for myself is proof of art's ability of affect us deeply and that various threads of experience (both of external realities and the imagination) can be woven together in ways, that even though they don't seem logical, can still be effective. 

Pages from sketchbooks

So perhaps I need to further integrate a narrative that has been floating around this new body of work. It began several years ago when I was making images in response to a story told to me while I was drawing blocks of flats in Leeds. At the time I made an animation of a boat at sea, the boat hit troubled waters and eventually sank, re-emerging in calmer waters only to fall prey to the same storm, over and over again. Other static drawings also included tiny boats, filled with tiny people, always engaged in some sort of tragic event. This boat has returned to my image bank, very much in response to the government cry of 'Stop the Boats'. I inwardly shudder as I think of the harsh trials that people have had to survive to get as far as the English Channel, only to find at the last hurdle, one more virtually insurmountable hurdle, the toxic myth of migration and immigration. The boats are now being sucked down by maelstroms, but these maelstroms are also digestive tracts, as if by setting out to legislate against these people, we in effect try to swallow them whole, we are now the monsters that swallow the boats. 

This is also a sign of our collective health. We treat immigration as if it is some sort of infection. However if we are to collectively heal ourselves, we will need to be far more in tune with the environment and focus on issues such as pollution and global warming, two of the very things that cause populations to destabilise. The Earth warms and fishing grounds become sterile, crops die because of drought and it becomes just too hot to live where you are. When it gets too hot to live, you need to move and as you do you come across artificial boundaries, invisible lines that were drawn across maps at some time, often in the 19th century by Europeans; lines that never took into account the invisible reality of the industrial revolution and its dire consequences for the planet.

The Chinese system saw the human body as a model of the cosmos and the cosmos as a model for the human body. A new cosmic model would include all of our recent tragedies, and would embrace polluted rivers as models of the body's blood flow, but now including micro plastics and chemicals found in our food, due to over investment in pesticides. Gut bacteria would be faced with strange foods that are blighted with antibiotics, preservatives and high levels of artificial sugars, the gut in turn becoming an embodied model for the Earth itself. 

The body's cells have long memories, these memories determine strange things, such as the fact that during the early development of the spinal chord, the heart is at one point above the head. Cells are programmed to divide and undertake various types of metamorphosis as they evolve into the forms that will be needed to maintain the particular life type they have an encoded DNA for. But tiny changes in the environment can affect their programming. 

So what am I getting at here? Can communication theory deal with how a cell communicates with other cells? Is noise or interference an issue? What would this be in the life of a body cell? Does the body inhabit a form of rhetoric? Is it all just about energy flow? Is the relationship between the scale of a cell and the human body, similar to the scale of a human body shown in relation to the scale of the solar system?

There is a story here, a tale of two selves, one a body and another of a mind, fused together and in the flux of fusion something else is glimpsed; a spirit, a vital charge, soul or just life itself. 

The glimpse

Always new images to find, and as the search goes on, a trail of not quite there ones are left, which when put together perhaps reveal something else, how the visual embodied mind seeks stories that speak differently to the verbal one. The Greek poet Nikos Kazantzakis once stated, "The universe is warm, beloved, familiar and it smells like my own body". 

The human universe

See also:

Drawing and communication theory

My first exhibition to include small boats

Migration 

Visualising energy flow

Tiebele in Burkina-Faso

Drawing using analogue and digital processes: A reflection on the visualisation of interoception

The micro and the macro: Up close and far away

Still thinking about what I do

The Milky Way

There will be a head-on collision between the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy. in approximately 4 billion years. The fact that I can even speculate on that is an amazing thing, science has given us eye extensions so powerful that we can see into the future and so wonderful that we can also see billions of years into the past. This awareness has also made us think again about our relative position in the universe. In the grand scheme of things we are totally insignificant, we will be so far gone when this event happens, that nothing will remain of us. Except, there is the fact that nothing is ever really destroyed. Events happen, light travels and so do other energy forms, a life form 4 billion light years away from Earth may be receiving signals from Earth at the same time that the Milky Way galaxy is crashing into the planets and suns of the Andromeda galaxy. Past, present and future spiral around each other, echoing the spiral arms of galaxies and local blue shift spaces compress as Andromeda advances towards us, whilst the wider universe takes a red shift away from us. Locally we experience life as a compact excitement, whilst the universe expands; the spaces between things growing and growing until at some point everything is so far away from everything else that all that will be read is the blank emptiness of the abyss. 

In front of me is another blank emptiness, this time it is white, the white of a blank sheet of paper, it has no marks on it but the longer I stare at it the more I see that its surface is active with potential. Tiny differences in light reveal a textured surface to this paper, a grain runs through it, a memory of its making. The fusing together of its fibres as it dried has left a textured surface and as you look at it very closely you can see echoes of its making. This awareness leaves an idea of an interwoven interior to this thin sheet. A paper's world of structure now arises and as it does it interferes with my first impression of its flatness and a white expanse. I look again, and an optical whiteness begins to billow like a sail in the wind, the convex sphere of seeing asserts itself and spaces begin to open out into this white field. There are as yet no marks or hard edges to focus on. I become more aware of my breathing, a rhythm begins to assert itself, one that flows backwards and forwards, out from myself into smoothly bending white spaces, these movements echoes of my chest, as it too rises and falls in response to the invisible processes of respiration. I seem to breathe my seeing. 

