Biodiversity of the Mind, 2024
In Between: Ecological Wisdoms, 2024
The environment is awash with non-human minds. When we focus on the materiality of nature and see it in mechanistic ways, we overlook the unseen dimensional depth of intelligence that exists there. These minds existed way before humans evolved. We propose these forms of intelligence as Ecological Wisdoms.
If we make these minds visible, they may appear as pools of mist circulating the surrounding land. These waves and whirlpools of minds cling to habitats and to non-human species, such as bacterial biofilm. If we could hear these minds, they might cry, call, and sing to each other and to species different from themselves in cross-kingdom exchanges.
Biodiversity of the Mind
A series of artworks, including Biodiversity of the Mind, features vessels that host ecological intelligence and non-human minds. They do this by nurturing communities of other species and cross-kingdom consortia.
The works escape the view that intelligence and minds are limited to humans. Instead, when we change this perception, we see minds emerging as a widespread feature in nature.
Biodiversity of the Mind, 2024
Dorion Sagan and Lynn Marguils wrote the seminal text, Gaia and Philosophy, in 1984. In this, they present a non anthropomorphic version of intelligence. They refer to the oldest minds originating in bacteria and archaea, some of the first colonisers of the planet. These minds grew into super-brains through autonomous individuals, collectively sharing information about the environment, exchanging their experience and memories, to adapt and change according to external challenges. The interlinking of individual bacteria into colonies, facilitated by a bacterial language, mirrors the firing of neurons in our brains to form intelligence. These early minds gradually grew to cover the planet in the bacteriosphere and to form a super-brain. Sagan and Marguils suggest that the microbial intelligence that emerged was likely a precursor and the basis for our own human intelligence.
Once we expand the criteria of what a mind can be, we find them also in plants, insects, fungi, slime moulds, and beyond. When we look back, we connect and belong to earlier and diverse forms of intelligence.
Ecological Wisdoms, 2024
The minds of other species and the ecological intelligence that emerges from networks, gives possibilities for eco-evolutionary adaptations. When we extend the understanding of how our own mind interacts with these others, alongside tools such as artificial intelligence, and ideas of in-between forces, we imagine routes of further evolutionary connectedness and resilience.
Over the past year, we created structures of substrates and folded membranes to encourage the emergence of ecological minds.
Bacteria, fungi, insects and plants colonise the forms to nurture minds as an unseen non-physical layer alongside the physical materiality.
Compared to human intelligence and AI, the minds of these others are much older, originating millions of years before us. We can learn from these as what we position as Ecological Wisdoms.
The work aims to expand beyond human bias and anthropomorphic ideas of the mind. It seeks to challenge how we consider intelligence and our relationship with these other minds.
Cry for Help, 2024
Cry for Help
The piece called Cry for Help creates a habitat for an assemblage of species, including willow, moss, fungi and bacteria. After watering, the structure filters fluid and collects it. The extract contains the chemical communication that is released by the plant to recruit beneficial fungus and microbes to aid its development. The Cry for Help is the name given to the cross-kingdom communication. By forming partnerships, the plant, fungus, and bacteria can share resources and enhance resilience during periods of stress and scarcity.
Bioelectricity, 2023-2024
The piece reveals a complex set of relationships and communication, facilitated by ecological wisdom and coordinated by minds beyond that of human intelligence.
The Many, 2023
Sources include:
Dorion Sagan and Lynn Marguils (2023, First published 1984), Gaia and Philosophy, Ignota. (link here)
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Acknowledgement
In Between: Ecological Wisdoms by Burton Nitta (Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta)