TAFKAV - The Artist Formerly Known As Vanda

DIVERSE FORME BELLISSIME - DIVERSE FORM MOST BEAUTIFUL - PAV 2010

2010-02-21T04:18:00.000-08:00

TAFKAV - DIVERSE FORME BELLISSIME

2010-01-15T05:09:00.000-08:00

TAFKAV THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS VANDA - DIVERSE FORME BELLISSIME - dal 5 febbraio all’11 aprile 2010 - PAV - Via Giordano Bruno, 31 - 10134 Torino; tel. 011. 3182235 -

TAFKAV THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS VANDA - DIVERSE FORM MOST BEAUTIFUL - from 5 febbruary till 11 april 2010 - PAV - Via Giordano Bruno, 31 - 10134 Torino - Italy; tel. 011. 3182235 -

www.pav.it

TAFKAV allo Streamfest 2009 - WET & DRY Relazioni tra arte e natura nel contemporaneo tecnologico 2-12 agosto 2009 GALATINA

2009-08-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

TAFKAV al Palazzo della Permanente, Via Filippo Turati 34, Milano dal 6 Luglio 2009 al 12 luglio 2009

2009-07-06T09:45:00.001-07:00

TAFKAV al Premio Libero Ferretti 2009 - Dove Abita l'Utopia

2009-01-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

L'opera tecnoetica TAFKVAV, The Artist Formerly Known as Vanda, è stata invitata dalla giuria a essere presentata come 'guest' al Premio Libero Ferretti 2009. L'edizione di quest'anno si intitola 'Dove abita l'utopia' e si terrà dal 17 al 27 gennaio 2009, presso l'Università Politecnica delle Marche, ad Ancona.

The technoetic artwork TAFKAV, The Artist Formerly Known as Vanda, is invited to be part as guest of the Premio Libero Ferretti 2009. This edition, titled "Dove abita l'utopia", will be held at Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, from 17 to 27 january 2009.

TAFKAV WORKSHOP 15-17/12/2009 NABA

2008-12-19T11:44:00.001-08:00

The Ecuador constitution is the first in the world’s history to grant nature legal rights

2008-12-19T11:19:00.000-08:00

"... One of the most notable features is the granting of legal rights to nature, making it the constitutional duty of both government and citizens to protect the environment and natural biodiversity, to prosecute those who harm it, and to repair it when damaged."
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/770/39694

"Exit polls indicate that a majority of Ecuadorians have voted yes to a new constitution. The constitution is the first in the world’s history to grant nature legal rights, and also to allow individuals to sue on nature’s behalf in courts."

http://ecoworldly.com/2008/09/25/ecuadors-president-will-quit-if-new-pro-nature-constitution-not-approved/

http://www.elcomercio.com/noticiaEC.asp?id_noticia=225350&id_seccion=28

TAFKAV AS "DISPOSITIVO DIDATTICO"

2008-12-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

L'opera The Artist Formerly Known as Vanda sarà utilizzata come "Dispositivo Didattico" all'interno della settimana dei workshop NABA "Activism or Artivism?". Il workshop TAFKAV omonimo si terrà presso la Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano dal 15/12/2008 al 18/12/2008. Il Worskhop sarà tenuto da Francesco Monico ed Emanuele Lomello.

Utilizzare un'opera d'arte multimediale in un workshop all'interno di un'istituzione dell'Alta Formazione Artistica e Musicale (sistema AFAM) vuol dire trasformare il progetto artistico in un dispositivo didattico.

Il workshop allora intende esplorare le possibilità didattiche e di ricerca dell'opera stessa e innescare un circolo tra creazione dell'opera d'arte, ricerca, produzione di nuovi saperi, e condivisione dei nuovi saperi. Il workshop esprime un'estetica in cui pratica artistica, esperienza didattica e produzione scientifica si fondono in un unico contesto di ricerca. Il partecipante non si identifica con l’artista tradizionale, diventa egli stesso autore dell'opera/e dalle quali cerca di ricavare informazioni, idee e eventi, con il diretto coinvolgimento di più persone, da luoghi e ruoli diversi.

Il workshop si sostanzia in un approccio sincretico tra teoria critica e prassi pragmatica che coincide con un'esperienza artistica intenzionale che diventa dispositivo della conoscenza.

francesco monico, milano 12/12/2008

2008-10-18T07:18:00.001-07:00

TAFKAV at Galleria D'ARS Milano Italy

2008-10-17T23:20:00.000-07:00

TAFKAV- the artist formerly known as Vanda Installazione technoetica
Dal 14 ottobre 2008 al 20 ottobre 2008

A TECHNOETIC INSTALLATION

Via Sant'Agnese, 12/8
Milano 20123
tel 02 860 290 / 02 86450302 (Italia) From Monday to Thursday, from 15.30 to 19.00 Friday from 17.00 to 19.00

TAFKAV: Work Explanation

2007-12-31T09:52:00.000-08:00

An orchid is rigged up to a device that measures its electrical output

The psychogalvonometer, which takes the pulse, is in turn linked to Arduino, which translates the electric impulses into Max MSP, which in turn fishes out the sounds and notes through computer RAM that amplifies the sequences of the sounds and transmites them across acoustic speakers.

The (artistic) work does not end with the installation nor with the theoretical exposition: Being an “art of research” it is conceived as a genuine research work that postulates theories and hypotheses and explores them with a pragmatic “experimentum.” Given its research quality, the work seeks its own scientific basis and the paper follows the rules of scientific publications from both the formal and substantive points of view. The theoretical research thus cannot be split off from the work of artistic exploration.

In this perspective, the artist is equivalent to a researcher who exits from the framework of recognized aesthetics – understanding aesthetics in the general culture sense, replete with cultural norms – and places himself on the frontier of knowledge and the effort to re-sensualize man.

The relation between the apparatus and the machine is the same relation as holds between metaphysics and practice. The paper outlines its assumptions and the operating backdrop (metaphysics); but, as the hermeneutic relation set up by the communication of the plant transformed into music (pragmatic) is activated, one has to see the alterity (the plant) as an ethical subject. And do this one has to read the paper as it tells the story of a certain kind of ecology and arrives at a famous U.S. court verdict and paper 'Do the trees have standings'? that recognized the trees of a forest as damaged parties in a civil suit, thus recognizing they have a de facto a telos and ethos and hence identifying them as individual holders of rights.

The central theme of the work is the pragmatic practice of communication and the end of the humanistic paradigm, that is, the world understood in terms of human centrality in nature. In an era in which cybernation has given us moist technologies – hybrid chips in which “dry” silicon meets “wet” biology – we are beginning to understand that the forms of biological life have their own languages, cultures and feelings, and that our relation with them can only be mediated by a kind of cultural bargaining that goes beyond what are construed as the typical human confines.

Man will, in the end, necessarily have to overcome humanism with a new approach to nature and technologies.

VIDEO TAFKAV BODY PROCESS ARTS ISTANBUL 9-17 November 2007

2007-11-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

go to see the video of the installation:

http://video.google.it/videoplay?docid=7659330316442601255&hl=it

INSTALLAZIONE TAFKAV AMBER '07 ISTANBUL

2007-11-10T00:37:00.000-08:00

fig 12 Istanbul
fig 11 Istallation ready
fig 10 Istallation ready
fig 9 Istallation Ready
fig 8 Me and Vanda
fig 7 Vanda
fig 6 particolare Orchidea Vanda e arduino

fig 5 montaggio
Fig 4 Montaggio
fig 3 Montaggio e Simona
fig 2. Prove elettriche
Fig 1 Disimballaggio alla Tobacco Warehouse

TAFKAV AMBER '07 ISTANBUL BODY PROCESS ART FESTIVAL 9-17 Novembre 2007

2007-11-09T02:34:00.000-08:00

L'istallazione technoetica TAFKAV - The Artist Formerly Known As Vanda - Experimentum 1.0 verrà esposta al festival A-M-B-E-R'07 Body Process Art Festival in Istanbul Turchia dal 9 to 17 novembre 2007 presso la Tobacco Warehouse, Tophane.

