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LIQUID
My reclaimed word for the 21st century is liquid -- specifically in
relationship to the character of life -- and as a counterpoint to the
machine metaphor: the philosophical and scientific idea that the whole
universe and everything in it can be understood as mechanisms, composed
of the sum of fundamental components, which are hierarchically organised
to perform work in a logical and predictable way.
**Dualism**
Rene Descartes' *Treatise of Man*, described conceptual models
of humans that were made up of fundamental elements -- a non-thinking
body and a thinking soul -- which could exist independently from one
another. He extracted the rational soul from the body in order to remove
any element of mentality. In this way, the geometrical nature of bodies
could be more exactly described by a new physics that reduced all
natural change to the local motion of material particles. The body,
denuded of the soul and mind, became known as the *Animal Machine* (or
Bête Machine). Yet Descartes neglected to characterise the nature of the
soul in more than its barest details. He considered it a mysterious
substance where 'the animal spirits' flowed from the pineal gland (the
principle seat of the soul) through a network of vessels (neurons) like
air. However, Descartes never developed a final theory about the
relationship between the body and the soul. This brilliantly simple act
of dualism created the foundations of modernity, providing the framework
for scientific developments and technological advancements during the
Enlightenment. The 'beauty' of a machine is that it represents a
framework for thinking and simultaneously embodies a technical system.
It therefore shaped a worldview that considered matter as inert --
without innate energy -- and required animation through external
agencies if it was to act. So, to animate a machine, energy, process, or
spirit, is needed. \[z\] Objects must reconnect with flow if they are to
be lively -- they need a relationship with liquids -- and we have denied
them the full range of these abilities. \[z\]
**Flux**
The pre-Socrates philosopher Heraclitus first expressed the idea of
reality being in constant movement in his adage Panta Rhei: "everything
flows, nothing stays." Finally, over the course of the 20th century it
was increasingly understood again that the world is situated within a
condition of flux. Thinkers and innovators have responded to the liquid
qualities of the world through significant shifts in our ways of
thinking. For example, Ludwig von Bertalanffy's notion of general
systems theory informed the field of cybernetics -- the scientific study
of control and communication in the animal and the machine. Alfred North
Whitehead's focus on process placed dynamic events at the core of living
phenomena, and Timothy Morton's search for designing with metabolism --
to generate 'straightforward' environmental images [^1] -- aims to
bypass translation of processual events through modes of representation.
In this realm of constant change, the machine metaphor describes reality
incompletely. As much as liquids have been conjured into our language in
an attempt to find a better metaphorical framework to characterise
'life', progress has been rhetorical, as liquids themselves are not
imagined or readily applied as technologies. Fluids may power machines,
lubricate them, or be consumed by them. However, the behaviour of
liquids is so rich and complex, that the toolsets we possess to
manipulate them do not offer sufficient precision to rival mechanical
potency. How can we think through liquids in ways that not only describe
our present reality, but also conjure into existence an occult
performativity of the material realm that acts upon the present as well
as helps to imagine and shape the future?
**Ever-changing**
Conventionally, the extraordinary properties of liquids
have provoked a sense of erasure, featurelessness monstrosity -- in the
sense they exceed our capacity to rationalise and control them by
applying our modern perspectives. Liquid bodies continually rise,
undulate, entangle, fall, and exist within watery landscapes. They are
often so entangled with their surroundings that it is almost impossible
to see them; for neither our natural senses, nor concepts, fully convey
their ever-changing nature. Defying classical conventions of
organization and behaviour, liquid matter is fundamentally lively. It
also simultaneously permeates and is infiltrated by its surroundings.
Claude Lévi-Strauss regards the sea as uninspiring, while Roland Barthes
views the ocean as a non-signifying field that bears no message. Yet,
Michel Serres embraces the details of liquid bodies, specifically the
subversive "nautical murmur" of the sea, which he regards as a symptom
of its disturbing, pervasive vitality: "It \[the sea\] is at the
boundaries of physics, and physics is bathed in it, it lies under the
cuttings of all phenomena, a Proteus taking on any shape, the matter and
flesh of manifestations. The noise --- intermittence and turbulence ---
quarrel and racket --- this sea noise is the originating rumour and
murmuring, the original hate." [^2]
Liquid bodies are anything but banal; they are subversive, resisting
control, atomization, and, ultimately, mechanization. Their fundamental
unpredictability and unruly multi-potentiality evades our tendency to
control and subordinate it to human desire -- even when industrial
apparatuses are used. Indeed, we are required to continually negotiate
our terms of engagement with such liquid bodies and find ourselves ill
equipped to quell their monstrous transformations, or impose order upon
their undifferentiated expanses. Although these rebellious
characteristics are palpable, to go beyond metaphorical rhetoric
requires their material nature to be 'named.' For example, they may be
recognised as fields, like 'badlands,' as reported by fishermen, where
it is difficult to navigate the water. Another example are interfaces:
where oil meets water and lifelike patterns emerge, which are
reminiscent of jellyfish or worms. In this way, an actual dialogue may
begin that embraces the complexity and character of the liquid realm.
