These notes were important when I looked at Project 1 in terms of developing an argument or position.
I read a pdf by Tim Ingold, Lines, a brief history (2007). In Chapter Two, I found a drawing by his father, C.T. Ingold, which shows Fungal mycelium. Ingold reminds us that much of the lines of the linear order of nature are hidden underground – rhizomes and fungal mycelia.
By researching a bit more (paragraphs below) I understood more about how mycelium can be seen as the gathering withinIn. This notion of gathering involves the idea of entities coming together in a mutual support system, to me this is about the mycelium. Mycelium facilitates gathering as it forms symbiotic relationships with plant roots, providing them with nutrients while receiving carbohydrates in return. This mutualistic gathering sustains the interconnected ecosystem. Ingold emphasizes that entities are not fixed objects but are constantly assembling and disassembling in their interactions with the environment. Mycelium exemplifies this idea as it is a dynamic and ever-changing structure, constantly growing and adapting to environmental conditions.
Reflecting on my learning around his book: Making. Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture.
I could not access the book and found a YouTube video seminar where he discuss his ideas from this book. (UnivOslo: Museum of Cultural History) The ideas are about thinking through making – about getting your hands dirty, an explorative way of finding oneself into or through a place of possibility. A controversial idea was to look at the division between ethnography and anthropology. He compares it with the art historical approach looking at art as objects versus practitioners producing art. I like the idea of art as an enquiry and would like to see research as such! His idea was to think of these different disciplines not as a field with boundaries, but as a line, a knot, with different lines of enquiry – undoing the territorial lines.
Topics were design and making, materials and objects and objects and things, gesture and performance, Skill and craft, the senses, Lines as trace and as a connection. Drawing
When forms arise in the making – emerge out of the material (da vinci – it was there in the marble)
What difference does it make if we regard something as an object – or as a material (lump of glass – stuff in terms of its potential – logic of being to logic of becoming. Properties of a world in formation – materials –
difference between objects and things – the concept of agency, a world where things engage, flows as fluxes. Made kites and observed them flying. The passive object became a thing..
How forms arise out of the regular movement – basket making, regularity and repetition. They made string out of fibre.
Skill – coordination and perception, how we attune to different conditions. What happened to skill – the debasement of skill
Senses – seeing and hearing is a practical observation in the world. Seeing as watching ( i think of the work by M Abramovic)
Lines
Drawing – trained to draw – the assumption was that you must be able to do it. An observation tool, see what you observed and where it went wrong.
Notation – how do we distinguish or combine different kinds of notations? A drawing, some numbers, diagrams – combined. The potential is excellent.
Assemblage – number of bits and pieces that happen to come together for a moment – not designed to fit together, they can go apart and combine with other – force of circumcise brought them together. We do not have to get too holistic about it – the bits still have their own identity. Good analogy for social life – not a completely integrated whole. It is dynamic and fluid. We need to consider their histories of becoming – the way they join up. (use the + adding one thing to another). He talks about Deleuze – dry stone wall, not cut to fit, different shapes – the structure looks like an assemblage. The + hides the labour of the builder/ making process – the history till the final product. Each stone can become a line – history. So when have a bundling of trajectories – Imgold calls it the gathering. The world is both chunky like a mosaic, but also woven like a textile – they always come together ( concrete – aggregate and cement. Aggregate are chunks, the cement is a binding agent – that glues them together. So it is a mixture, and because of the two concrete has substance and coherence) (This reminds me of my making vessels with paper mache – glue becomes part of the gathering of the object)
When we put together – the + sign would mean a process for something to hippen. What is hidden? recipe? stuff is made out of ingredients, which is not a simple joining. Thinking of baking cake (entanglements) do you see this tangle? You see something different. How do we explain materials and what happens to them, when they become ingredients? To address this problem he found to make a distinction – the material world – as continuous material, and everything within it is as a fold/crumple – folded continuously. A world in flux – alchemy says its is continuous, not out of molecules and bits of pieces, folded and wrapped. Elkins says alchemy is the struggle with materials and not understanding what is happening. Recipies as stories – narrative, observe. We do not see the transmission of coded information, but bringing the past into present experience. (world a folded crumpled domain of always unfolding, rather than coded information)
Palimpsest – piece of parchment written over and over again. Its helps the past to rise up and the presence to go down. Tilling – add layers. Ground is layers – not turned over .
Burial – central issue on life and death. Where does the world human come from – humus, soil. Burial is the renewal of the force of life – put the past in the ground that the ground can give rise to the new life.
new ideas – we build up, the ground is just a residue, you should escavate to. Nature not a source for growth. Burial becomes a locus of dehumanising – going back to nature.
The ground where the body becomes the source of life – compares to an archive. from which life sprout. The soil in an an-archive. The ground comping up again.
Time and history. Time is connected to regularly recurrent events – repetitions. What if we see history as a process of becoming, and growth?
Experiment – alchemy and modern Will draw on experience and experiment. Where we intervene and look to see what happens – part of a journey (itteration and itineration – deleuze) Life itself is a collective experiment – in living we try to figure out how to life.
Post Humanity? Humanism had its day? What then would happen to these disciplines? He refers to mystic, Ramon Lu. Homo est animal – we are not humanising the world, we are continually creating ourselves. It is what it does. Ingold want to re imagine to human is a verb – how we would understand art, art is a verb – ratifying. Greek meaning – araristo – to join??? what does it mean to join – we can create some sort of coherence?
Joining ideas
In working with material, we join with it in the making process.
MORE READING ON TIM INGOLD
I also read a paper by Ingold, Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials (2010) Realities Working Papers # 15: Bringing Things to Life July 2010 3
“to replace it with an ontology that assigns primacy to processes of formation as against their final products, and to flows and transformations of materials as against states of matter. Form, to recall
Klee’s words, is death; form-giving is life.”
An exciting find was his ideas on agency:
“I shall argue that the current emphasis, in much of the literature, on material agency is a consequence of the reduction of things to objects and of their consequent ‘falling out’ from the processes of life. Indeed, the more that theorists have to say about agency, the less they seem to have to say about life; I would like to put this emphasis in reverse.” Ingold concludes that the ‘problem’ of the agency is born of the attempt to re-animate a world of things already deadened or rendered inert by arresting the flows of substance that give them life. He argues that they are alive precisely because they have not been reduced to the status of objects. To him, this is a reductive logic. He continues to argue that the hylomorphic model is the source of this logic.
Conclusion to take as an argument in my research , as well as when I critically evaluate arguments which seems to differ, but still significant.
I prefer to think of objects, things, animals, plants, nature as part of my human experience, my companions in this world. My conclusion to take to my own research is that objects like feathers, fungi, nests are not just passive instruments or containers for social symbols and meanings. I cannot place agency strictly in the human realm, I see a fluidity and relation between all things, human and non-human.
Original version (April 2008 ) presented at ‘Vital Signs: Researching Real Life’, 9
September 2008, University of Manchester.
Bibliography
Ingold, Tim, 2010. https://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/id/eprint/1306/1/0510_creative_entanglements.pdf
Ingold, Tim. ( 2006). Lines a brief history. Routledge and Taylor At: https://taskscape.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/lines-a-brief-history.pdf. (