MICROPAINTINGS, DIATOMS AND TRANSDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL GROUPS

Micropaintings, Diatoms, and Transdimensional Travel Groups

Communicating climate change through art

Suppose I were to tell you I have been reinvigorated with wonder, that I fell in love again with the world. Suppose I were to say we became reacquainted amidst a stream of light funneled through a dark barrel and refracted through a glass lens. Suppose I learned just how beautiful ordinary things are when you look at them from a different perspective, when you zoom in past the outer barrier. It is blank at the start. Then you turn the knob slowly and a haze of color appears. Then, a new world opens up to you, exploding as if you are watching a time lapse of a rose blooming. Stooped over the microscope, I am a child experiencing autumn for the first time, stupefied by the burst of warm tones, reawakened by the cool, refreshing breeze.

For some time, I have been creating multi-dimensional micropaintings in response to the effects of human behavior on the environment. The first layer placed on the microscope slide is opaque, and then a thin piece of glass—a slide cover—is positioned over top. I continue to mount more paint on these slide covers, adding water to the paint as the stratification builds for translucency and depth. When placed under the microscope, you can move through each layer as if sinking to the bottom of the sea: the first layers are imbued with color and high resolution, but as you move inward, the picture becomes less visible and obscures. Aside from posing as an imaginative response to the abuse our planet has endured, these micropaintings act as exhibitions where art and science are engaged in a symbiotic relationship.

One slide speaks to how methane and plastics are deposited into the air and ocean, how they fill our respiratory systems with toxins and marble the bodies of nonhuman species with malignant growths. Another slide depicts the bleaching of the Great Barrier reef resulting from intemperate fishing and tourism that have compounded the threat of global warming and ocean acidification. As you move through the layers, you are traversing space and time, starting at the present and then diving into the past. The sea is home to an entanglement of anemones, kelp, and tubeworms ensnared by synthetic polymers. Chemicals contained in plastics cast into the ocean interact with these organisms with parasitic intentions. In the first layer of the painting, you are shown how these habitats are presently met with the unwelcome guests of radiation, plastics, and fossil fuels, killing species more rapidly than they are renewed. But a deeper submersion into the painting will introduce you to coral colonies as they once were: a colorful metropolis of diverse species braided together in procreative arenas in a balanced, continuous, and natural cycle of living and dying.

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My work with microscope slides and paint was inspired by an early microscopist practice of arranging diatoms for the purpose of generating fine art. Diatoms are single-celled algae that range from 20–200 microns in length. One hundred diatoms would fit into the size of a comma in normal typeface—size 12, Times New Roman. In the late 1800s, microscopist J.D. Möller used a single hog’s eyelash glued to a pencil to arrange diatoms in spectacular geometric designs and rectilinear organizations often resembling intricate mandalas. These were constellations of the artistic consciousness, fixated on showcasing beauty for beauty’s sake. These diatom arrangements were frequently exhibited at social gatherings and were said to evoke a profound sense of awe in the viewer, a reawakened appreciation for the diversity of lifeforms populating the Earth that are beyond our field of vision.

More recently, diatoms have been implemented as a tool to map a history of climate change. When looking at a diatom through the microscope, you are transported to a distant Earth, an unfamiliar Earth, an Earth of interconnected processes and ecosystems, generating new life forms across space and time. Diatoms are ancestors of the sea, capturing moments of Earth’s climate history. Changes in the combination of fresh and sea water—induced by rises in sea levels and water management—can be hypothesized through the evaluation of diatom remains. Because they are preserved in layered sediment that contain parts of the ecosystem in which they once lived, diatoms function as a portal to a previous version of the Earth, allowing us to improve our understanding of the planet’s evolution.

While Möller and I have taken the microscopic approach to access smaller dimensions— preserving Earth’s smaller beauties in intricate arrangements or painting microscope slides to call attention to the widespread impacts of climate change—artist Lee Hunter has been zooming out, projecting into the future. Through this macroscopic lens, Hunter envisions a future where humans have reached the climax of environmental destruction and face consequences that impede both everyday life and the ability to carry out scientific endeavors such as space travel. In Hunter’s fictional future, space travel has been terminated as Earth can no longer supply the necessary resources to support cosmic explorations.

I first encountered Hunter’s world-building project Cosmogenesis at a museum in my hometown of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Cosmogenesis, a collection of art objects Hunter has accumulated since 2014, explores humanity’s relationship with nature as well as the narrowing gap between apocalyptic fiction and the grim reality of climate change. Interested in challenging our ability to think creatively about the future, Hunter focuses on the ways in which speculative fiction forges a space where we can critique the society we live in and dream up new, viable futures.

Its narrative framework is based upon the following premise: It is 2245 and the United States’ coasts have been submerged due to rising sea levels. What was once the country’s capital is now a lost city home to fish and sea turtles, barnacles and algae fastened to the pillars of the White House. An archivist is invited to the new Library of Congress to translate artifacts from Transdimensional Travel Groups (TTGs), organizations grounded in Western occult practices and coded language to convey methods to travel parallel dimensions for the acquisition of resources no longer found on Earth. These groups banded together between 2040–2145 and were secretive with their methodologies for parallel travel, so information was shared orally, with no written records left behind.