In an age of instability, where matter is at the edge of chaos, liquids
persistently respond to uncertain terrains by exhibiting dynamic
patterns and structures. Think of a whirlpool or tornado where
repetitions of processes within a site confer persistence upon a
structure, rather than being obedient to the absolute position or
configuration of atoms. The operative agents of this realm are
'paradoxical' objects[^3] that are made up of the constant flow of
matter and energy. These structures can occur at many different scales
and become increasingly complex with time. They do not only act
independently but can also collaborate, linking together like
hurricanes, to form massively distribute hubs of activity across the
surface of the planet. Such hyper-structures not only form weather
fronts, but also manifest as soils and forests, which exist in many
niches and at multiple scales through the metabolic activity of a web of
beings. Collectively, they contribute to the active forces of nature.
**Liquid life**
The notion of *liquid life* draws attention to alternative
pathways that are self-organizing and self-sustaining. Liquids that
'act' through their own agency may open up opportunities to work with
the natural realm in new ways, by thinking along, with, and through
liquids -- both as a metaphor and as a technology. In this way ideas can
be tested, refined, and developed towards particular dreams, challenges,
and futures. Such expanded perspectives also engage with alternative
power and identity relationships that move towards inclusive, horizontal
interrelations, which are consistent with an ecological era by
distributing agency through continuous media, rather than the discrete
atoms and packets of 'information' that characterise mechanistic
frameworks. This continuity is therefore not bounded like objects, but
is expanded through immanent spaces.
An example is in the work of Viktor Schauberger who regarded water as an
organism. He invented apparatuses for enlivening slow flowing and
polluted water by inducing turbulence that made water livelier. The new
energy provided by the vortices in these bodies of water could also be
used to perform useful work, like transporting lumber. At the same time,
rivers and streams were revitalised by these technologies. Such
approaches dilute, decentre, and reduce the environmental impact of a
particular kind of human presence in the construction of industrial
processes. It also critically proposes notions of society that embrace
all humans and even includes species that have become so intrinsic to
our biology they are integral to our being. For example, bacterial
commensals (bacterial microbiome), symbionts (pets), and even 'living'
fossils (mitochondrial bodies, viral and bacterial gene sequences in
'junk' DNA) are fundamental to our existence; their diffusion within our
flesh conferring us with unique character. As members of our 'fluid'
communities, their rights and (potential) responsibilities are
emphasised, as are notions of agency and modes of conversation. Such
considerations invite alternative ideas about personhood with the
potential extension to chimpanzees, dolphins, machines, land, rivers,
and even planet Earth.
These recognitions may also extend to building coalitions for
(environmental) peace and include plants (ancient trees), insects (bees
and other pollinators), soil organisms (mycorrhiza), and other creatures
upon which our immediate existence depends. Of course, such notions,
which are woven throughout the cycles of life and death, could
potentially extend indefinitely to embrace every being on the planet.
However, from a 'lived' perspective, community members are bestowed
relevance through anthropological ethical concerns and values, which are
played out in the construction of social groupings that are at the heart
of ecological change. An 'ecological' ethics however is necessary, so
that the intimate connections between fluid bodies and their habitats
can be sorted, ordered, and valued according to the requirements and
character of particular places and their communities. Yet, these
groupings may no longer be recognizable according to current conventions
of naming and classification -- in other words, \[z an ecological
shifting of our value frameworks will inevitably produce monsters --
namely, uncategorisable beings z\].
**Direct encounter between liquid bodies**
Although existing life forms may
already be read as liquid bodies, they are inevitably still framed
within the conventions of the Animal Machine, which invokes discourses
of efficiency, geometric perfection, hierarchies, and determinism. To
circumvent these biases, an apparatus for provoking direct encounters
with liquid bodies is needed to produce a unique semiotic portrait of
liquid life that corresponds with the dynamics of the living realm. This
may be explored through poetics or graphical notations, -- yet all forms
of representation of liquid bodies are problematic as they are
incomplete -- enabling the liquid realm to 'speak' in its own terms is
preferable.
