Kinship: Response to Slanted Things and The Companion Species Manifesto Readings

As I go through the readings assigned specifically about kinship, I have a lot of ideas swirling around my head, and am struggling to get them organized enough to have an idea to write about. So I thought I’d just get writing and see what comes out.

• With regard to colonial organisms:
  • In some types of colonial organisms, there are different zooid types, that have different jobs. Some are the protectors, some are the navigators, etc. At first I assumed that each zooid was equal with one another, regardless of their “job”.
  • I’ve been struggling a bit to understand the difference between colonial organisms, and organisms that live in a colony. My high level understanding of colonial organisms are organisms that are comprised of lots of smaller organisms (zooids). The zooids are attached to each other (I think), and would not survive without each other. Organisms such as coral are easy for me to identify as colonial organisms. But what about ants? They live in a colony, and I don’t think they would survive very well solo. But they’re not physically connected – is this a requirement to be considered a colonial organism?
  • After reading the introduction to Slanted Things by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, I couldn’t get the concept of Gaia out of my head, and Margulis and Sagan’s simple definition: “Gaia theory… views Earth’s biosphere (the place where life exists) as a single, self-regulating entity: the Earth is alive.” Could Earth be a colonial organism? Maybe my desire to have an exact definition of what a colonial organism is and is not really isn’t that helpful. Everything on earth is connected to each other in some way – even if it’s by air, and gravity, energy. And I think that all organisms on earth require some sort of relationship with another organism in order to survive.
  • “Strictly speaking, to be symbionts individual members of at least two species myst touch each other most of the time”
  • “… all living things on Earth are in physical contact through tis water, atmosphere and soils, and that they all dwell in a coating on the surface of a limited planet”
  • At some point, I began to wonder if there is any sort of hierarchy in the structures that zooids make. Are the navigators more important than the feeders for example? Is there any sort of subjugation amongst the zooids? Are the colonialist colonial organisms?
  • What does it mean to be an individual?
• With regard to my guide project:
  • At first I thought I wanted to do something similar to the Parable of the Polygon by Nikki Case. I was thinking of showing the relationship between zooids in a colonial organism by allowing the user to drag shapes that represent different zooids around on their screen. But as the past few weeks have shown, time spent doing technical work in front of a computer is not something my life is lacking at the moment. Between Connections Lab and my day-to-day work, I am in front of a screen a lot! Maybe it would be beneficial to do something a bit more analog for this class.
  • I’ve been thinking about kinship in terms of connection, and one way that I understand connection is through physical contact with the work that I’m doing. This would lend itself to a more analog exploration.
  • As I was brainstorming some ideas for my guide, this Instagram post came up, which shows people making paper doll cats out of paper with brass fasteners to hold the joints together. Something with paper form, that are connected with yarn or something could be an interesting physical representation of what a colonial organism is.