The technoetic istallation TAFKAV - The Artist Formerly Known As Vanda - Experimentum 1.0 will be showed at A-M-B-E-R'07 Body Process Art Festival in Istanbul Turkey from 9 to 17 november 2007 at the Tobacco Warehouse, Tophane.

First Conclusions from TAFKAV
1. Plants are living beings;
2. If plants are sensitive living things, then they are not molecular machines that can be patented like chemical formulas;
3. If plants are living things then they are sensitive and can a pragmatic communicative relationship with humans can be defined (this communication will be only man oriented);
4. Articulating this pragmatic approach ought to allow man to define a poetic "self" through the punctuation form created while communicating with plants. This poetic self should allow man to formulate an original interpretation of himself in an era of profound anthropological mutation.

Thanks for this version at Massimo Banzi (Interaction Design - Arduino), Steve Piccolo (Music and sounds), Emanuele Lomello (Max MSP);

http://www.a-m-b-e-r.net/

Reviewing the Future: Vision, Innovation, Emergence Montreal, Canada

2007-03-23T02:21:00.000-07:00

An Heuristic Method

2007-03-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

The text is part of the work.
That’s why this research work is based on a written part and on an installation.
The written part is in fact part of the installation and should not be considered less important.
It stems from the experience.

This relationship between the installation and the writing represents the relationship that exists between an experience and the fact of its being shared – its objectivization or communication. For me personally, the experience is associated with naturalness, immediacy and spontaneity. In my life it has always been relatively easy to have experiences and behavior (in fact it is not possible to not communicate, which is a form of behavior, cf. Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackon 1967). To react, to interact – it’s as if there were a background of “natural” sensations that we naturally enact, without thinking too much about them. The text, meanwhile, is related with the objective choice, the quest to understand, to codify communication.
Experience is an ontogenesis, born of itself and itself giving birth to being. When one arrives at what one has been searching for (when one can almost see the idea and one knows one is in the “right zone”), things change, and the mind that shares the experience finds terms with all the simplicity and ease of natural behaviour.
I mean that behavior which becomes communication because it is recognized and shared by the community.
I would like to highlight another difference between experience and text. In experience, usually, one is conditioned by circumstances, in the sense that the environment helps determine the experience.
With artists, one doesn’t have experiences of the same kind one has with scientists. With research associates one does not have the same kind of experience as one has with childhood friends. The tones, rhythm, accent, phraseing and even the contents change. Because the form changes the content.
That’s why the text of the installation is an artistic text but written according to the methods, rules and style of a scientific paper.
Goethe is an example here, a literary example. After having spent two years in Italy, he returned to Germany and shared his experiences in a text, Versuch die Metamorphose der Pfanzen zu erklaren (1790), in which he described - “the multiple specific phenomena in the splendid garden of the universe within the framework of a simple general principle.”
In his text, he wrote as if the method of nature were to - “generate ... in conformity with precise laws, a living structure that is the model for every artistic thing.”
His publisher rejected the manuscript, claiming that he was a poet and not a scientist.
When finally Goethe managed to publish the writing elsewhere, botanists, scientists and the public at large ignored it.
The public demands that everyone stay within their own field.
Nobody, anywhere, accepts with ease that science and poetry can merge.
The scientific community forgets that science was developed from the first form of technology, tekné, which is like poetry, and therefore has at least to consider that an axial rotation could bring them together a new in a way benefiting both and proving superior and of reciprocal interest.
Goethe made his poet friend Johan Christian Friedrich von Schiller write his text on the metamorphosis of plants and then personally explained him the theory, using drawings and symbols. Schiller told him- “This is not an experience,it’s an idea.”
Goethe emphasizes his marvel at having had an idea without knowing it and of making it visible, thus realizing that as a philosophicall concept, ideas don’t necessarily depend on time or space, while experience is restricted in both senses. “The simultaneous and the sequential are thus intimately linked in an idea, while in experience they are always separate” - he concluded.
When Goethe’s text came to light in France, almost 20 years after publication, readers were amazed that a poet could author such an important work on nature1.
According to Goethe the naturalist, the experience of nature reinforces poetry which generates shared meaning.
According to Goethe the poet, we are only able to write, and the best of us do that by writing a text on apper while others prefer to read.
The text becomes the product of the solitude of experience; It is not subject tot the various kinds of environmental conditioning other than those imposed by the intrinsic nature of being a text. For this reason, writing seizes the core of experience and renders it something to be shared.
I hope to have given insight into why TAKFAV is both an installation and a written text, and how both of them share the ontological status of work-text. The written text is formatted “like scientific texts” is the work itself, and the interactive installation TAFKAV is an artifice while at the same time being the work, too.
In fact, any human artifact is in reality a kind of word, a metaphor that modifies experience in one way or another. It doesn’t make much difference whether we consider intangible or tangible artifacts like sculpture, paintings, comics, computers, cameras, record players, interactive installations or exhibition spaces as objects or media. Likewise, it doesn’t make much difference how we, artistic styles in painting, poetry, theater or music, and the laws of science or scientific essays.
They are all artifacts, all created by man and all can be analyzed through words, as in the final instance the structure of reality and of our plausible descriptions of it partake of the same verbal structure.
There are interesting analogies with the associative logic of the Trivium and the Quadrivium.
That there is a trend towards the recovery of past methods of constructing meaning is due to the fact that if we observe the context of the advent of Trivium and Quadrivium, we will see how even then technology was the central problem – the poetic tekné and the question of how to describe the world that necessarily supposes some form of a negotiation with nature, which is wet, and the word, which is techological and dry.
Transmodal syncretism derives its own techniques form the abstract method used since the Renaissance. This entailed a science of contents and of messages, and allowed for the recovery of scientific creativity that complemented the too-rigid and limited old science of the time.
In 1620, Francis Bacon, in Aphorism XIX, suggested that there are two possible ways for research and the discovery of the truth: one that goes from the particular sense to the general axiom, and thereby judges the truth. The other draws its axioms from the particulars, then works back by degrees towards generalization.
For Bacon, the second was the correct path to the truth.
About a century later in Italy, Gambattista Vico wrote the Scienza Nuova, in which he declared - “in that dense night of darkness, which covers the earliest of our most remote antiquity, there was an eternal light, one that never went out, and pointed to this truth which can under no condition be doubted: this civil world has certainly been made by men, and that therefore we not only can but must find the principles for it inside our own human mind.”
Throughout human history there are at least two formal causes to which both logos and mimesis adapt: One has an oral structure, the other a visual one2.

