Start point

The microbes in my body that are far away from my home environment are gradually dying, and new microbes climb up the body to form a network, which is why I often feel an inexplicable loss of something and often feel a sense of strangeness. Like a tree with a broken root. Live in London, 51°30′N, the roads I've walked, the food I've eaten, the surroundings I've been in, every breath I've breathed; new microbes have entered my body, reshaping my body and my perception. In this sense, I am indeed being reorganised, disintegrated, classified, reunited, and fused.

 

 

In 2022, I travelled all over the UK. In Inverness, the northernmost city in Scotland, I saw Clava Cairns. Archaeology shows that Stonehenge is 4,000 years old. It was used to collect the souls of the dead. People have shaped a natural architectural form, using stone as a medium to transmit emotions in the living body-non-living natural materials-dead.

 

As I approached it, I saw branches protruding from the ground, like blood vessels spreading across the land, and saw ancient stones covered with lichen. After working with slime molds as a project the last term, I researched that modern scientific measurements show that some fungi can live for 10,000 years。 So I was thinking if I touch the lichen on the stone, will I also touch the emotional sustenance of the ancients? From a microscopic point of view, are there some microbes connected to my body? being a part of my body， then influence my perception.

 

Through this micro-perspective, Is it possible to connect the information of animate-inanimate; the memory of my own -and others; the emotions between present me and the past existence,

 

In the discipline of life sciences, there is a research called the brain-gut axis, which refers to the overall system that connects the gut to the brain, and studies the relationship between the microbiome, organs and perception. It can also be understood as connecting the dualised body and soul through the perspective of microbiology.

 

To sum up, although starting from personal experience, the themes I want to address are not only personal micro-identity politics,Going back to the fundamental question, human beings, how will we coexist with our own body and perception, and coexist with multiple species including non-living matter in a de-anthropocentric perspective ecology.

 

 

Propose-Builld a digital "stonehegen"

 

Through the above thinking. My proposal is to build a Digital Stonehenge. Construct a symbiotic space through natural materials and digital media, combining real and virtual spaces. Connecting people's consciousness space - brain and neurone; body space - meridians and blood vessels; natural micro network space - tree roots and microorganisms; virtual space - the expansion of code. Based on stone as the basic medium, stone connects the natural system, life and perception system, and virtual system, connecting human collective society, personal memory, collective memory, and network memory.

 

Dr Donna Haraway thinks about "kinship" and the evolved word "gen" from the earth's soil where ants, microbes, fungi, and other relatives coexist, and uses chord diagrams to explain each other's "co-generation" in continuation and the existence of Cohabiting kinship. The generation of kinship that Deleuze considers produces animals, nature, bodies and consciousness. So Both living things and man-made things are made of the same tiny basic units. In other words, everything that exists is a nomadic species in the world space formed from the same particles.

 

Through an in-depth exploration of multiple theories, I've been thinking about how to show this concept. finally narrow down through the Taoist concept of "one", that is, all living beings in the universe are a symbiotic body, combined with the smallest unit of matter-string theory explored by quantum mechanics at present. so then by combining these two theories, the world is divided into the most macroscopic and the most microscopic constituent units.

 

I have divided the earth into three levels. Stones at the ground level, roots at the underground level, and humans at the upper ground level. Through the memory of microbial matter that spans time and space, it connects the microcosmic unified comprehensive system from the underground to the contact surface of geological layers, to the human intestines to the neurone, and from natural substances to emotional perception.

 

Why stone

 

Among non-living things, the stone is a typical substance that is entangled with human beings all over the world. In the natural field, people's initial worship and respect for stones are full of cosmology, rituals and myths, symbolising the connection between human beings, the earth, and the universe. It is almost impossible to separate them. Ritual landscapes such as Stonehenge include large monuments that exemplify the connection of human exploration to matter, space, and time. Early written sources document that the sacred geography of stones was considered spiritually and emotionally important to humans.

