[NetBehaviour] ~~organism

[Alan Sondheim]

~~ organism

http://www.alansondheim.org/organism1.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/organism2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/organism3.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/organism4.jpg

...microbiomes, yes, organisms are collocations, loosened
communities, matrices. but there's more to it than that, time
plays a factor, temporal striations: what constitutes an
organism, form or formlessness in time, undergoing sheaves of
potential structures. high-speed photography brings this to bear
on the world; in these images there are forms at the edges of
waves, similar to those i've found at the surface of the ocean.
the forms are composed of surface-tension skins, molecular
interactions, similarities throughout their bodies which exist
for only a fraction of a second. but this is not to declare them
dead or inert, anymore than clays can be considered such. we've
read endlessly about formlessness, but this high-speed melding
creation, creating, creativity, surrounds us, is within and
without us, within and without the very processes of our
worlding thought. i'm in awe, always, of these creations, of the
intense and intrinsic beauty of our planet, even now, in the
midst of a granular destruction unsurpassed in its history.
these forms rival the burgess or chengjiang strata; in a sense,
they are emptied of all life, but in another sense, they are
replete with it and among it. this may be the only hope left in
the world, although most likely not for us, and not for them,
for anything or anyone, either. instead it's a hope that beauty
will continue even if unobserved, that the shuddering and
markings of the planet will resonate for billions of further
years. so these images of organisms are a harbinger of a
futureless future, a world as if we were still around, a hope as
if there were still hope, for something emergent on the horizon;
we have never read the signs, nor comprehended the little we
have seen, these evanescent, transcendent, and transitory forms
among them.



http://www.alansondheim.org/negative1.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/negative2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/negative3.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/negative4.jpg


~~ organism