An apparatus that I have been working with since 2009, the Bütschli
System, arises spontaneously from intersecting liquid fields -- olive
oil and strong (3M) alkali. This uniquely varied, yet predictable
chemical recipe, produces lifelike bodies that spontaneously move, show
sensitivity to their surroundings and respond to each other.[^4] The
strange, yet somewhat familiar images, symbols and behaviours that arise
from the Bütschli system may be read as recognisable bodies and
behaviours that arise from the tensions between interacting material
fields at the edge of chaos. Yet they can be engaged and shaped by
physical and chemical languages. For example, adjusting external factors
that alter surface tension can induce specific movements like
clustering; while changing internal factors such as adding salt
solutions to the mixture, enables droplets to make sculptural
formations. How these outputs are read or interpreted is established
through juxtapositions against multiple disciplines such as prose
poetry, science, and design notations.
A human-scale example of this kind of experiment was held as a
performance called "Temptations of the Nonlinear Ladder"[^5], which was
performed at the Palais de Tokyo in April 2016 for the Do Disturb
Festival. An environment was constructed using a black mirror with a
reflective metal disc suspended above it which generated multiple
interfaces between ground, water, and air. Circus artists explored these
spaces, improvising connections between them while using their bodies as
liquid apparatuses. The audience was invited to gaze into the reflective
surfaces that episodically appeared through the performance space and -
as if they were telling the future - bestow meaning on the images they
observed. In this way, the radical human bodies were transfigured at
interfaces where they acquired imminent meaning -- becoming a language
of flux.
Similarly, Bütschli droplets also begin to reveal a world through a
liquid perspective, conjuring new words, concepts, and relationships
into existence. Such notations may enable us to inhabit spaces more
ecologically, understanding how we may engage the infrastructures and
fabrics that enable life rather than building mechanical objects for
living in. Our apparatuses for inhabitation may acquire increasingly
lifelike characteristics that extend the realm of the home and city into
the ecosphere, where internal and external spaces are engaged in
meaningful and mutual conversation. For example, \[z\] a house may be
able to recycle its water and metabolically transform waste substances
into useful products \[z\]. This is a pursuit of the "Living
Architecture"[^6] project and is envisioned as a next-generation
selectively programmable bioreactor that is capable of extracting
valuable resources from sunlight, wastewater, and air and then generates
oxygen, proteins, and biomass. "Living Architecture" uses the standard
principles of both photo-bioreactor and microbial fuel cell
technologies, which are adapted to work together synergistically to
clean wastewater, generate oxygen, provide electrical power, and
generate useable biomass (fertilizer). The outputs of these systems are
then metabolically 'programmed' by the synthetic bioreactor to generate
useful organic compounds like sugars, oils and alcohols[^7].
IMAGE by Simone Ferracina \* When life is considered through a liquid
lens, it is no longer a deterministic, object-oriented machine but soft,
protean, and integrated within a paradoxical, planetary-scale material
condition that is unevenly distributed spatially but temporally
continuous.\*\[THE ITALICISED TEXT INDICATES THE PLACEMENT OF THE
IMAGE\]
Manifesto
**Liquid** life is an uncertain realm. The concepts
needed to realise its potential have not yet existed until now. The
hypercomplexity and hyperobject-ness of liquid terrains exceeds our
ability to observe or comprehend them in their totality. Indeed, what we
typically recognise as living things are by-products of liquid
processes.
**Liquid** life is a worldview. A phantasmagoria of effects,
disobedient substances, evasive strategies, dalliances, skirmishes,
flirtations, addictions, quantum phenomena, unexpected twists, sudden
turns, furtive exchanges, sly manoeuvres, blind alleys, and exuberant
digressions. It cannot be reduced into simple ciphers of process,
substance, method, or technology. It is more than a set of particular
materials that comprise a recognizable body. It is more than vital
processes that are shaped according to specific contexts and subjective
encounters. Yet we recognise its coherence through the lives of
'beings', which remain cogent despite incalculable persistent changes
such as flows, ambiguities, transitional states and tipping points that
bring about radical transformation within physical systems.
**Liquid** life is a kind of 'metabolic weather'. It is a dynamic
substrate - or *hyperbody* - that permeates the atmosphere, liquid
environments, soils and Earth's crust. 'Metabolic weather' refers to
complex physical, chemical and even biological outcomes that are
provoked when fields of matter at the edge of chaos collide. It is a
vector of infection, an expression of recalcitrant materiality and a
principle of *ecopoiesis*, which underpins the process of living,
lifelike events -- and even life itself. These life forms arise from
energy gradients, density currents, *katabatic flows*, whirlwinds, dust
clouds, pollution and the myriad expressions of matter that detail our
(earthy, liquid, gaseous) terrains.