The structure
The structures have a fundamental role in the process through which we select, organize and order information springing from reality.
The structure of perceptions is based on a configuration structure ably and plausibly described by Gestalt theory. All situations are configured in an area of attention that we call Figure and a vast area of disattention that we call Ground3.
The two areas are configured because they interact with each other, reciprocally confusing and influencing each other across a shared border that defines each of them at the same time. Figures emerge from the Ground and return there as the Ground shapes itself around the Figures and generates them.
The Ground is configurational and comprises all possible available figures at the same time in a scheme that also entials each new Figure mixing from time to time with all the other figures in the Ground.
The Ground is the structure and the style of mental activity, the “way of perceiving” and the “terms” according to which one perceives a figure.
The oral and the visual structures define the ground as well as the structure and style of consciousness. But studying this ground is impossible because it is the environment and is subliminal. The only possible strategy is the creation of an “anti-environment” – and that is the activity of artistic research4.
Perception, then, is generated across fields that are grounds of configuration in which the magnetic attractors are the figures that emerge from the field before immediately returning there in a continuous dynamic flux of interaction. Figure and ground generate a dynamic force field in which reciprocal interactions are generated through the intervals that both separate and identify them.
These intervals are resonant, tactile and dynamic.
Resonance is the configuration of the acoustic space; tactility is the space of the line of significant separation, representing the pressure of the interval.
We can establish connections with things when we don’t define the borders between ourselves and the objects of nature. And we can establish interactions when, intead, we do define these borders.
We can use fields of meanings in which we are immersed in a dynamic way – infusing them with the influence of the things of nature. Likewise, we can use these fields of meanings by creating intervals in a way that allows us to identify them with defined structures that represent ourselves as beings and nature as ground.
In the first case, we and the object become, dynamically, one single thing, a process in which we are immersed in nature to generate a world-flux and to create a a plant and virtual reality.
In the second case, we create two “artifacts” – the subject and the environment – which become very useful to categorize the world and create a validated world-reality.
The foundations of this Transmodal Syncretism, then, don’t lie on any general theory but rather on a heuristic method in which responses have the utmost importance insofar as they determine the genre of this approach5.
The place of coficiation and “mastering” of the senses are the arts – and we can use aphorisms, artistic practices, juxtaposition and syncretic praxis as research techniques.
A concrete science cannot today be considered a fortunate science unless it manages to possess both its own “ground” and to be concrete at the same time.
In fact, a concrete science must keep its adherence to experience, although without limiting its scope only to empiricism, and must seek to give an ontological dimension to every empirical experience.
Science will never find the conviction to possess, with its concepts, the keys to nature, and it will never renounce those foundations and presuppositions that created it.
For that reason, syncretism is a valid strategy that also emerges in other historical and religious contexts in which the common enemy was military, religious or political. Today, we can argue that the current enemy is “habit” – the a-critical repetition of behaviours, opinions, perceptions and values – which leads only to the ageing of metaphors and already-wilted truths.

Hermes@Nature aka TAFKAV: a Tech-Noetic Installation -

2006-12-01T06:30:00.002-08:00

Francesco Monico
Center for Advanced Inquiry forIntegrative Arts – Planetary Collegium www.planetary-collegium.net //www.m-node.com

Abstract

2006-12-01T06:29:00.001-08:00

Hermes @ Nature aka TAFKAV may be described as part of a systematic development of a poetic interpretation of communication as “text” flowing between particular subjects and humans. The concept of “text” here extends beyond information in general to any number of objects subject to interpretation.
The hermeneutic circle describes a process of understanding a dynamic relationship and refers to the idea that one’s understanding of the whole is established by reference to the constituent parts and vice versa.
Neither the whole nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, hence it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a relationship – rather, it highlights that meaning must be found within a dynamic relational context.
The projected installation will explore communication with the plant kingdom, specifically with flowers.
The aim of this experiment is to build a potential flow of human-plant information flow that generate a rhythm or pace and a series of constants that can then be codified – arbitrary, as with all sign systems – in a system of communication and hence a system of meaning.

Premise

2006-12-01T06:28:00.000-08:00

In this paper I describe an 'experimentum' that explores the possibility, and attendant problems, of establishing communication where none yet exists.
This essay does not rely on any common base of information, so any that exists has to be created and then offered to the other in such a way that the other is able to discover its significance.
First, the bases for an information exchange have to be set up. Then, after that, we can activate the communication exchange.
There is a distinct possibility that, once established, this exchange may reveal to us unexpected insights into our reality.
I want ot clarify that this installation is man direction oriented, it wants to say that the meaning is man oriented, that is why we will be explicity arbitrary in the creation of the music's sequence pattern. The sound will be on ultrahigh and ultrabass frequency to stay out of the normal human used frequency.

The Subject

2006-12-01T06:26:00.000-08:00

VANDA is an epiphytic orchid with a monopodial growth habit that likes to live on the branches of trees. Some types manage to live as litophytes on rocky crags in sunny areas about 400 to 500 meters above sea level. In general these orchids have emerald-green flat or cylindrical leaves, and the fleshy, firm and aromatic flowers emerging from the upper stems tend to last for a considerable time. Their root system tends to extend broadly.

fig. 1 Vanda Orchid

PART 1 Establishing an ethical context: from a telos, a system of feedback, to a communication. 1. Plants are living things

2006-12-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

“Pan, the god of vegetation and nature, was called ‘bryaktes,’ which may be translated as ‘the joyous god’ and is very similar to ‘bryasmos’ which means ‘pleasure.’”

In On Being Morally Considerable^ⁱ, the America philosopher Kenneth E. Goodpaster argues that ethics and morality have to go beyond anthropocentrism, as it is absolutely wrong to think of the environment only in terms of human satisfaction. Any distinction between organisms somehow “worthy” of moral consideration and others that are not is plainly a case of discrimination.

At the end of the first half of the 20^th century, the Russian philosopher Piotr Demianovich Ouspensky (1878-1947) theorized that every thing in the universe had a physical or phenomenal aspect and also an invisible or noumenal one. In his view, what the senses couldn’t perceive was a kind of “intellect,” with which all living things, as well as apparently lifeless things, were all equipped.

iIn M.E. Zimmerman et al (edts.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1998 pp. 56-70, originally published on: Journal of Philosophy, LXXV, 6, 1978 pp. 308-25

fig. 1 Piotr Demianovich Ouspensky

According to Ouspensky, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Just as cells living in harmony form a complex living being, so the parts of nature constitute a super-organism of which the inorganic world, such as the earth, water and are, are integral parts. This superorganism is alive, because if it lacked any of its constituent parts it would have ceased to be, just as any living being ceases to live if it loses one of its vital components

(Cfr. R.F.Nash, The Right of Nature, The University of Wisconsin Press Madison, Wisconsin, 1989, p.57.)

fig.2 Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold (1887-1947) was inspired by this vision when he wrote A Sand County Almanac^ⁱ. The chapter in that book on the land ethic is revolutionary: Through the land ethic, man becomes an integral part of nature, which in and of itself has a value unto itself, rather than only having a value for human beings.

One of the environmentalist battles of the 1970s pitted Walt Disney Co. against the Sierra Club organization. The bone of contention was a planned ski resort in the Sierra Nevada mountains, realization of which would have meant the elimination of thousands of trees. The court eventually ruled that the Sierra Club’s client – the trees - did not have “standing,” meaning in legal terms that they had no business appealing to the courts. As it happens, Disney scrapped the project due to the negative publicity around it.

In the aftermath of this case, Christopher Stone, a philosopher of law, wrote an essay titled Should Trees Have Standings?^ⁱⁱ exploiting wordplay between the concept of legal rights and an upright position. He argued that in the Sierra Nevada ski resort there was indeed a damaged party. To demonstrate his claim, he noted that his lawn communicated with greater clarity when it needed water, as in fact it began to wilt and die.

Goodpaster claims that plants are an integral part of the Land Ethic, adding that plants are not simply objects but living entities. As they tend to protect and heal themselves, it’s not plausible to deny that trees do not have an interest in remaining alive.

Paul W. Taylor argues that trees, even if they do not have desires or feelings, can be damaged or aided, and that it is our duty to seek their welfare – in the sense that we have prima facie moral obligations towards trees insofar as they are members of the earth’s biotic community, and we are morally bound to them insofar as they participate in keeping ecosystems alive and complete. For Taylor, it is our moral duty to consider as good what is good for them (the trees), and to help them live a healthy existence in a natural state.

