Sequence of the destruction of the shell of a snail by a predator, saves of the prey and process of reconstruction of the damaged zone*
ARTIST STATEMENT
My research interest is focused on the interaction processes that share information with the surroundings and present degrees of communication, cognition and intelligence, subjects to the evolution and the emergence of the novel. The framework is the one of the natural complex systems open, able to process this information and to make decisions. This is based on provisional empirical facts and in my own experience with pets and small wild animal communities, bio-artficial animals, 4thD animals and the “Zoonarrative”, a novel literary creation based in the language of animal fiction, the fractal representation and the animal Brownian movement. My challenge is to explore shared singularities and processes that exhibit learning, evolution and newness, as well as to get to know the diverse aspects the language animal beyond the instinctive thing, that includes models of expression and communication, memory, forms of thought, emotions and feelings, aesthetic of the biodiversity and how the creativity is present in its interchange with the outer world.
In particular, and from a multidisciplinary approach between the art of the complexity and fractal geometry that I have developed, my first finding was the hazard and the chaos in the natural constructions of the terrestrial gastropods( snails), followed of a comparative study between the natural fractals and the Brownian motion. In my last works of the complex dynamics and the alive beings and/or bio-artificials, they are an observation object that allow me to catch manifestations of its cognitive systems like a singularity of something which is new, presents patterns and can be evolutive.
In this line my current proposal tries on the destruction and the cognitive complexity in terrestrial gastropods, where I research the answer of a peer of snails to the attack of a predator that destroys part of its shells and of that one of them achieve to be saved by means of the correct decision making. The used method is comparative, using like reference to validate the proposal the second gastropod that is not able to escape. During the attack, the answer of gastropod that survives reveals a degree of intelligence or adaptation to the environment (where it is the limit?) or to the own hazard that is in the origin of all creation – it mediates or not it human interaction – that as in this case gives an opportunity, when being an nonautomatic action, but chosen between the alternatives which they appear. The chosen option implies the flight by an aluminum profile of concave conformation that is on the land, getting up to centimeters of the ground, by which the snail can move with certain difficulty, but that the predator cannot reach due to its size, anatomical conformation and to the equilibrium conditions that demands the passage by the profile. In this knowledge what to choose, gastropod shows a cognitive capacity that is translated in perception of the facts, decision making and clear understanding of the emitted signals and the available resources, that in combination add an inherent property to all complex system, that is its creative capacity to produce a new or emergent event: its survival. Finally, this ability implies a process nonlinear of reason than it would be a sophisticated cognitive pattern of signals – valued between all the known interdependent patterns -, which allows him to identify the danger degree, to put itself out of danger and finally, with my aid to be transferred to a safe place to begin to repair the damage caused by means of the calcareous secretion production that in contact with the air and a process of iteration covers its visceral mass.
THE ARTIST
Myriam Solar is a contemporary artist and idependent researcher of the complexity aesthetic and art and the quantum poetic interested in the knowledge of the interactions between the visible and invisible and the human and non human worlds. From her earliest works about of the complexity art, the living systems, the new geometry in the art and bio-machines she has worked with issues surrounding the aesthetic and languages of the biodiversity. She participed in Symbiotica-Adaptation with Physimorphisme and complexity art (2010) and continues to explores the communication between interspecies as part of her ongoing interest in the cognitive patterns in living systems with wild birds, snails and ducks in community, and aquatic pet animals, the animal communication, the brownian language, biosemiotics and the animals and nature in the art and Literature. Solar is also poet, international curator of contemporary art and director of platforms and projects on the Internet. Her creative work has been exhibited in literary, artistic and academic forums in Madrid, London, Amsterdam, Paris and New York. She graduated in Sciences of the Information from the Complutense University of Madrid, has been Academic of the University of Chile and Professor of the Complutense University of Madrid. At present she is Director of Q-Literary Museum and ICE Instituto de Chile del Exterior en España, is a member of ASCI, Art & Science Collaborations, New York (USA), IEPI, International Exchange for Poetic Invention, USA-Holland, E:CO(Usa).
1. Escape of the prey by one metallic profile 2. Destruction of a great area of the shell of the snail 3. Peer of snails 4. Detail of breakage of the shell of the snail 5. Loosening of a piece of shell 6. Snail exploring the environment with a little bit of shell on himself before to begin the reconstruction process 7. Detail of exploration of the snail on its new environment 8. Shell partially self-reconstructed with secretion of the snail 9. Estome or opening by which the snail shows the foot and edge of the same after of the first repairing, drawing and digital mixed media panoramic, 2011.
From ‘Destruction and cognitive complexity in terrestrial gastropods and human interaction’
Sequence of the destruction of the shell of a snail by a predator, saves of the prey and process of reconstruction of the damaged zone*