Collaboration and copying

A Braarudosphaera bigelowii cell, with a black arrow showing its nitrogen-fixing organelle

Tyler Coale, University of California, Santa Cruz

Two of the strands that this blog tries to weave in and out of its fabric are collaboration and copying. Sometimes as a way to develop new drawing ideas in responses to experiences in collaboration with another artist, and at other times as a reminder that we cant really exist without operating in collaboration with the environment that surrounds us. Our very existence depends on collaboration. Not only our day to day survival in relation to a symbiological relationship with the world around us, but in a deep sense, related to the way that life itself has evolved and how it reproduces. I was reminded of this when I read recently that a bacterium that used to exist on its own has evolved into a new cellular structure that provides nitrogen to algal cells. At a cellular level it is quite common for one species of bacteria to live inside the cells of another species. I have mentioned before that humans could be thought of as hosts for bacteria, as there can be more body mass attributed to them, as opposed to what you might call us. This is a situation that exists throughout the natural world, for instance, cells in the roots of peas host nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and cockroaches host endosymbiotic bacteria that provide them with essential nutrients. 

The evolutionary history of these collaborations can be explained using endosymbiotic theory or symbiogenesis, a theory that argues that bacteria began living in eukaryotic organisms after being engulfed by them, indeed the two major types of sub-cellular structures found in eukaryotic cells, (cells with a membrane-bound nucleus) are mitochondria and plastids, both of which evolved from bacterial endosymbionts. As all animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms are eukaryotes, this places symbiogenesis at the root of life's evolutionary history. 

At a cellular level gradually complexity is arrived at by cooperative collaboration

The fact that new mitochondria and plastids are formed only by splitting in two, supports the idea that it was in the coming together of different elements that basic life forms were created. This splitting is called fission and it is interesting to think how this is done and how the concept of copying lies firmly at the core of how life survives in the forms that it does.

Stage 1: The bacterium before binary fission has the DNA tightly coiled. Stage 2: The DNA of the bacterium begins to uncoil and has replicated. Stage 3: The DNA is pulled to the separate poles of the bacterium as it increases size to prepare for splitting. Stage 4: The growth of a new cell wall begins the separation of the bacterium. Stage 5: The new cell wall fully develops, resulting in the complete split of the bacterium. Stage 6: The new daughter cells have tightly coiled up their DNA.

A merger of an archaean and an aerobic bacterium created the eukaryotes; a second merger created chloroplasts which were the ancestors of green plants

The complexity now associated with these processes has evolved over millions of years and this evolution has determined that cells work in amazingly sophisticated ways within our bodies. Indeed there are what are called somatic-junctions, where cellular quality control is developed, as signals are passed between cells in order to develop bodily responses to the changes that it experiences as it passes through life.

A somatic junction that is sending operating signals to the muscles

These invisible processes are vital to our existence and in many ways they mirror the way that life can be led on a day to day basis. Cooperation is vital, a symbiotic understanding of the totality of life is essential if we are to survive. Therefore I am trying to develop more and more cooperative aspects to the way that I try to operate as an artist and human being. 

I value the input of other people much more now than I used to as a young man. But not just other people; 'others', is a term that can include all animal, vegetable or mineral existences. 

Landscape with interoceptually aware body beneath

As I continue to make images, the more that I can give form to the various stories that weave themselves in and out of bodies, landscapes, inner visions, outer limits and the psychic manifold that seems to envelop everything, the more I feel that there is some use in this business of making art and perhaps it's now time to return to printmaking, (I'm currently working on the image directly above as a silkscreen print). Print was my first discipline and composed the craft element of my DipAD and it was the technical area I was responsible for during the early years of my teaching career on the Foundation Course at the then Jacob Kramer College in Leeds. Printmaking and its processes are deeply embedded into metaphor, the notion of the copy in particular is central to the process, as well as concepts such as type and token, reproduction and impression. I was always fascinated by the myths surrounding the story of Alois Senefelder's discovery of lithography. The capturing of an image in stone and the use of grease to hold that image and then its release from the stone by a process that relied on a layer of water that sat on the unmarked, un-greasy surface, was as much a story of fossilisation as printmaking. There was something deeply meaningful about stones being able to both absorb images and then be used to reproduce them.

The dead horse arum lily is an amazing mimic. It copies the attributes of dead meat, so that carrion seeking blow flies are attracted to it. Not only does it produce an offensive odour of rotting flesh, it can raise its temperature, so that a fly will think it is landing on a recently dead animal. The odour it produces is a strong, putrid smell, very like a real carcass, this coupled with its flesh-coloured hairy flowerhead, make the plant irresistible to the flies.

Dead horse arum lily

This 'non-thinking' creature has developed a copy of the 'real-world' far more realistic than most of our human efforts at copying nature. The drawing above, pales in significance as an imitative idea in comparison to this lily's mimicking ability. As a communicative sign that works as a cross species example of bio-semiotics, it is wonderful, and it does, I think, ask questions as to how clever we are as a sign making species.

Of course we can manufacture artificial scents, sounds and tastes as well as make visual objects that act as copies of other things, and we have stories about how good great artists are as copyists, the artist Parrhasius was supposed to have painted a curtain that looked so real that his rival Zeuxis tried to pull it back. However who or what determines the need for copying in the first place. Is it a conscious decision made by humans, or is it a natural evolutionary process, as much organised by bacterial necessity as by conscious thought? 

A ceramic flower based on a dead horse arum lily

Mimesis is the academic term for copying, but it suggests a more reflective understanding, and it is not just about copying. It is a concept that suggests that we model our understanding of what is, on perceptions or experiences of what we think of as the real world, i. e. we need to make models of experience, in order to grasp the essence of what we are experiencing. These models are in effect 'copies'. When we try to communicate our understandings we have of experiences, we use the models as some form of shorthand and this, not only helps us communicate with others, the models also allow us to reflect back on the way we have in turn shaped communications. The concept of mimesis therefore operates in the gaps between the experience of reality, its communication through copying or modelling and reflection upon the process. In making a drawing or object that ‘looks like something else’, we are therefore operating at a deep level of meaning making.

References:

Latorre, A.; Durban, A.; Moya, A.; Pereto, J. (2011). The role of symbiosis in eukaryotic evolution In Gargaud, M.; López-Garcìa, P.; Martin, H. (eds.). Origins and Evolution of Life: An astrobiological perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 326–339

Schwartz, H., (1996) The culture of the copy: Striking likenesses, unreasonable facsimiles. Princeton University Press

See also:

Collaborative drawing

Drawing dialogue symposium talk

Drawing as entanglements of life

Hybridity and permeability 

Quantum entanglement

Printmaking

Mimesis