H.Rolston III, another environmentalist^ⁱⁱⁱ, depicts a plant-organism as a spontaneous system that maintains and reproduces itself and also executes a program. Inside this system there is information that supervises procedures, and without which the organism would be nothing other than some carbon fluff. For Rolston, this information is contained in the DNA sequence and supplies the organism with a telos or end purpose – even if the organism may not be aware of this.

Value, then, is not anthropologically projected onto the object but is already present in the object in a biogenetic sense. So there is no motive to exclude plants from moral consideration.

For Rolston, though, it’s reductive to stop here, because the single plant, conceived as a solitary organism in an inorganic world, could not survive or even live. It would have no value without its surroundings, with which it is engaged in a set of relations. So, he suggests, we have to consider the plant as adapted inside an ecosystem and consider the single organism as a “point of experience” in the network of interconnections between living things. It is this that has intrinsic value per se, and it is this that uses both its own specific techniques and know-how to carry out its life and, at the same time, modify its environment.

So there is something even bigger than the plant or the species that has value: The Ecosystem.

I can’t help but note that a clause in Article 3/5 of the proposed European Union Constitution establishes as a duty for both the Union and the member states the due respect for and consideration of environmental concerns. This orientation suggest that it is both a moral and juridical duty to recognize the protection of the environment, the ecosystem and all living things as one of the “fundamental values” of the Third Millennium.

As living things, plants also have a dignity that must be respected – because after all plants are sensitive, they communicate, they learn, they remember and they plan ahead.

To understand this better, and to demonstrate and communicate it, I project a poetic installation named “TAFKAV” – The Artist Formerly Known As Vanda. It is a tech-noetic and syncretic work that triggers a hermeneutic process between man, technology and nature.

iA. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, ..., ed. Italiana Red Edizioni Como 1997.

iiStone, Christopher D. 1974. Should Trees Have Standing? Los Altos, CA: William Kaufman Inc.

iiiH. Rolston III Challenges in Environmental Ethics, in: M.E. Zimmerman et al. (edts.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1998 pp. 124-44, originally published on: Environmental Ethics, vol.2, n.2, 1980

2. The phenomenon

2006-12-01T06:20:00.001-08:00

The explanation of a phenomenon is linked to the domain over the information that identifies it. In other words, a phenomenon remains inexplicable until the observation field is widened to the point of including the context within which the phenomenon is found. The phenomenon is defined as a set of relations.

If the observing subject is not aware of the intricate network of dynamic relations between a phenomenon and the matrix in which it is found, he or she will tend either to acknowledge something “magically mysterious” or will end up describing the object under study as having certain properties that the object-individual-phenomenon may in fact not have.

(I will henceforth use the term object-individual-phenomenon to indicate any subject, object or entity that sets up a communicative relationship with us)

This is already received wisdom in biology, but it seems that in philosophy and the arts the habit remains of considering an object-individual-phenomenon as a self-enclosed and freestanding unit. But if one studies an object-individual-phenomenon in isolation, one effectively traps one’s method in a labyrinth, and what one actually ends up doing is studying the nature of that labyrinth.

If, by contrast, we broaden the investigation to include the effects that the object-individual-phenomenon has on other objects-individuals-phenomena, thereby including the reactions and feedback between them, as well as the context in which these reactions occur, the sense of natural phenomena shifts from that of the artificially isolated freestanding unit to one of relationships between parts of a much vaster system.

3. Communication and Logos

2006-12-01T06:17:00.000-08:00

Let’s assume that the explanation of a phenomenon is linked to the quantity of information necessary to specify its identity and its relations – we might call these the figure and ground to use a common term from the visual arts.

At the same time, let’s suppose that the researcher shifts from deductive analysis to an analysis of perceptible manifestations, and that the vehicle of this “data” is information transfigured as communication.

Information, then, is the number of observable variables that define the interaction. Communication is a retroactive system, hinged on feedback, has neither a beginning nor end, and constitutes its own proof of existence.

The property of communication:

Several properties of communication might help found a tech-noetic hermeneutics. These properties are inspired by Pragmatics of Human Communication by Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson^ⁱ, although the goal here is to eliminate the psychological and clinical approach and to use the pragmatic theory as if it were a general theory of communication between humans and nature.

iPaul Watzlawick , J.H. Beavin, D.D. Jackson, Pragmatic of Human Communication,Norton, New York , 1967

fig. 3 Watzlawick Beavin Jackson feedback's model

The impossibility of non-communication:

Behavior does not have an opposite; there is no such thing as non-behavior or, put another way, it’s not possible not to behave. As all behavior is experience, and as such a message and therefore communication, it’s not possible not to communicate. Any behavior whatsoever is a message. And if communication coincides with behavior, then nature, too, communicates, through behavior.

Numeric and analogic communication:

Human communication allows for two days to refer to objects: we can represent them with an image, or we can give them a name. These two modes are basically the numeric mode, using words, and the analogic mode, using images. In numeric communication, the relation between the name and the thing named is an arbitrary rapport. In analogic communication, there is something that that is somehow naturally linked.

Analogic communication comprises any kind of non-verbal communication, including positions, movements, gestures, emission of odors, metabolic variations, as well as communication signs present in the context where an interaction takes place.

Humans seem to be the only natural organism to use both analogic and numeric modes of communication. Nature uses almost exclusively the content of the relation and analogic forms to carry out communication.

The concept of the relation:

We are not able to understand the intrinsic essence of the meaning of relations, as we can only study the feedback-effect of relations. Relations provide us with a tool to study the larger system of which it is a part, and we can examine the communication that this tool generates.

As we observe the output of relations, if we insert this output in a system, we generate communication, and so at this point we can observe communication.

Conclusions:

As it is impossible not to communicate with nature we can deduce that we always communicate with nature in an analogic manner. Some form of feedback follows each kind of analogic communication, and if we take all the feedback together, we have generated a series of regularities that punctuate the communicative exchange and become shared norms or, as it were, communication rules.

An object-individual-phenomenon does not communicate so much as she or he is the complement of a communication. That is, the entity does not produce communication by participates in it. Communication is a transactional process, and institutes relationships.

So, with the right insights and approaches, it should be possible for man to set up communication with nature.

The methodological outline articulated so far serves as a key to understand the basics of tech-noetic hermeneutics, the idea that the relationship between man and nature can be explored through a conceptual machine which functions by putting objects-individuals-phenomena inside a homeostatic system which, once activated, will generate – after a reasonable amount of time – a series of regularities that in turn will create a relation and some degree of transaction.

4. The Thinking Homeostat

2006-12-01T06:16:00.001-08:00

Today, to investigate the relationship between an object-phenomenon-individual and the various relations that define it – a relationship that is tantamount to a black box for us – we can use a homeostatic process, defining a conceptual instrument made up of interconnected subsets in a way allowing for a perturbation from one of these subsystems to influence the others, which in turn react with the same abilities.

In any homeostatic object-process, all possible configurations have an equal possibility of being created by the reciprocal action of its defining elements. The occurrence of a certain configuration does not have any effect on what the next one will be. The process is random, and it is impossible to predict the future sequence.

This, in other words, means that there is no information being produced by the homeostat, and therefore it is not possible to build a meaningful communicative structure.

However, if our conceptual homeostat is able to archive the configurations it experienced in order to reuse them, the probability of predicting and producing information and communication undergoes a radical change, in the sense that some configurations will in fact never occur, while others will repeat themselves – and with the archive serving as a kind of memory function, it becomes possible to define a rhythm and a regularity, ultimately becoming a system of shared norms.