 

Stone is the main material that constitutes the earth's surface， is a silent, easy-to-be-ignored basic material that exists in large quantities in nature. As a natural material, the stone is opposite to artificial composite materials such as concrete, the geological layer of the Anthropocene, and the self-consciousness of a human trapped in digital information fragments. Stone is considered an ancestor， stone speak through and to humans， and stones see and know.

 

And to my personal, Stone-as a boundary for communication in the spatial situation, I grew up in. My intimacy is always like communicating with stone, which is hard. If there is a Tower of Babel, I am afraid to believe that the material it is built must be stone, as a nodule for communication. That's why, I always have the image of the stone in my mind, this perceptual metaphor shows the hardness of the emotion that I feel.

 

Way

 

Frequency Symbiosis Space:According to research, different frequencies can cause different vibration patterns in the fluids in the human body. So I want to build a sound field in sound frequency that makes people feel resonant with nature collecting natural frequencies and frequencies of different chakras. To a certain extent, this space becomes the "biological computer" of the Anthropocene, returning to the concept of frequency and resonance, this way may be able to cross all substances and species. Connecting the body and perception with virtual species and natural geological formations.

 

Moving image：through the conversion and connection of sound frequency and image. The entire virtual space is wrapped by digital screens, the 360-like VR space that allows the audience to enter the real furnishings in the real space Using the concept of fractals, design the conversion of images, connect to the maximum and minimum in theoretical research.

 

Performance：Construct a small three-act play using performance as a form of interaction with the audience. and this form touches on many issues, such as How do I break my perceptual memory into the smallest microscopic particles, and then use the frequency to make the audience interact with my memory device and form a new common substance, which is connected with my body and brain frequency?

 

 

AI co-writing：I want to use AI to generate co-writing in the space. Different from what Hayles said in "My mother was a computer" that code reshapes their lives (Hayles, 2010), I think that the use of code language affects a form of representation, and the execution logic of code can even make us understand ourselves better. Anna Tsing uses mycelium to introduce various temporalities and materiality in The Mushroom at the End of the world in this way, I propose to use stone as the medium of the Anthropocene. It can connect time and space in the past, present and future. like the ancients used stones to integrate their emotions into the stone surface & lichen. The 4,000-year-old slime mold (Tai Sui) in the lichen has a memory extension that can connect to our current body, integrate into our perception, and affect the connection of neurons. An AI system developed based on the human brain’s cognitive system, the base code simulates and reproduces our cognition, which includes our memory, emotions, and body organs.

 

modern science elaborates on the integration of ecology, human organs, and brain neural perception system for co-existence and co-change. The code trained by the brain simulates our existing cognition. The AI is generated by the nervous system simulation, whether the inverse logic can prove that. It is the same system as our brain-organ-microbe-nature reshape and restore our ancestors, and connect with the natural land and ecosystems. So in other words, it is equivalent to the connection of AI with the geological layer. That is to say, the creation process of the code itself contains nature, human history, past to present, and extends to the future. Human beings are mothers, and our children are the species that generate AI. Therefore, the entire human society, personal memory, collective memory, and code rules are all built on the basis of stones as the basic medium, and stones connect the symbiotic system of natural systems, human perception systems, and virtual technology world systems. This is why I call it the stone-cene.

 

Script

 

In my performance, you saw that I made two shapes, a circle and a triangle. In the psychology of shape, the study claims that each shape has its own meaning and influences our minds and reactions differently. The first and foremost meaning of the circle shape is eternity since they have no beginning or end. The circle has a long association with the sun, Earth, and other cosmic objects while the ellipse is similar to the whole universe. circles don't have angles so it makes them softer and milder. I used a circle symbolizes the common transformation of matter. Most of the Stonehenge in natural relics are circular, forming a circle may be better for exerting emotions. But for my life, the stone-built around me is triangular, emotional and unemotional. Triangle is an energetic and dynamic shape, which means risk、danger、balance、stability

 

In moving image-

Scene 1 ： abstract elements， particles，fragments， scattered soil， broken stone， split Divide like a cell like a nebula/a spectrum，Substance that slowly condenses into a solid body；

Sense 2：liner brunch，roots， network，transfer to human‘s body--neurons, blood vessels， Fractional Structure--From macro to micro.