KOMBUCHALPHABET
“Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul.”
(The Fountain 2006)
ENTRY No.1
16/10/15
Within this project we will observe an attempt to research the correlation between the properties of kombucha and petri dishes as mediums enclosing the meaning of life and death.
Kombucha ( jpn: kōcha kinoko - 紅茶キノコ) is a beverage of fermented black or green tea. It is produced by fermenting the tea with a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast called Scooby. It is claimed to be the elixir of life due to its therapeutic character, however scientific evidence of kombucha’ s beneficial effects in humans is lacking.
Petri dishes were named after the German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri. Petri is a shallow cylindrical plate out of glass or plastic that biologists or microbiologists use to culture cells, bacteria and other microorganisms. The modern petri dishes usually feature rings or slot and contain agar, a jelly substance, derived from the polysaccharide agarose.Consequently, agar plates are containing a mix of agar and other nutrients in which microorganisms can be cultured and observed under a microscope.
After the end of Livelife-Lifelive #2 Workshop at Waag Society, I prepared two mediums for Scooby. The medium’s recipe is:
2 L of water
70 g of sugar
4 tea bags of black tea (Earl Grey)
The first medium was maintained in a plastic container, in a dark and dry environment (≈16 °C) while the second one was divided in smaller portions and maintained in glass containers, in a dark and dry environment (≈26°C). I decided on maintaining the mediums in different environments to observe if any differences will occur.
ENTRY No.2
22/10/15
Scooby is a medium that had become more and more popular due to its side attribute where, when dried, it becomes a thin leather-like textile. Fashion agencies and fashion designers have incorporated the “vegan leather” in their collections making apparel and footwear masterpieces out of it. Consequently, through this project, dried scoobies are the potential medium of making the basis of a new typeface. Many artists and graphic designers have used unconventional mediums and materials in order to make unique and never-seen-before typefaces. Furthermore, Scooby has another interesting attribute. After dried out, it falls into dormant mode and it can be preserved for almost 2-3 months. Consequently, Scooby, although it appears to be “dead”, it can be revived from “hibernation”.
To sum up, the questions I need to answer through this project are:
What is life and death? How do we perceive dead (inanimate) and living (animate)? What “living” and “dead” language and/or alphabet means? What is the importance of a language and/or alphabet as a medium of communication between human/organisms? Does it have other properties?
ENTRY No.3
5/11/15
THE GESTATION OF THE WORLD
“In the beginning there was nothing, nothing but the silence of the infinite darkness. The breath of the Creator flooded against the face of the void whispering “Let there be light!” and light was, and it was good.”
(Noah 2014)
Life and death, arche and telos, have always been two of the biggest enigmas for humankind, arising ambiguous ideas. In Theogony, as seen in Evelyn-White’s version (2014), Hesiod interpreted chaos as the divine primordial condition, a moving formless mass from which Cosmos and Gods were originated. Therefore, Chaos is the “ζῶσαν οὐσίαν” – the living matter, the origin of everything.
According to Anaximander (Dancy 1989), apeiron (ἄπειρον / ἀ- a = without and πεῖραρ-peirar = end, limit) was the main cosmological arche, something eternal and infinite that faces no decay and which perpetually yields fresh materials. In the bowels of apeiron, the opposites of hot - cold, wet - dry etc. were generated and they were the triggers of the creation of the world. Furthermore, Timaeus in Zeyl’ s version (2008) said that the Creator formed Cosmos in the resemblance of a living being, bestowing upon it the most ideal of all shapes, that of a sphere which includes inside it all the other shapes. This creature had no need for eyes neither for ears, as there was nothing outside to be seen or heard. Furthermore, the spherical entity had no need to seek for nourishment as it was fed from its own wasting (32a - 34c). Consequently, Timaeus dicta gestated new ideas regarding the origin of life, such as: non-perishability, ouroboros and cycle of life.