The fact that these exist and are shared gives them sense, so though there is no need for us to attribute significance to them.

By definition, this is a communication system because no subsystem can be in balance while isolated from others. And, insofar as it is a communication system, it will generate a series of feedbacks that, over time, will generate a series of regularities that will become a kind of punctuation. We are witnessing the system’s giving birth to a signifying “behavior.”

This homeostat is a stochastic process. A has an effect on B, whatever B produces has an effect on A, A and B are influenced by the context, and at the same time they influence that context.

Any entity is continually influenced by communication.

Any identity depends on communication.

The identities create a system.

In order to understand himself, man must understand nature. Likewise, to be “understood” by nature, man must be understood.

The generation of significances occurs via a homeostatic process based on the sharing of experience.

Understanding the interaction between man and nature:

We who want to understand the interaction between man and nature must insert both of them into a dynamic homeostatic scheme in which feedback is generated in such a way as to produce shared norms and then a kind of punctuation. We can then attribute signficiance to every norm or set of norms, anod nothing forbids us from creating a complex mythology of norms, replete with their “deepest” or “real” meanings, even if these suppose a magic or fantastical explanation of how the norms originated.

In fact, in this poetic point of view there is no necessary relation between fact and explanation. “Concepts” are formed when they emerge from a homeostatic system as rhythm, regulatrity, and punctuation.

Hic, Nunc and the past:

Our hermeneutic is based on a process that, once activated, is determined by preceding experience and is enriched by regularity and shared significances.

The past is thus the algorithmic matrix of the present, as it is in this system’s past that we find those regularities that become the formal rules for a communicative syntax.

Any object-individual-phenomenon A that is inserted in a system with N (Nature) is tightly bound to the relation both undergo, and will be to some extend determined by that.

What is past is the form of the present.

The relativity of the notions of reality and world:

This initial essay on the tech-noetic relations between man and nature aims to explore, hermeneutically, a world of hypothetical significances or relations that exist between man and nature. This would offer us a way to be closer to the environment in which we live as well as to understand ourselves better, especially amid today’s technological revolution.

Human language incorporates notions of meanings bestowed on the reality and the world. Still, once we accept the homeostatic system and principle according to which relations can be observed only in the context where they take place, both those words – “reality” and “world” – lose their meaning and become two rather ambiguous terms. Identifying a reality in the world, i.e. a shared psycho-cultural reality, must vary along with the context and the position of the observer.

PART 2 - 1. TAFKAV- What is a Plant?

2006-12-01T05:45:00.000-08:00

Now, at last, we are ready to address the second part of our work – What is a plant?

Living beings are sentient, insofar as they have organs able to detect variations in the external environment and to render that useful for the inner environment.
There are living species that are able to interpret, as information, signals coming from the environment that man and other species do not recognize as significant.
The world would seem to be an aggregate of different worlds, which meet only on their border zones. Everyone lives in their own cognitive cage

(A longer version of this argument appears in Appendix IV)

Ted Turlings of the University of Neuchatel is working on the ménage-a-trois of a corn plant, the Spodotera exigua caterpillar and the Cotesia margini Hubner wasp.

fig. 4 corn plants

When the caterpillar attacks the corn plant, the latter communicates by emitting a mix of volatile substances, in large part engendering torpor, which tip the wasp off to the presence of the caterpillars on its leaves. The wasp dives down and attacks the caterpillars, turning them into food reserves for its larvae

(Turlings TCJ, Loughrin JH, McCall PJ, Röse USR, Lewis WJ, Tumlinson JH (1995) How caterpillar-wounded plants protect themselves by attracting parasitic wasps. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 92: 4169–4174)

fig. 5 cotesia plutellae

Massimo Maffei, Simone Bossi, Dieter Spiteller, Axel Mithöfer and Wilhelm Boland of the Department of Plant Biology, University of Turin in Italy (M.M., S.B.); and Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena in Germany are working on the relation of the Lima bean plant Phaseolus lunatus and theMediterranean climbing cutworm Spodoptera littoralis.

fig. 5 Phaseolus lunatus

When the cutworm attacks the beans plant, The results showed that the early events upon herbivore attackwere: a) a strong V_m^¹ depolarization at the bite zone and anisotropic wave of V_m depolarization spreading throughout theentire attacked leaf; b) a V_m depolarization observed for theregurgitant but not with volicitin {N-(17-hydroxy-linolenoyl)-Gln}alone; c) an enhanced influx of Ca²⁺ at the very edge of thebite, which is halved, if the Ca²⁺ channel blocker Verapamilis used. Furthermore, the dose-dependence effects of N-acylGln conjugates-triggered influx of Ca²⁺ studied in transgenicaequorin-expressing soybean (Glycine max) cells, showed: a)a concentration-dependent influx of Ca²⁺; b) a configuration-independenteffect concerning the stereochemistry of the amino acid moiety;c) a slightly reduced influx of Ca²⁺ after modification of thefatty acid backbone by functionalization with oxygen and; d)a comparable effect with the detergent SDS. Finally, the herbivorewounding causes a response in the plant cells that cannot bemimicked by mechanical wounding. The involvement of Ca²⁺ insignaling after herbivore wounding is discussed.

1 Membrane potentials (V_m)

fig. 6 Spodoptera littoralis

Plants are continuously interacting with the external world.The coordination of internal processes and their balance withthe environment are connected with the excitability of plantcells.

Several plant species, including Lima bean Phaseolus lunatus,when attacked by herbivores emit volatiles that attract naturalpredators of the damaging insects. This signaling by the plantto higher trophic levels has been interpreted as the plant'scry for help.

(Dicke M, Sabelis MW (1992) Costs and benefits of chemical information conveyance: proximate and ultimate factors. In BD Roitberg, MB Isman, eds, Insect Chemical Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach. Chapman and Hall, New York, pp 122–155 and DeMoraes CM, Lewis WJ, Paré PW, Alborn HT, Tumlinson JH (1998) Herbivore-infested plants selectively attract parasitoids. Nature 393: 570–573)

The human nose can in fact detect the corn plant’s emission. So when an individual is aware of this dynamic and recognizes the odor, he will be able to decodify an abstract signal and insert it in a punctuation, a syntax and a dynamic communication with the corn plant. In short, he will be able to hear the plant’s alarm call and, if there are no wasps around, could intervene to save the harvest in some other way.

What matters here is that the understanding of the message transforms simple chemical information into an inter-species communication and defines the beginning of a communicative relationship between man and plants.

Science has also discovered that trees talk to each other, oak to oak, banana to banana and so on. Which means trees also listen.

The main conversation themes seem to be the risk of attack by insects, underground water levels and the quality of sunlight. Thomas Boller of the University of Basel has shown that plants can also communicate via their roots.

So, plants can communicate through odor, and they can also “smell odors “ and develop a kind of tactile sense. They can also “see.” Plants have many photosensitive organs that react specifically to certain frequencies of light, which help them know when it is day and when it is night, how much light is available, where it comes from, and how long the day will last. They can also detect where there is too much ultra-violet light around and react by producing pigments capable of filtering them out^ⁱⁱ.

iiFlorianne Koechlin, Biologist, Blueridge-Institute, membro del Board GENET e del Swiss Ethic Committee on Non-human Gene Technology – ECNH, Basilea, è l'autrice dell'articolo Concezioni moderne in biologia su cos'è una pianta, scritto per il 1° Congresso Internazionale “Cdg – Scienza e Società – La frontiera dell’invisibile: biomedicina, nutriceutical, nanobiotecnologie”, del 16 e 17 ottobre 2004 a Villa Caruso Bellosguardo, Lastra a Signa, Firenze . Articolo che ha dato spunto a questa parte dello scritto. http://www.consigliodirittigenetici.org/new/sciesoc.php

fig. 7 mimosa pudica

Plants also possess a tactile sense. Think of the mimosa pudica, whose leaves fold inward and drop when touched, earning it the nickname of the “touch-me-not” or, in Chinese, the “shy” plant. There are thousands of plants that react, in various ways, to tactile stimuli. Some react to mechanical stimuli that a human could never detect. The Bryonia dioica, for example, will react to a weigh of 0.00025 milligrams.

