Biosemiotics Illustration Process
April 2019
Francesca Dompe Illustration Process Book
Every year the English and Creative Writing Department at The Cass publishes its students’ writing in a collection book called Anthology. This year Studio Ink is in charge for the third edition of the Anthology. Each Inker chose a text and created an illustration for it. I chose Biosemiotics
BIOSEMIOTICS
An essay about an emerging new field in biology that seeks to bridge the theoretical gap between the arts and sciences and increase our understanding of how meaning is produced in living systems and beings. The argument of biosemiotics is that there is a radical connection between organic systems of reproduction and growth and cultural systems like literature and arts. But biosemiotics is not reductive. Rather it increases our sense of the power of interpretation and the universal nature of aesthetic life. The essay also dicusses ideas by Timothy Morton, a leading scolar in the ecological humanities, and environmental biologists and philosophers from the mid-19th century to the present day
Biosemiotics by Holly Evans
knowing than they are to the processes of self-conscious human logic [...] Literary metaphors are real, not just figures of speech - they are living vectors of new knowledge.’ Wendy Wheeler & Louise Westling, Biosemiotics and culture: introduction Discuss.
it is shockingly evident to “see that everything is interconnected.” The ecological thought requires not a rethink but a whole new approach to thought itself. Morton characterises the ecological thought like a “virus that infects all other areas of thinking… it has something to do with ideas of self and the weird paradoxes of subjectivity. It has to do with society. It has to do with coexistence.” The coexistence or interrelation that ecology and biosemiotics needs has been sacrificed at the will of major thinkers for the past four hundred years resulting in dire consequences for the planet’s ecosystems. Even in the 21st century, Morton states there is still a lot to be done in terms of spreading awareness of ecology among the public and intellectuals. The populist language associated with Nature or our perception of “Nature” in society such as environment and “being green” are a far cry from the true significance of
thinking ecologically. These phrases along with similar terminology have been imbued by society with a sense of being explicitly synonymous with protest groups and what Morton refers to the “environmentalist ideology that wishes that we had never started to think - ruthlessly immediate, aggressively masculine, ruggedly anti-intellectual, afraid of humour and irony – is dubious at best.” These misperceptions, misinterpretations and paradoxes within a global community has maintained the hierarchical, anthropocentric attitude towards the world. This has a produced a deep-seated urge for new ecological thought and the field of biosemiotics. Since the Enlightenment period of the 17th century until late Modernism the human mind, body and its surrounding environment have been evaluated on the deterministic logic of cause and consequence. Thus, the Newtonian model viewed nature as a system of interlocking mech-
READ
‘The scaffoldings upon which genetic development is possible are semiotic and relational, not reducible to material objects alone. The sedimentations which make a person and a culture are made of biological, as well as cultural metaphors. The abductions of natural patterns are [...] based on metaphor or what Bateson called ‘syllogisms in grass’ [...] men die, grass dies, men are grass. In other words, nature’s logic is relational and poetic [...] The organism is made of layered embodied knowings of these kinds, about its own environed history and about its ways of world-being. The forms of these - abductions whose essential structure is metaphoric - are in fact much closer to poetic and aesthetic
To discuss the evolutionary phenomenon of biosemiotics, a good place to start to understand a type of thought that is critical, open and transformative, is the opening argument by put forth by Timothy Morton in his book The Ecological Thought. Morton passionately states that we as inhabitants of the earth, need to radically discard our current understanding of Nature and nonhumans who also populate the planet. The reason for this? Well, the perpetual ecological crisis we have been facing in the modern age. The catastrophic consequences of which include the Holocene extinction and global warming. For Morton
anistic parts that were connected through the purity of reason and causality. However, these interlocking parts were dead parts, Nature was dead matter with no understanding of its potential or interpretative meaning. Nature was reducible to a material context that existed within a human system. In philosophy, Rene Descartes’ cleaving of the mind and body has caused irrevocable damage to how we view humans within nature. The concepts of imagination and creativity was radically foreclosed to anything that was deemed not to have a “mind”.
to humans but is open to the rest of nature. From the most intelligent organisms to single-celled organisms symbiotic mediation and freedom can be found. Semiosis is the foundation of biology and evolutionary life. This theory far surpasses the limited linguistics of Saussure and other post-war theorists, biosemiotics transforms the Newtonian nature of dead matter into living biosphere that is playful, interpretative and relational. Biosemiotics is a model for a deeper and meaningful understanding of the world. The roots of the movement stemmed from a select group of influential thinkers that started to question the estrangement that had been developing between cultures, natural world and its organisms. The works of Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944), Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) and Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) paved the way to a deeper understanding of the intrinsic potential found in nature.
Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory has become influential in understanding sign relations and the organism’s experience in the environment. The biology of Uexküll and the concept of the Umwelt are important precursors to biosemiotics. This paragraph will attempt to explain the Uexküll’s theory and to stress the significance of it. The German word “Um-welt is literally the world around, the world in which the subject is placed immediately and without reflection.” The use of Umwelt in Uexküll’s theory is applied to mean the organism’s subjective world as it allows for semiotic amplification. The important idea to consider with Uexküll is that every organism’s environment is species specific. “The single animal is not more or less well adapted to its environment; on the contrary, all animals are inserted (eingepasst) into their environments with equal perfection.” What Uexküll is establishing here,
is that the environment is based on perception and each subject has its own Umwelt. For an organism to perceive their environment, cognitive behaviour must occur for the subject to interpret information from their surroundings. This is a semiotic process and therefore the Umwelt is a space of semiosis. Uexküll states that each species has their own set of stimuli which they interpret to perceive their unique Umwelt. The environment is alive with activity from the constant semiotic processes produced by each individual species, nature is an interconnected web of semiotic relations. Uexküll proposes that each organism interprets signs of from their specific Umwelt reality, via a physiological concept of an inner world (Innenwelt). The Innenwelt is the relation between the mind and the body of the organism, “a network of nerve connections whose articulation attempts to reconstruct, in the organism, the object situation
D ME Biosemiotics undoes all of this, it is an ontology of relation. A revolutionary way of thinking that puts humans back into nature, an approach that is biological and organismic. The movement combines biology and semiosis, to raise questions and develop a model arguing the use of signs is not just a semiotic process exclusive
of the external world (which, however, will in itself always remain inaccessible to the organism).” The restrictive element of the inner world is due to the semiotic capability of the organism itself. The simpler the organism, the simpler the Innenwelt but what is for all organisms according to Uexküll that not all of the stimulations will be perceived knowingly by the subject. The process of semiosis performed by the organism works at a pre-conscious biological level. To support his theory, Uexküll embarked on a series of scientific case studies with a variety of organisms in particular single celled organisms, to prove that every organism interprets meaning in their environment. A paramecium is a single celled fresh water organism, Uexküll chose this example because, “The paramecium’s enivornment is limited to two things: liquid with stimulus and liquid without stimulus, the stimulus being either chemical or mechan-
ical […]. It is thus possible to speak of an environment with only one type of stimulus.” The significance of this evidence proves that not only every organism uses a semiotic process to define their own Umwelt but the Umwelt theory is the foundation of biosemiotics. Uexküll’s work is a milestone in understanding irreducible, non-deterministic, abductive nature of the environment.
explain that mental processes and the meaning that derives from the combination of both concepts. “…the answers (if any) are concealed in the paradoxes generated by the line between Creatura and Pleroma… the line which the Gnostics, Jung and I would substitute Cartesian separation of mind from matter… the line that is really the bridge or pathway for messages.” Within these paradoxes of the Creatura and Pleroma lies a genetic and semiotic process, exchanges of information are taking place. What is information? Well, for Bateson it is a “difference which makes a difference”, but before that becomes knowledge the difference between objects needs to be interpreted. This step to recognise and evaluate the difference between things for Bateson is the process that is at the core of evolution of all living organisms. This unique evolutionary process of mean-making that is significantly metaphorical. The se-
miosis that is at work is ludic, tinkering with possibility and botching meaning. A creative process that is always evolving and bridging the gap between potentials of meaning. “…mutual untranslatability (which forces analogic/ metaphoric thinking upon us) is fundamental to the creative growth of newness capable of establishing new habits.” The “mutual untranslatability” is key to understanding the non-deterministic nature of ecosystems. Meaning is not inherent, it cannot be directly translated, it needs to be open to interpretation, made sense of. Meaning is created or dissolved dependant on situation by using metaphorical logic of semiosis. Bateson supports his epistemology by employing the metaphorical logic of a syllogism to prove a whole new world of meaning can be accessed. Bateson holds the logic of the syllogism is a core trait of Creatura, it has a preverbal relationship. The logic of syllogisms are
READ Upon reading the set quote from Louise Westling’s and Wendy Wheeler’s introduction the main focus is centralised around Gregory Bateson’s metaphorical logic of “syllogisms in grass”. Bateson argues Cartesian dualism needs to be abandoned in light of a more evolutionary way of thought. To assert a new form of epistemology, he uses Jungian terms of ‘Pleroma’ (the non-living world undefined by subjectivity) and ‘Creatura’ (the living world that is defined by perception, emotion, and evolution) to
based on an outcome of two premises that are linked, however Bateson argues that syllogisms of metaphor are dissimilar. “Grass dies; Men die; Men are grass” through this metaphorical logic Bateson shows the ontology of relations between all organisms (between humans and nature), therefore a wider understanding of ecology. “…apart from language, there are no named classes and no subject-predicate relations. Therefore, syllogisms in grass must be the dominant mode of communicating interconnection of ideas in all preverbal realms.” The irreducible relationship between all organisms transcends any material or humanistic value this is where biosemiotics and ecological culture dwells.
