Empedocles

The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (c. 440 BC) "believed that everything was composed of the simplest parts of the four elements: fire, air, earth, water...Empedocles believed that he needed to posit two forces to explain change and movement. These he called LOVE and STRIFE [adapted by Freud as EROS and THANATOS]...the first theory of evolution developed out of Empedocles' system. Love brings together certain kinds of monsters. '...many heads grew up without necks and arms were wandering about naked, bereft of shoulders, and eyes roamed about alone with no foreheads" Donald Palmer, 1994. The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy made Lighter. California: Mayfield p 30 (illustration p. 31).

Unitary and modular organisms, the body as a shape

On the subject of outlines, and then unitary and modular organisms, Ryan van Huyssteen mentioned a small part of Bram and Piet van Wyk's How to identify trees in South Africa, 2007 (Cape Town, Struik).

"...plants differ fundamentally from most animals in that the form or outline of the whole organism is flexible, not fixed. Growth in plants is not due to an increase in size of a predeterminate body form, but involves the repeated addition of component parts...unlike animals, plants continue to grow for as long as they live...indeterminate growth is possible because they retain some unspecialized embryonic cells in the form of meristems that never mature...If a plant accidentally loses a part of its body, it can easily replace the damaged part by adding new modules. In fact, a plant can lose a substantial part of its body without dying. A tree can be chopped down to ground level and still be able to survive. If such drastic damage was inflicted on a unitary animal it would certainly die!" p. 14-15

Read the full excerpt here.

shadow imprints

0. Rayograms, cyanotypes, blueprints

1. Rayograms, cyanotypes, blueprints

 

Top: (black and white) Man Ray, Rayograph, 1922 and 1926, photograms

Above: Anna Atkins, Cystoseira granulata, Dictyota dichtoma and Anatomized leaves, cynanotypes from Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions and Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns.
  
Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was a botanist and photographer. Atkins learnt the process of creating cyanotypes from Sir John Herschel, a friend of Atkins and her father, who invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842.

 Atkins employed the process with dried algae in Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in 1843, as well as, among other self-published works, the presentation albums Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns (1853), Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns (1854).

Her father, John George Children, was also a naturalist and a scientist, and is the namesake of the Australian Children's python, Antaresia childreni. The children's python is known to prey on microbats, dangling from stalactites in caves and catching them mid-air. The genus of the python Antaresia is named after the star Antares.

* see wiki sv. Anna Atkins and longer article here 

Above: Household photo emulsion equipment, from The Light Farm Low Tech Emulsion #1: Hershey's Tornado Emulsion (recipe at thelightfarm)

* see also Van Dyke Brown, chlorophyll prints and whiteprints (or 'bluelines', reverse blueprints that will "fade over a span of months (indoors) or just days (outdoors), becoming illegible")

Photoshop

Proposal map, 2012