Gas exchange in humans

The air drawn into my chest is 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen, plus a little carbon dioxide, neon, hydrogen and other trace gases. As I breath a chemical reaction takes place and I breathe out the same 78 percent nitrogen, but now without so much oxygen, and with more carbon dioxide. 

When a plant is carrying out photosynthesis carbon dioxide needs to move from the air into the leaf. It does this by diffusing through small pores called stomata. At the same time oxygen moves out of the leaf through these stomata pores. This movement of gases in opposite directions is called gas exchange. Plants can only photosynthesise when they have access to light, however, cells respire all the time. During the daytime therefore plants both respire and photosynthesise.The rate of photosynthesis tends to be higher than the rate of respiration therefore there is a net diffusion of carbon dioxide into the plant. During the nighttime, plants only respire. This means that there is a net movement of oxygen into the plant and net diffusion of carbon dioxide out of the plant during the night time. I did some drawings that I was going to animate to show how this works, more invisible actions to make visible.

Gas exchange in plants

Plants are not as active as animals, which means that plants can maintain a full rate of respiration and live successfully with much lower oxygen concentrations. This is of particular significance to roots and stems. Roots obtain their oxygen from the air spaces between soil particles, but this tends to be in short supply owing to respiratory activity of not only the roots in question, but also those of other plants, as well as the respiratory activity of soil animals and microorganisms. Nothing exists in isolation, which is something I want to hold on to as I try to work out what I'm doing. These drawings which are taken from visual information within scientific texts, informing my ideas, as much as drawings made under the umbrella of what is usually called art. My experiences are deepened by this access to knowledge, and allow me to think about the deep interconnectedness of everything. 

It is photosynthesis that is central to the presence of the paper I draw on, it was once perhaps an esparto grass, or a tree, cotton, flax, straw or jute, but now an aqueous deposit of vegetable fibre in sheet form. It is the cellulose that allows these deposits of vegetable fibre to stick together. Cellulose does not dissolve in water, which means the fibres float without breaking down. A similar situation is happening within our own digestive systems. Cellulose cannot be broken down by our stomach enzymes, but the plant fibres aid digestion as roughage. So in one way we could think of plant made paper as a sort of roughage and that it aids both mental and physical digestion. 

Both myself and the paper I am working on are the result of photosynthesis capturing the sun's energy. The white radiance of the paper a mini moon that reflects light energy outwards just as the actual moon does. Both the Milky Way and this paper obey common laws of energy exchange, I am both like everything else and yet different to everything else, connected to everything as star stuff and belonging inextricably to the matter energy dance. 

There are though other forms of invisible energy exchange going on all around me and these have been 'pictured' in commonly used visual languages. For instance, even as a boy, I would take for granted the fact that a speech balloon could tell me something about the nature of someone's inner emotional state. In the speech balloons below you can make a guess as to what is being communicated, and even if you are not quite sure, hopefully at least you will be able to tell that they are representing different types of emotional communication. 

It is not just in the shapes of the speech balloons themselves, visual marks made within speech balloons can also be used to communicate thought and emotion.

(I took these balloon shapes from Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics', an essential read if you want to get your head around these issues) 

Everything matters: A slightly more rounded edge and we feel a little tipsy. 

The language of the diagram can slip between science and art very easily

The images I have used in this post are all drawings. I had to draw the visual exchange of gasses diagram by referring to an online science article and the balloons were drawn after looking at a page of Scott McCloud's ruminations on the languages of a graphic novel. I needed to re-draw them because the originals had things in them that I wanted to take out or change because they interfered with what I wanted to communicate. The bigger issue though is that others had been there before me in communicating things that were almost exactly the same but most importantly, just slightly different. The images in effect become hybrids, my own needs grafted on to the original purposes. This is going on all the time, I mimic what others say, but put what they say into my own words, I am constantly using bits of other people's communications wrapped up with my own. If it was all my own no one would understand it, it would be that paradoxical private language. Things are repeated over and over again if they work, but what if they don't repeat properly or if there is a slight difference? In differences languages evolve; but are these languages like photosynthesis, systems that are also energy converters? I am beginning to think that they might be. Leaves not only convert light energy into chemical energy, they store it. So they are like batteries. Thoughts are made of chemical and electrical exchanges, thoughts can be released by exposure to images that build up ideas in the mind. This exchange is taking place somewhere. It is physical as well as psychic. Just as matter and energy can be interchanged, the physical nature of paper is at times totally enmeshed into the sign systems evolved by humans, the resulting entanglement being objects that we call drawings. 

Look both ways

The great thing about drawings is that they allow you to look both ways at once. You can make a physical trace of your body's gestures, as well as create an image that is designed to carry a message. It can belong to art as much as science. It can be used to develop imaginary spaces and yet be a flat object at the same time. The physical trace is also a message, and in that duality is forged a new thing that like all new things is constantly open to interpretation. This is drawing as a type of compaction.

See also: 

Why interoception

Drawing it all together

Heidegger on the significance of drawing

Drawings as aesthetic transducers 

Visualising energy flow