ation of cultural metaphors not exclusively open to them but it an experience shared by all of nature. As Wheeler and Westling explain,
solution for the specific environment or situation. Art is unique, art does not only show but thematises. An artwork tackles various concepts on a multi-dimensional level, this calls for a special mode of attention. The themes that an artwork maintains are inter-relational to sensory experience for example, imagining, maintaining and manipulating. All of these faculties are direct traits of semiosis and by extension are used in nature. “A whole history and prehistory informs the poet’s creation in the same way that it informs both the objects he or she conjures as signs, and also all biological life.”
same biosemiotic processes as a single celled organism produces an overwhelming sense of interconnectedness and embodied sense of ecological knowing. From Uexküll’s Umwelt theory, Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought and Gregory Bateson’s ‘syllogisms in grass’ provide important discussion and theory that all biological life is shot through with signs. It is important to remember to radicalness of movement. Biosemiotics completely tears apart four hundred years of scientific and philosophical thought of determinism, dualism and materialism. It is thinking about communication, dynamism, openness. Biosemiotics has the sympathy that we need to tackle the catastrophic ecological crisis we face in the modern age.
D ME The genetic and semiotic processes that occurs to generate meaning in nature can be found in the creation of culture and artistic mediums. It is essential that the human race sees culture and the cre-
For those of us in the humanities who are especially drawn to ecological matters and their representation – whether centrally and consciously or marginally and symptomatically – in works of literature and art, or to the observation that similar patterns and movements appear in biological and cultural forms, the work of scientists in formulating the life sciences must remain of vital concern.
In the forming of poetry, the poet plays around with words, sounds and textures to get the right meaning. Similarly, this method occurs in painting with colours. This process of abduction comes directly from how cells play with different biological signs rather than linguistics or paint, to find the right
The field of biosemiotics has revolutionised and deepened our understanding of the world. It is model that furthers our understanding of human cognitive behaviour but also furthers our knowledge of every organism in nature. To recognise that we as human beings use the
Understanding the text was a big task, since the text is not a story but, an explaination of what biosemiotics is. The explaination is based on different theories, biology, science and experiments. Although I found the text still intersting, I was a bit disappointed since there were just few lines dedicated to the relationship between biosemiotics and art and litera ture
Text Analysis
My initial sketches were rough as rough was my understanding of the text. The most difficult part was to hold on the large amount of information given along the text. Trying to sketch my understandung was a way to get a grip with the text
Initial Sketches
Nous Vous & Ben Jones When I didn’t have my full text I did some general research but also looked a bit into “organic”, since the text Biosemiotics >> BIO= Life. I also looked into collage and playful colours and shapes
Research
Joe Cruz & Wangechi Mutu Once I had my text, I could do research more appropriate. Joe Cruz B&W pictures with oil pastels, was similar to what I had in mind. Wangechi Mutu works is a mixture of collage, painting and other materials and it feels like to look inside the human nature (women), so I thought to bare in mind these two artists along my development
Research
I started to develop some visual responses, exploring what my mind was thinking about the text. Doing this helped me to process wall the information from the text
Initial Development
How to recreate something that could give a sense of organic, biological... or that links with the sense of life? I experimented different things from playing with acrylic to play with colorant and water
Experiments
Along the text I didn’t find a lot of refernces regarding art, literature etc, but there are alot of references to living organisms, life, cells and experiments. So, i researched whithin biology book to visualise cells and organisms. I did a couple of sketches to represent the biological world using pastels as Joe Cruz does.
