A visual interpretation of consciousness as a continuous process of self-organisation and embodiment

Abstract

That consciousness is ubiquitous, and relevant to autopoietic self-organisation and embodiment within every living being and/or organism, is a prevalent idea in contemporary consciousness research. However, because ‘consciousness’ as a word is derived from con or cum, meaning ‘with’ or ‘together’ and scire, ‘to know’ or ‘to see’ it infers the experience of knowing with an ‘other’ and/or ‘others’. The narrative that follows, while expressing a life of its own, documents the interdisciplinary research conducted and questions who and/or to what ‘other’ might infer. My visual diary, Dust from dust: Microorganisms and other tales: An Artist’s diary, created as the visual component of a creative practice-as-research undertaking, was silently performed amidst ‘others’ in the Unisa gallery, in an attempt to render visible, the autopoietic, self-organising embodiment essential to the conscious self-developmental component of the project. Once upon a time, I grew bacterial yeast cells in a glass vitrine to observe how they self-organised their own embodiment and photographed the process. At the same time, I conducted interdisciplinary research into consciousness as a self-developmental process, and utilising the cellular symbiosis unfolding in the vitrine as a self-reflexive mirror, came to visualise how indispensable bodily feelings are to conscious self-development, and being-in-the-world-with-others processes. As a creative-practice-as-research undertaking, I grew, manipulated and photographed the cellular imagery in the vitrine over many years in an attempt to unfold personal bodily feeling associations the imagery held captive, while gathering photographic footage I considered capable of expressing the primordial nature of certain emotive feeling experiences. Once obtained, I choreographed and performed a stop-frame video, entitled Dust from Dust: Microorganisms and other tales. An artist’s diary. The stop-frame video, along with a catalogue that focuses on the processes engaged with, accompanies the written narrative. Once edited, I macroscopically projected different phases of the video into a three-walled enclosure in the UNISA Art gallery. The three videos, representing a facet of my praxis, ran concurrently over a two week period. The fourth facet, presented with the video projections to emphasise conscious self-development as an in-the-world-with-others process, was the glass vitrine. It was positioned in a darkened enclosure in the gallery space, opposite the video projections. This narrative documents how I projected myself into the cellular imagery developing in the glass vitrine, in a way akin to how the ancient alchemists ‘projected’ themselves into the prima materia with which they worked. While the alchemists seemingly worked unconsciously, and my praxis initially started somewhat unconsciously, the process developed into a conscious attempt to embody the research findings. So, while the video choreographed, champions a microbial cell story, by referring to it as an artist’s diary, I emphasise the subjective nature of my praxis as a whole. In this creative-practice-as-research undertaking, I address the significance of bodily feelings and their relevance to being-in-the-world-with-others processes. In doing so, I aim to offer insight into how and why feelings are essential to inter-subjectivity and/or sociality, self-organisation and conscious self-development, as well as how and why conscious self-development can lead to immersive experiences, which I interpret as embodied adaptation to the rich diversity and/or fullness of life itself.