Plants are sensitive to at lest 17 environmental variables, they can perceive light, chemical substances, sounds, vibrations, gravity and temperature, and react to these variations by modifying their metabolic processes.

fig. 8 Bryonia dioica

Plants learn, remember and plan ahead:

Scientific research has shown that plants are able to learn, remember and plan in advance.

Many plants measure the amount of light reflected by neighboring plants, and in this way discover the position of the adjacent plants, which allows them protectively and pre-emptively to adapt to new situations before they actually come about.

Plants can plan ahead. They can carry out preventive actions through their metabolic processes, accelerating the growth of a stem, for example, or thickening a branch here and there, or bolstering key root networks. They can also produce defensive chemicals, all usually with the aim of placing themselves in the best possible position for the desired sunlight.

As plants must seek to avoid excessively intense competition with other plants, they must make decisions about how to grow and how extensively to use the available space. They must integrate signals of how hard the soil is, along with signals of acidity, nitrates, the distribution of water, temperature and light, the presence o insects, lichens, fungus and other microorganisms, and they must elaborate all these signals into a strategy to make the necessary decisions to grow.

Memory can be defined as the experience of an organ used to the advantage of others – in this sense, memory is also present in plants. By pre-exposing leafs to weak solar rays, a growing plant can survive later in conditions of weak light. Similar strategies are used by roots in relation to salt and water underground.

Cuscuta, dubbed “devil’s hair” or “strangleweed” as well as s “dodder,” is a parasitic perennial without leaves and with very low levels of chlorophyll. It attacks host plants with its scaly sucker extensions, wrapping around them and penetrating their vascular systems. Once germinated, the cuscuta’s root disappears and its stem lengthens, already hunting for a host. When it finds one, it wraps around it, but if the host is deemed unappealing, it will create only a few spiral stems to carry out its leeching of the other plant’s energy sources. It takes about four days to grow these spirals, so the cuscuta must decide four days beforehand if it has found a suitable host, indicating some forethought.

fig. 9 Cuscuta

But if plants are able to have experiences, to remember, learn and plan in advance, then it is natural to ask whether they also possess some form of intelligence. Some scientists are convinced they do, and note the amazing similarities between plants and animals on the cellular level. The paths followed by internal communication signs is quite similar in plants as to those in animals and humans.

The ancient communication system using hormones is present in animals as well as plants, and that is why our interaction with plants can be so beneficial or harmful.

The active principle for aspirin is a vegetable hormone produced by some plants in response to attack by viral pathogens. Humans, as well as some animals, have learned to use it for the same reason. The principle – salicylic acid – plays a central role in triggering immune systems of plants to control or weaken a certain pathogen. It is very interesting that it works just as well in animals – and that is because, indeed, many of the molecular mechanisms of mammals and insects are very similar to those of plants.

Like animals, plants have also developed a system of electrical communication. If touched, the mimosa pudica releases electric shocks that are created and spread across cellular membranes and can travel up to 20 centimeters a second, roughly the same speed as the nervous system of animals.

Many chemical substances that serve in the way communication occurs in animals’ nervous systems, such as amino acids and peptides, also occur in plant cells.

Plants and animals are also similar from a genetic point of view. Fred Meins, an epigenetic expert at the FMI in Basel, told Florianne Koechlin that, on the genetic level, the difference between plants and animals should be understood in terms of condition, not principles^ⁱ.

There is ample proof that the way plants learn can be compared to the way other organisms do, all based on molecular processes.

Animal organisms deploy neural learning, through the coordination of the way different muscles behave. For plants, the learning process results in the coordinated behavior of different tissues that produce an adaptive response in terms of phenotype plasticity.

Both plants and animals learn through trial and error, adapting to an environment that is constantly changing in a bid to survive.

Plants are not animals (I do not, however, want to propose that plants are animals^¹).

Modern biology teaches us that plants are sensitive living things. They are not simply molecular machines that can be patented like chemical compositions. There are, in fact, no patents for plants.)

1For a fuller discussion of the difference, see Appendix III.

iW.R. Ashby, Introduzione alla cibernetica, trad. it. Di M. nasti, Torino, Einaudi.

PART 3: The TAKFAV project

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The TAKFAV Project is conceived to explore a poetic communication rapport between man and plants.

The Artist Formerly Known As Vanda

The project entails building a poetic communication process between a vegetable organism and man. The scheme used can be described thus: Sensors able to detect bioenergetic fields – electric conductivity^¹, photosynthesis and other properties – that plants produce are applied around Vanda.

1The plant's electric circuit: an increase in counter-EMF is proportional to an increase in current. A capacitor is part of a polarization circuit [P] - a capacitor in series with a resistor. The capacitance and resistance of the polarization element vary with frequency such that the ratio of reactance to resistance remains constant. If the capacitance of the plant tissue is static, and the current low, very little counter-EMF is generated and essentially is not seen during the measurement. The static capacitance will behave as purely ohmic resistance. At higher currents of conductance, a charge of capacitance builds up and resistance increases, as seen by the indicator drop.

fig. 10 psychogalvanometer

These sensors transmit the energy variations to a transponder that in turn communicates with a synthesizer that transforms these modulations into musical signs. An electronic musician then codifies these musical signs arbitrarily, in forms of harmonies, reverberations and so forth, in a way that each sound-form can be associated with a particular state or experience of Vanda.

www.arduino.cc

Fig. 12 Mini Mac

fig. 13 Belkin Pure AV Digital Optical Cable

fig. 14 Max./MSP

It is the “farmer,” i.e. the person taking care of the plant, who will thanks to experience be able to associate the various sounds with what Wanda is doing or, as it were, saying.

This setup is then completed when the plant’s sensors also pick up the energy fields of the approaching human. This poetic hybridization should generate sounds that can be interpreted as a true dialogue between the plant and the “cultivator.” And, once again, understanding what constitutes harmony will require an accumulation of experience, leading to an ability to relate certain sounds to certain physiological states of both the plant and the person.

In 1998, a direct descendant of Max/FTS was developed in Java (jMax) and released as open-source.

fig.15 Logitech Z-5500 5.1 THX Speaker System

TAFKAV may be described as a poetic installation permitting a preliminary form of communication between the plants and humans.
This communication has to be understood hermeneutically, as the relationship between the participants is dynamic and our understanding of the whole can only be arrived at by reference to the parts, and our understanding of the parts by reference to the whole.
As neither the whole nor any individual part can be understood without reference to another, the process is a circle.
However, as noted at the beginning, that does not mean that it is impossible to interpret.

first conclusions from TAFKAV

2006-12-01T05:01:00.000-08:00

Plants are living beings.
If plants are sensitive living things, then they are not molecular machines that can be patented like chemical formulas.
If plants are living things then they are sensitive and can a pragmatic communicative relationship with humans can be defined.
Articulating this pragmatic approach ought to allow man to define a poetic “self” through the punctuation form created while communicating with plants. This poetic self should allow man to formulate an original interpretation of himself in an era of profound anthropological mutation.