**Liquid** life is immortal. Arising from our unique planetary
conditions, its ingredients are continually re-incorporated into active
metabolic webs through cycles of life and death. Most deceased liquid
matter lies quiescent, patiently waiting for its reanimation through the
persistent metabolisms within our soils.
**Liquid** life exceeds rhetoric. Its concepts can be embodied and
experimentally tested using a trans-disciplinary approach, which draws
upon a range of conceptual lenses and techniques to involve the liquid
realm with its own 'voice'. From these perspectives liquid technologies
emerge that are capable of generating new kinds of artefacts, like
Bütschli droplets, which are liquid chemical assemblages capable of
surprisingly lifelike behaviours. These agents exceed rhetoric, as they
possess their own agency, semiotics, and choreographic impulses, which
allow us to value and engage in discourse with them on *their* terms.
The difficulty and slippages in meaning and volition between
participating bodies creates the possibility of en evolving poly-vocal
dialectics.
**Liquid** life provokes an expanded notion of consciousness. Its
'thinking' is a molecular sea of possibilities that resist the rapid
decay towards thermodynamic equilibrium. In these vital moments it
indulges every possible tactic to persist, acquiring a rich palette of
natural resources, food sources, waste materials, and energy fields.
These material alliances necessitate decisions that do not require a
coordinating centre, like the brain.
**Liquid** are non-bodies. They are without formal boundaries and
are constantly changing.
**Liquid** bodies are paradoxical structures that possess their
own logic. Although classical laws may approximate their behaviour, they
cannot predict them. They are tangible expressions of nonlinear material
systems, which exist outside of the current frames of reference that our
global industrial culture is steeped in. Aspects of their existence
stray into the unconventional and liminal realms of auras, quantum
physics, and ectoplasms. In these realms they cannot be appreciated by
objective measurement and invite subjective engagement, like poetic
trysts. Their diversionary tactics give rise to the very acts of life,
such as the capacity to heal, adapt, self-repair, and empathize.
**Liquid** bodies are pluri-pontent. They are capable of many acts
of transformation. They de-simplify the matter of being a body through
their visceral entanglements. While the bête machine depends on an
abstracted understanding of anatomy founded upon generalizations and
ideals, liquid bodies resist these tropes. Liquid bodies discuss a mode
of existence that is constantly changing -- not as the cumulative
outcomes of 'error' -- but as a highly choreographed and continuous
spectrum stream of events that arise from the physical interactions of
matter. They internalize other bodies as manifolds within their
substance and assert their identity through their environmental
contexts. Such entanglements invoke marginal relations between multiple
agencies and exceed the classical logic of objects. They are inseparable
from their context and offer ways of thinking and experimenting with the
conventions of making and being embodied.
**Liquid** bodies invite us to articulate the fuzziness, paradoxes
and uncertainties of the living realm. They are still instantly
recognizable and can be named as tornado, cirrus, soil, embryo, or
biofilm. These contradictions -- of form and constancy -- encourage
alternative readings of how we order and sort the world, whose main
methodology is through relating one body to another. Indeed, protean
liquid bodies help us understand that while universalisms, averages and
generalizations are useful in producing maps of our being in the world,
they neglect specific details, which 'bring forth' the materiality of
the environment.
**Liquid** bodies are political agents. They re-define the
boundaries and conditions for existence in the context of dynamic,
unruly environments. They propose alternative modes of living that are
radically transformed, monstrous, coherent, raw -- and selectively
permeated by their nurturing media.
**Liquid** bodies invite us to understand our being beyond
relational thinking and invent monsters that defy all existing forms of
categorization to make possible a new kind of corporeality. They are
what remain when mechanical explanations can no longer account for the
experiences that we recognise as 'being alive.'
*"Liquid life arises from out of a soup, smog, a scab, fire -- where the
incandescent heavens rain molten rock and alkali meets oil -- a
choreography of primordial metabolic flames. Amidst the reducing
atmosphere of choking toxic gases, its coming-into-being draws
momentarily into focus and recedes again. The unfathomable darkness of
the Hadean epoch is reincarnated here. It is drenched in thick gas
clouds, unweathered dusts, and pungent vapours, which obfuscate the
light. The insulating blanket of gaseous poisons protects the land
against the cruel stare of ultraviolet rays and ionizing space
radiation, which spite the Earth's surface. Out of these volatile
caustic bodies, a succession of chemical ghosts haunts the heavy
atmosphere. Here, imaginary figures, like those that appear in a fevered
condition, split faint light around. They wander among the auras of
turbulent interfaces and thickening densities of matter, scum and crust.