THE MATTER OF DEATH
Undeniably, defining life became a great challenge since the time of Aristotle and for the modern scientists and philosophers on the grounds of life being “a process and not a substance” (Jabr 2014). Therefore, despite the fact that human managed to predict nature or tame wild beasts, even intervene evolution or creating behemothic machines, the only thing he was unable of doing was to control death, to be infinite. That stems from the vanity of human existence and the gluttonous lust of an eternal life. To put it in other words, humans could not take control over time and space (Saunders 1891). According to Schopenhauer (Saunders 1891) “Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a moment; then it belongs forever to the past…We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we end in the dissolution of all of our parts and the musty stench of our corpses”.
On the other hand, it might be easier to define death. Death is the termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. The bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. However, what happens after that? Does the inanimate flesh cease to be alive?
Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedo (Rowe 1993), posed an interesting opinion a little before taking the poison. He quoted that he was not afraid of dying, since what really mattered is not human’s mortal body but the inner core, the soul. The only thing body desires is pleasure of all kinds and thus after death, soul is being released of its carnal prison. Subsequently, Aristotle (Harris 2002, p. 103) believed that the soul (the form) and body (the matter) are inseparable and for the one to exist the other must be present while Democritus proposed that the essential feature of life is having a psyche (Berryman 2010).
In regards to Biology, as living are considered the organisms that are featuring the following characteristics: homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction.
According to Genesis, God made the protoplast out of mud offering him the most valuable thing people seek, immortality. However, after committing the Original Sin, the protoplasts became mortals acquainted the fear of decay and perishability. As a consequence, after death, the bodies of the living beings return to mud and this is where decomposition starts.
HEN TO PAN
(One is All)
“A small individual within the stream. All is One, One is All.”
(Fullmetal Alchemist 2009)
The aforementioned quote has its roots in Cleopatra’s Chrysopoieia (χρυσοποιεία -gold making) where: “One is All, All is nothing and by it is All, and if you have not All, All is nothing” (Lindsay 1970). Alchemy has invaginated Hen to Pan and its strong connection with the cosmic serpent, Ouroboros, as the prima materia, symbolising the eternal return. However, this theory can be also found in Anaximander’s and Plato’s Cosmogony. As confusing and abstruse as it seems it makes sense. With death comes life, and with life comes death. Consequently, life is perceived as a constant cycle that begins anew as soon as it ends.
ENTRY No.４
14/11/15
SCRIPTA MANENT
“In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
(New International Version John 1:1)
Once establishing the writing system, society became able of recording information, something that it was not possible to be achieved by spoken words. Therefore, writing allows societies to convey information to the next generation and share knowledge. As Caius Titus states “verba volant, scripta manent” which literally means: “the spoken words fly away, while the written remain”. In other words, writing enabled people to save their thoughts and send them much further to time and space; writing became a medium to “vanquish mortality” (Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey 2014). However, the imperfection of speech eventually led to the creation of new forms of communication. The symbols were invented and they bear a conventional representation of a concept.
In conclusion, this project was an attempt of portraying the tender thread that divides life from death and vice versa. Although it is quite hard and phenomenally impossible to give an answer to mankind’s biggest riddles, I believe that through this process I managed to find something visually interesting.
ENTRY No.５
16/11/15
RESULTS
I removed Scoobies from their liquid medium after 4 weeks in order to form the typeface. The first medium which was maintained in the plastic container was slightly thicker and had a translucent color while the rest Scoobies, preserved in the glass containers were hazy, having a pale orange color. Subsequently, almost half the Scoobies were used to shape the typeface where I prepared three different versions. The first one was done arbitrarily, resembling my own graphic character where I formed the 24 capital letters of the Ancient Greek alphabet. Using a reference sheet, I formed the letters of the second version by placing the sliced Scoobies on the blueprint making it take the shape of a pre-existing typeface. Lastly, I created a version of small letters using a referencing sheet due to the fact that Scooby was extremely fragile, lichenous and sticky making it hard to form smaller shapes.