In walking through the exhibit, I was reminded of the Welsh concept of hiraeth, a homesickness for the lost places of your past to which you cannot return. As an archive of objects that contain the memory of a bygone place, Cosmogenesis highlights the common attempt to preserve a historical moment and the complications that arise in the process of translating the visual into a readable narrative. Among other things, I was curious about the function of Hunter’s archivist as a symbol for the desire to memorialize our achievements, to keep a timeline of human progress. In an interview with the College Hill Independent, Hunter stated that the character of the archivist represents their interest in the tradition of interpretation, where meaning can be lost and made. This “sort of slippage … seemed to be a fun spot to inhabit,” they stated. The archive is comprised of photographs that serve to reproduce TTG training manuals, ceramic figures and vessels, stone sculptures, handmade mirrors, needlepoint, and found objects which reference portals, temples, and markets used and established by TTGs. They come together as part of a system that reveals the secret methods of parallel travel used by TTGs to discover the key to a new cosmos.

Hunter mentioned that around the time they began the project, a quote by Fredric Jameson had been circulating among political and cultural theorists and philosophers: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism.” Taking a stance firmly against the apocalyptic and dystopian thinking perpetuated by the media and popular culture, Hunter envisions a future where capitalism has fallen and the Earth remains standing, wounded but in the process of regenerating. While Hunter’s exhibit serves as a commentary on our current conservation efforts, it also seeks to unravel neoliberal capitalism and explore its detrimental global impacts. “The relationship between climate change and capitalism is intrinsic … One of those systems is ignoring that the other system is collapsing and continuing to push on even though we are in the sixth extinction. We are already in the middle of collapse. We are collapsing now.”

The premise for Hunter’s project arose from an article that argued humans have reached the first peak of maximum technological advancement and another is projected to occur in about 70 years, after which it is believed that Earth will no longer have the resources to achieve interstellar travel, which has historically allowed us the opportunity to understand our place in the universe. The people who possess power and access to capital are those that are capable of forwarding the space exploration agenda; however Hunter finds it difficult to imagine that these individuals have a humanitarian objective. “There doesn’t seem to be any chance that they are not trying to treat space as another area to colonize as the rhetoric about space is manifest destiny-based. Why are we going to mismanage the place that we live to the point that we must flee to space to survive. The travel cults ended up being another way to access other pockets of the universe.”

For Hunter, humans have been given an amazing biosphere to call home. We are stewards of this planet and finding a new planetary body to manipulate into satisfying our biological needs should not be our quick fix for ensuring the survival of our species after we have exhausted the Earth. “The landscapes in Cosmogenesis have giant dead zones in it, they can’t grow vegetables, they have to do everything in bio-splicing labs. Most of the seed banks were destroyed so there are not many biological species remaining that humans can use as a food resource. They are working on remediation for these large swaths of dead zones,” but there is a limit to how successful such attempts at mending the planet are; the more injured our planet is, the more fruitless ventures to preserve become. So much effort is allocated to preserving artifacts of human knowledge, but we remain negligent when it comes to protecting the planet’s diverse inhabitants from endangerment.

The invention of the microphotograph in 1852 by John Benjamin Dancer proved to be a useful tool in the preservation of unique and rare documents; in present day, microphotographs are made in response to the fear that products of human thought will be lost due to paper’s vulnerability to time. The inexpensive wood-pulp paper used for newspapers rapidly disintegrates, and even paper considered to be good quality degrades within a few decades. As a contingency plan, books and periodicals that have become unusable and fragile have been transferred onto a microscopic film format. Libraries are able to store large quantities of information in a small space due to the size of these microphotographs. The original documents are photographed onto a film reel and then projected onto a larger screen for viewing. Microfilm copies allow libraries to frequently access the material of rare and aged manuscripts without causing damage to the original texts through handling.

We should be handling our planet with the same degree of care. We should devote more effort, however tedious, to preserving what is left before we, like Hunter’s TTGs, have to find new means to locate materials no longer abundant on Earth, or grow vegetation using seeds kept in biobanks. We are of nature, not apart from nature, not above nature. So how can we imagine new and viable futures in which humans respect and live in harmony with the flora and fauna populating this planet? What would the future look like if we brought other organisms into the democracy governing Earth? What if we alter our thinking about who dictates the planet’s future? What if we all— human and nonhuman species alike—assume responsibility for our actions and actively work toward making amends whether it be through the creation of art objects or planting a community garden?

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The morning after my interview with Lee Hunter, I am sitting in my kitchen watching the light cast the shadow of branches and leaves onto the windowsill. I think about how distant I am from nature in this room, how it seeks entry through shadows. I pry open the window hoping the scent of nature will filter into this congested space, this kitchen that looks out upon a groomed landscape, one that keeps the growth of grass at bay.

Like Hunter, I am interested in the various tools and frameworks for seeing and thus being in the world, zooming in and zooming out across time and space. In a time when the climate crisis has reached immeasurable magnitudes, it has become difficult to decide where to begin making amends. Perhaps the first steps to address the endangerment of our planet should be taken through artistic means. Perhaps an urgency to preserve Earth’s seen and unseen beauty will arise if we are presented with opportunities to creatively interact with nature’s offerings from multiple perspectives.

NICOLE KONECKE B’23.5 recommends the pear and honey poptart from Plant City.