Fungus

A common thread that links all the conversations we've read thus far is biology, simple, plain to read, biology.  A biological need to make special, a biological behavior to act as hunter-gatherer, and a biological fact that our world depends more on fungus then the survival of human beings (Christopher Manes).  Were less useful for this planet than fungus yet we create computers smarter than we?  This worlds been turned upside down.  We strive not to make this world, this earth, a better more useful place rather we mystify away what place we really live on by creating on top of it sky scrappers and highways to hide the damage.  The guest speaker today Colin Ive's titled himself an Eco Artist, and that he was.  I really enjoyed his concept of starting with an animal like a opossum, an animal most people would cringe at the thought and not enjoy to see a picture of.  But when he showed us the videos he showed us what we would not normally look at or see, a opossum, another species, another living thing, because thats a common thing for us humans to do.. not notice other living things apparently.  Colin wanted to create multimedia video images of animals that were nocturnal and during his installations of his videos he would make them interactive with the audience just as if his audience was outside seeing this kit fox run and hide or mice scramble for food.  He created interaction between people and animals were interaction and understanding would not normally be found.  Much like the hope of Rachel Dutton and Rob Olds, Colin wanted to create understanding between man kind and wild life, to much of a lesser scale than Dutton and Olds but still the same hope that we can achieve a medium where we can live in peace and harmony.  To Dutton and Olds they realized that "culture doesn't matter at all in the great scope of the huge, grand earth"(64).   Our culture, something that continues to hold us back from being able to live side by side with every other species in this world.  Culture tells us we need money, TVs, cars, excessive food, refrigerators? (that one was a shock to me)... culture tells us we need everything, we need it now, we need to much of it and we are to never go without any of it!  But what is it?  It is a bunch of useless materials we've created in order to satisfy an evolving need for need.. if that makes any sense.  Dutton and Olds give up their arts lifestyles and become disgusted at the fact they were ever one because after they 'gave it all up' they got everything they ever needed, "your perception comes out of the landscape rather than at it,” (72).  Its only when your perception tells yourself your giving everything up that you believe you are.  After we realize that, we change.  Olds ends with this thought, "We can't assume what is comfortable for society, pick and choose.  You've got to do it all the way, or not at all.  Or we die" (83).  What Olds and Dutton don't know (or don't say) is that through this conversation and the biography of where they've been in life they have created art through a lifestyle.  They realized that art didn't need to be created but maybe looked for instead, like the deer footprints in the gravel or a sunset lighting up an infinite stretch of pure land.  Dutton no longer wanted to make symbols or paintings that stood for life, she wanted to live it instead, she wanted to break free from the cultural trance civilization is stuck in and wanted to learn something new… and live.  Like Dutton, Colin wanted too to help people break free from their cultural trance and normality too by providing interactive art that showed them either the effects of clear cutting (in a very clever way might I add) or the affect we directly have on salmon just trying to make it up stream.  Hopefully through interactive media and innovative ways to bring humans closer to the reality of nature and all its living things to be able to see our ghastly grotesque effects on them,  we can then realize were not the race that matters because if none of them are here, we wont be either.  Nature, nor animals, nor fungi, nor this world is fighting us… why do we continue to fight with all of them?