Cell Research
Riso Print During this workshop I tried to visualise a concept of layers (of knowledge) and connections, but I think it wasn’t succesful at all. Instead I gained an idea of what we can do with Riso Print
Workshops
Linocut In this workshop I wanted to print something that could remind a “palyful biosphere’ for mankind. I tried this with the intention of experimenting later on in my possible illustration
Workshops
How to include nature in my illustration? Along the text is highlited in many ways the importance of the nature for Biosemiotics theories so, I wanted to include nature in my illustration. I thought about how Wangechi Mutu includes real natural elements in her huge collages, so I collected leaves and I experimented with them
Further Development
I experimented a lot. I used pictures, scans, composition with other material. I tried to make some painting with and from the leaves, with the intention of play around with it later in in photoshop
Further Development
Since the text was very complex, I choose to focus on the concepts that I found more interesting and base my three routes on these
Three Routes 1- “Biosemiotics is an ontology of relations between all organisms, we are all connected, the dominant mode of communicating is a interconnection of ideas in all preverbal realms” 2- “Biosemiotics puts humans back into nature with an approach that is biological and organismic. It transforms the Newtonian nature of dead matter into living biosphere that is playful interpretative and relational”
Concepts
3- “Biosemiotics completely tears apart four hundred years of scientific and philosophical thought of determinism, dualism and materialism”
“Biosemiotics is an ontology of relations between all organisms, we are all connected, the dominant mode of communicating is a interconnection of ideas in all preverbal realms� For the first route I tried to develop a concept that start from this part of the text
Route 1
I played around further, with images from internet, because my pictures were scary
Playing Around
I liked the concept of connection with the route 1, I wanted to see how it would look like in riso print, screen print black and white, only one colour... I just tested around
Experiments Screen Print
I made a Riso Print from the Screen Print
Playing wih different layer colour (3) in Riso with different paper
Black and White Riso Print
Two colours Riso Print yellow and black
Overlapping yellow and red gave me a nice orange
“Biosemiotics puts humans back into nature with an approach that is biological and organismic. It transforms the Newtonian nature of dead matter into living biosphere that is playful interpretative and relational” I wanted to create something with the leaves, something inspired to Wangechi Mutu’s works
Route 2
Playing around with photoshop gave me this... just trying Photoshop tools
Playing Around
So, even for route 2, I wanted to experiments a bit with Riso. I split the channels in the original and tried to remake the illustration with the available Riso colours at school. I tried also with only one colour or two colours, just for the sake of testings because I really enjoy the colour results of Riso Print
Riso Experiments
“Biosemiotics completely tears apart four hundred years of scientific and philosophical thought of determinism, dualism and materialism” For the route 3, I focused on the concept that according to the natural rules of biosemiotics, us human being, we should throw away all the knowledge we acquired in the last 400 years, that is from the Enlightenment onward. In my head, there was “rubbish bag” of knowledge, and nature should have a place above knowledge
Route 3
The initial development of this concept wasn’t very successful. I really needed to push the concept forward in a way that wouldn’t be a cliche’. So, I started to focus on Enlightenment and organisms, cells, nature. How to put these two things together I wanted to combine the meaning of the Enlightenment in our society and the organic I prepared a file to laser cut a seethrough acrylic
Pushing the concept
I took many pictures with white background and moving the lights to increase the effects on the transparency
I took many pictures with black background and moving the lights to increase the effects on the transparency
My favourite picts are these
In the text is told about an experiment done on a single cell to establish if a single cell has the ability to recognise the environment around itself. I wanted to include this on my illustration with the concept that nature stands above knowledge. Drawing cells was difficult for me so, I decided to go for the biggest cell visible at human eyes: the egg. The egg represents a cell, but also life because is a living organism. How to represent an egg?
Cells
and
Eggs
I started to play around with my pictures. I wanted the egg >> the life overlooking to the knowledge acquired from the Enlightenment onward
At the same time, I wanted something a bit abstract not explicit
I played with Riso to test how it would look like in layered colours or monocolour
I really liked the lettering made o with laser cut, but I have to say that the egg wasn’t working very well so, I draw one myself and I applied on my picture
Towards the final
I made some testings with my drawn egg but, I really needed to push it forward
I made some testings with my drawn egg but, I really needed to push it forward
Once I developed properly my egg I wanted to find its right place with the lettering. Through warp, liquify and other photoshop tools I could achieve a result that I find quite interesting. I like the contrast between the lettering and the egg, it seems natural/unnatural as the concept of biosemiotics can be
Final in Colour
Ultimately I wanted to make the folding of the egg a bit more natural. I also added a bit of noise to make more united the two elements. Once in grayscale, I regulated a little bit the levels. My illustration is finished and I quite like the result. I like that the result is not obvious, it makes you think and results a bit complicate like the whole text of biosemiotics was for me
Final in Grayscale