Over the course of half a billion years, sudden ectoplasms spew in
successive acts over the darkened theatre of the planet. Charged skies,
enlivened by the ionic electricity of fluids and periodically lit with
photon cuts, strike blows into the ground to begin the process of
chemical evolution. Dancing under ionic winds electric storms scratch at
the Earth and charged tendrils of matter stand on their end. Vulgar in
its becoming, the blubber slobbers on biomass with carbohydrate teeth,
drooling enzymes that digest nothing but its own bite. Energetically
incontinent, it acquires a cold metabolism and a watery heart. Expanding
and contacting, it starts to pump universal solvent through its liquid
eyes, lensing errant light into its dark thoughts. Mindless, yet finely
tuned to its context, it wriggles upon time's compost, chewing and
chewing with its boneless jaws on nothing but the agents of death. In
its structural disobedience, the misshapen mass steadily grows more
organized and reluctant to succumb to decay. Patterning the air, its
fingers extend like claws, obstructing its passage between the poles of
oblivion. Caressing itself in gratuitous acts of procreation, the daub
offers contempt for the forces of disorder, and crawls steadily towards
being."*
**footnotes**
[^1]: Morton, Timothy. *Hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology
after the end of the world.* Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2014.
[^2]: Serres, Michael. *Genesis*. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press,
1996. 14.
[^3]: Also termed 'dissipative structures' by Ilya Prigogine
[^4]: Armstrong, Rachel. *Vibrant Architecture. Matter as a CoDesigner of
Living Structures*. De Gruyter Open, 2015.
[^5]: A collaboration between
Rachel Armstrong, Professor of Experimental Architecture, Newcastle
University, Rolf Hughes, Professor of Artistic Research, Stockholm
University of the Arts, Olle Sandberg, Director, Cirkör LAB and circus
artists Methinee Wongtrakoon (contortionist) and Alexander Dam
(acrobat), with technical rigging by Joel Jedström
[^6]: The Living
Architecture project received funding from the European Union's Horizon
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement no. 686585.
It is made possible by a collaboration of experts from the universities
of Newcastle, UK; the West of England (UWE Bristol); Trento, Italy; the
Spanish National Research Council in Madrid; LIQUIFER Systems Group,
Vienna, Austria; and Explora, Venice, Italy, that began in April 2016
and runs to April 2019.
[^7]: "Living Architecture LIAR -- transform our
habitats from inert spaces into programmable sites.\" Living
Architecture. 2016. Accessed September 16, 2017.
http://livingarchitecture-h2020.eu/.
References
Armstrong, Rachel. *Vibrant Architecture. Matter as a
CoDesigner of Living Structures.* De Gruyter Open, 2015.
"Living Architecture LIAR -- transform our habitats from inert spaces
into programmable sites." Living Architecture. 2016. Accessed September
16, 2017. http://livingarchitecture-h2020.eu/.
Morton, Timothy. *Hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology after the end of
the world.* Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Serres, Michael. *Genesis.* Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996.
Glossary
**Animal machine** or Bête machine, is a philosophical
notion from Descartes which implied the fundamental difference between
animals and humans (cf. L'homme Machine). Now this theory is strongly
challenged.
**Componentization** is the process of atomizing
(breaking down) resources into separate reusable packages that can be
easily recombined. Componentization is the most important feature of
(open) knowledge development as well as the one that is, at present,
least advanced.
**Ecopoiesis** is the artificial creation of a
sustainable ecosystem on a lifeless planet.
**Ectoplasm** is a
supernatural viscous substance that supposedly exudes from the body of a
medium during a spiritualistic trance and forms the material for the
manifestation of spirits.
**Hyperbody** is a living system that
exceeds conventional boundaries and definitions of existence. For
example, a slime mould in its plasmodial form that looks like a
membranous slug is a hyperbody; it is formed by the merging of many
individual cells to form a single, coordinated giant cell.
**Hypercomplexity** is an organizational condition that is founded
on the principles of complexity from which new levels of order arise
from interactions between components, but that exceeds a classical
understanding of complex systems through their scale, heterogeneity,
distribution and capacity to transform their surroundings.
**Hyperobjects** are entities of such vast temporal and spatial
dimensions that they cannot be perceived in their entirety and defeat
traditional ideas about the discreteness and certainty associated with
individual bodies.
**Katabatic** flows are wind currents.
**Microbial Fuel Cell** is a metabolically powered apparatus that
under anaerobic conditions, converts organic matter into electricity,
fresh water and oxygen.
**Photobioreactor** is a system that uses
the ability of micro-organisms to convert light and carbon dioxide into
biomass, like sugars, alcohol and cellulose.
**Scrying** is
reading the future against the present by using unstable images produced
by reflective surfaces.