APPENDICE I: comunicazione e logos (Translation pending)

2006-12-01T04:58:00.000-08:00

Cosa è che riusciamo ad osservare?^¹

Noi possiamo percepire solo le relazioni e i modelli delle relazioni in cui si sostanzia la nostra esperienza. E' la cibernetica ha fornirci la risposta: le percezioni sono tali soltanto in rapporto a un punto di riferimento (o a un insieme di punti di riferimento).
Quello che viviamo è una realtà trasfigurata in mondo dall'effetto di un sistema di comunicazione basato sull'informazione, che utilizza come contenuti le parti comuni delle esperienze soggettive.

La punteggiatura della sequenza di eventi: le regole

Un'altro principio della comunicazione riguarda l'interazione tra i comunicanti, quella che è stata definita la "punteggiatura della sequenza di eventi". Si tratta di modelli di scambio (su cui gli oggetti-individui-fenomeni coinvolti in una sequenza comunicativa possono concordare o meno), secondo i quali ad ognuno dei partecipanti sembrerà che l'uno o l'altro abbia l'iniziativa o che si trovi in posizione di dipendenza e così via. Tali modelli regolarizzati diventano regole contingenti.

L'interazione complementare e simmetrica

Le relazioni tra oggetti-individui-fenomeni possono essere basate sull'uguaglianza o sulla differenza. Nel caso dell'uguaglianza, gli oggetti-individui-fenomeni che interagiscono tendono a identificarsi l'uno nel comportamento dell'altro dando luogo ad un'interazione simmetrica.
Nel caso della differenza, (il caso che ci interessa), il comportamento di un oggetto-individuo-fenomeno completa quello dell'altro oggetto-individuo-fenomeno e costituisce un tipo diverso di Gestalt (forma) comportamentale, si ha allora un'interazione complementare.
La relazione tra due uomini è una relazione simmetrica, la relazione uomo-natura è una relazione complementare. In una relazione, due diversi comportamenti che si sono adattati ai rispettivi ruoli, sono interdipendenti, cioè si richiamano a vicenda^².

A questo punto resta da comprendere il termine logos.

Nessuno è in grado di dare un’adeguata definizione al vocabolo logos. Il razionalismo ellenico nasce su questa contraddizione; i greci furono i primi a chiedersi che cosa sia il logos e quali siano le sue procedure. Il termine logos fu indicato in discorso, calcolo, valutazione, misura, ragione di essere delle cose, causa, apprezzamento, stima, definizione, argomento, ragionamento, pensiero, scelta, spiegazione, necessità...^³

Esso indica ogni spiegazione dell’esperienza in termini linguistico-razionali. Eraclito coniò questa parola: 'sebbene tutto avvenga secondo il logos (la ragione discorsiva) gli uomini sono ottusi nei confronti del logos, sia prima sia dopo averne sentito parlare, e sembrano inesperti al riguardo^⁴ -.

Essere razionale, infatti, non significa avere una teoria della razionalità; si può utilizzare l’intelligenza senza averne idea, essa si manifesta nella vita come un'abilità, una capacità innata e/o acquisita con l’esperienza. Tutti, chi in misura maggiore o minore, sono usati dalla ragione, dalle concatenazioni logico discorsive create dal fluire incessante dei discorsi con le loro catene di significati che recuperano gli echi nascosti delle nostre esperienze.

Se la mente non esiste scissa dal logos allora noi non possiamo sviluppare alcuna ricerca e comprensione sulla posizione della mente nel mondo. Questo è vero, ma noi possiamo studiare la funzione del dispositivo (scatola nera) nel sistema più grande di cui fa parte. Questo ci procura un vantaggio euristico: non abbiamo bisogno di ricorrere ad alcuna ipotesi intrapsichica (che è fondamentalmente inverificabile) e possiamo limitarci all’osservare i rapporti in ingresso-uscita, cioè la comunicazione.

Il problema definisce l’attribuire un significato a un atto, che per essere compreso deve essere arricchito appunto di un significato condivisibile. Il significato può essere scelto tra un gruppo di n significati possibili e probabili, ma che possono essere non veri, ma che, indipendentemente dalla verità, avvalorano l’atto comunicativo.

Questa comunicazione è rinforzata dal comportamento che è determinato dall’esperienza precedente, ma è inattendibile ricercarne le cause nel passato. L’evento a viene prima dell’evento b così che l’evento b è determinato da a. Ma questo è un errore perchè in una interazione comunicativa b non sta soltanto reagendo ad a e non si rende conto che lui influenza il feedback comunicativo con la sua reazione. La memoria crea la costruzione e la priorità dei significati; ma le esperienze soggettive su cui si basa la memoria hanno la tendenza a distorcere i significati.

Qualunque soggetto A che comunichi al soggetto B è strettamente legato alla relazione in corso e ne viene determinato, cioè prende i suoi significati.

Quindi la comunicazione è un sistema a retroazione, a feedback, non ha fine ne principio, e si sostanzia in sé stessa.

Da qui il paradosso: è non reale la comunicazione in una data struttura comunicativa perchè uno dei suoi membri non è reale, o uno dei suoi membri è irreale perchè la realtà è la stessa struttura comunicativa?

La comunicazione come funzione

Per duemila anni l’uomo ha visto i numeri come espressione di grandezze^⁵; nel 1591 Francois Viète de la Bigotière introdusse la numerazione mediante le lettere dell’alfabeto. Fu una variazione che fece nascere il concetto di funzione e relegò in secondo piano l’idea dei numeri come grandezze astratte. Infatti a differenza del numero la variabile non ha un valore indipendente, una variabile ha valore solo in rapporto con un’altra variabile (come il principio figura/sfondo della Gestalt). Il concetto di funzione è il rapporto tra le variabili ed è espresso come un’equazione (ma non è il solo modo). Le funzioni diventano segni per un nesso. A questi segni manca il carattere della grandezza, della forma, sono segni per un’infinità di situazioni possibili di uno stesso tipo che solo se comprese come unità sono numero.
Il nesso da comprendere è il parallelismo che esiste tra l’esplicitazione matematica del concetto di funzione e il riconoscimento in psicologia del concetto di relazione.
Le ricerche sul cervello e sugli organi sensoriali hanno dimostrato che noi possiamo percepire soltanto le variazioni e i modelli delle relazioni in cui si sostanzia la nostra esperienza. E difficile percepire un suono costante e regolare che tenderà a diventare impercettibile. Se vogliamo farci un’idea tattile della trama di una superficie, non è sufficiente appoggiarci sopra un polpastrello, ma bisogna farlo scorrere avanti e indietro, perchè se non lo muoviamo non possiamo prendere nessuna informazione utile, fuorché probabilmente sulla temperatura che d’altronde dipende dalla differenza esistente tra la temperatura dell’oggetto e quella del dito. Questo dimostra che le percezioni implicano un processo di cambiamento e/o di movimento.

La percezione creata dal logos è quindi una relazione che è identica al concetto matematico di funzione.

Ne consegue che la sostanza delle nostre percezioni logiche non è costituita da cose ma da ‘funzioni’; e le funzioni non sono grandezze isolate ma ‘segni per un nesso...per un’infinità di situazioni possibili di uno stesso tipo...”
E se le cose stanno così allora e ancora di più il processo di comunicazione con la natura in cui l’uomo è coinvolto, cioè la consapevolezza che l’uomo ha di sé stesso, è sostanzialmente una consapevolezza delle funzioni, delle relazioni in cui si trova coinvolto.

1W.R. Ashby, Introduzione alla cibernetica, trad. it. Di M. nasti, Torino, Einaudi.

2Un oggetto-individuo-fenomeno non impone una relazione complementare, ma piuttosto presuppone il comportamento dell'altro oggetto-individuo-fenomeno e nello stesso tempo gliene fornisce le ragioni, in questo modo tutti gli scambi di comunicazione sono simmetrici o complementari a seconda che siano basati sull'uguaglianza o sulla differenza.

3Di fronte a questa difficoltà di definizione ci possiamo far aiutare da quei discorsi in cui il logos sembra non funzionare, o, al contrario funzionare troppo come l'enigma, il dilemma, l'antinomia, il paralogismo.

4 Eraclito Pery Phiseos

5 O. Spengler, Il tramonto dell’Occidente, trad. It. Di J. Evola, Milano, Longanesi, 1957, p.132

APPENDICE II: l'omeostato pensante

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Causa ed effetto
Le cause dell'emergenza di una punteggiatura (delle regolarità/regole) assumono un'importanza del tutto secondaria, quello che s'impone è la punteggiatura (la regolarità/regola) come effetto rilevante dell'interazione delle parti di un sistema.

Circolarità del modello – L'uroborus
Nelle catene causali, lineari e progressive, ha senso parlare del principio e della fine di una catena, ma nelle relazioni tech-noetiche uomo-natura, che si basano su un sistema omeostatico concettuale, tali termini perdono di significato.

Le relazioni tech-noetiche sono circolari, e non ha senso parlare di fine come di inizio in un cerchio.

Il modello è circolare e ha come simbolo l'uroborus, il serpente che si morde la coda, questo modello ci obbliga ad abbandonare la nozione che l'evento A viene prima e che l'evento N è determinato dal verificarsi di A poiché si commetterebbe un errore a dire che N precede A, e così via all'infinito.

APPENDICE III: I sensi

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Siamo abituati a indicare come organi di senso i cinque sensi classici comunemente conosciuti: tatto, gusto, olfatto, vista e udito. In realtà esiste una vasta gamma di recettori di senso, che però percepiscono solo tre tipi di stimoli: luminosi, chimici e meccanici.

Cosicché, pur comprendendo infinite varianti da organismo a organismo, i cinque sensi possono essere ridotti a tre: sensi che percepiscono stimoli luminosi, chimici o meccanici. I recettori sensibili agli stimoli luminosi sono detti fotorecettori. I recettori sensibili a stimoli meccanici, pressione, temperatura, campo elettrico, campo magnetico, sono detti meccanorecettori. I recettori sensibili agli stimoli chimici, odori, sapori, ormoni, feromoni, sono detti chemiorecettori. I fisiologi, studiosi delle funzioni e delle attività degli organismi viventi, utilizzano la parola recettori per indicare quelle strutture in grado di ricevere segnali o stimoli dall’ambiente esterno o dall’interno dell’organismo animale e di attivare una reazione nell’organismo stesso al ricevimento dello stimolo. I recettori possono essere singoli, oppure riuniti anche in numero molto elevato, in strutture complesse.

Abbiamo detto che le piante comunicano, questo si desume dal fatto che le piante attuano strategie difensive contro i predatori, quando una pianta di peperoni è attaccata da un bruco produce delle tossine e diffonde un segnale di allerta che stimola la produzione delle medesime tossine. Le piante di pomodoro sotto attacco producono delle tossine di metilgiasmonato. I ricercatori botanici che si occupano di comunicazione chimica tra le piante non possono utilizzare alcun profumo per non interferire con le comunicazioni tra le piante. Questo perchè il metilgiasmonato è utilizzato in molti profumi in commercio. Il profumo come mezzo di comunicazione può scatenare anche delle relazioni complesse.

APPENDICE IV: La differenza fra piante ed animali

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Ad un certo punto del corso dell'evoluzione sono apparse le prime rudimentali fibre muscolari, queste hanno permesso ai protorganismi che si muovevano di quà e di là a caso nell'acqua o nell'aria del nostro pianeta di iniziare, prima goffamente e poi via via in maniera sempre più perfezionata, a dirigersi verso determinati stimoli.

Viene da sé che se il protoorganismo si dirigeva verso il cibo non faceva nessuna differenza se il cibo era di orgine, vegetale o no, se stava fermo o si muoveva. Quello che successe fu che si scatenò in alcuni organismi una gara a chi evolveva sistema di movimento sempre più funzionali e coordinati.

Ma il coordinamneto necessita di un'immensa attività di gestione informativa, fu così che si svilupparono sistemi informativi interni agli organismi deputati alla gestione dei muscoli.

In questo modo nacque il sistema nervoso, il quale a sua volta per espletare meglio la sua funzione ebbe bisogno di promuovere un ganglio e controllore dell'intero sistema, dando origine poi al cervello.

Quando gli animali hanno iniziato a predarsi tra loro per recuperare energia, hanno sviluppato specifici sensori e cellule specializzate per la diffusione dei segnali. Le reazioni rapide e il movimento coordinato sono diventati fondamentali per trovare cibo e compagni. Il sistema nervoso e il cervello sembrano essere quindi una conseguenza del movimento, o meglio della corsa al movimento scatenata dalla competizione evolutiva tra specie la cui fonte di energia sta in altre specie.

Questa è appunto al seconda grande differenza tra organismi animali e vegetali, i primi si muovo in maniera evidente, i secondi si muovono a livello fenotipico.

Le piante ricavano l'energia dal sole per mezzo della fotosintesi; visto che il sole è sempre disponibile, il movimento non è mai stato un fattore critico cosicché qualsiasi movimento fatto dalla pianta è il risultato della ricerca del sole o di una strategia di difesa operati su scala estremamente più piccola rispetto agli organismi animali e agli uomini. Per la pianta la fonte di energia dell'ambiente è una stella posta a qualche milione di chilometro con la quale la pianta deve ottimizzare uno sviluppo fenotipico adattando la propria crescita e il suo sviluppo.

I rizomi costruiscono una prospettiva tridimensionale del loro spazio locale, ed elaborano un movimento in funzione dei flussi di fotoni che percepiscono.

TAFKAV Scheduling Information

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Overview	TAFKAV is a dynamic Interactive installation that presents plants as complex, living beings. The plant's generated music reveal plants as they sense and respond to their environment. The original sound based on plant metabolic process, is composed by Steve Piccolo and live plant material.
Credit Line	TAFKAV is a project of Francesco Monico. Original sounds by Steve Piccolo. Additional support was provided by NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano, Facolà di Media Design, www.naba.it, and by PhD Research Center M-Node, www.m-node.com.
Space Requirements	Few square feet.
Rental	Euro ..... Includes plant & files to produce a 16-page critical guide to the istallation; digital file to produce study guide for grades; media kit; link to the TAFKAV website; two staff for five days (three days to setup and two days to takedown); Lights, ultrasonic humidifier, plant seeds.
Shipping	Venue responsible for one-way shipping. Insurance is included in the rental fee.
Contents	4 orchids Vanda Cerulea, sun lights, ultrasonic humidfier, digital controleld fan, sensors, computer, arduino, speakers ; 3 video displays; 5 audio sources; title banners, 13 translite photographs.
Themes/Sections	The Artist Formerly Known as Vanda. Interactive plant-human's installation trought music.
Gallery Environment	Daily temperatures between 65–75 degrees. Dimmable ambient lighting. Electrical access from ceiling or floor. No direct daylight. Environment
Security	Medium: public entry to the building to be monitored.
Staffing	Attendant required for daily a/v start-up and shut-down, and gallery walkthroughs; an individual capable of growing, installing, and maintaining plants; and a technician (on call) for electronics. Installatiorequires three able-bodied preparators for five days (three days for set-up; two days for tear-down).
Contact	francescomonico@gmail.com
Availability	see: http://www.francescomonico.com/the-artist-formerly-known-as-vanda

2006-12-01T04:43:00.000-08:00

francesco monico 2006

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