shimmer in the blockchain landscape

Howard Morphy writes about the Australian Aboriginal Yolngu peoples' concept of Bir'Yun – the transformation of a cultural painting from the rough, dull contour of the underpainting to the brilliance of the final work, which is filled with crosshatching to indicate “a shimmering quality of light which engenders an emotional response” [3]. Morphy suggests this idea operates cross-culturally [3]. Morphy and Deborah Bird Rose extend this concept to the shimmering pulses of life — seasons, new life, sun glistening on rippling water [3], streams of light in the landscape and the interconnections, emergence and withdrawal between interacting species, those termed as having symbiotic mutualism [4].

Shimmer requires a process of transformation – energy translating from one form to another, from dullness to brilliance. ​

"Nothing is connected to everything, everything is connected to something" notes Donna Haraway [1] via Thom van Dooren [5]. Mapping this to a network topology to see a visualization of it shows similarities with peer-to-peer networks and the topology of decentralized blockchain networks. These network maps or topologies of interconnections based on this idea can be seen in ecology also from high level view, such as species' interactions with each other and their environments as well as down to the low level view of cellular / organelle evolutionary mappings created via the symbiotic interconnections idea proposed by Lynn Margulis' 1960s serial endosymbiosis theory (SET)[2]. From a topological view, we can see that the decentralized network topology of ecology is similar to the decentralized topology of the blockchain.​

If landscapes in the physical world shimmer due to the interconnections and relationships between species, their habitats and the land in their physical environments, do digital landscapes on the blockchain shimmer as well? This exhibition is a speculative exploration of these ideas, using the underlying approach of placing extinct species onto the blockchain via my specture research project. In an attempt to de-centre the human, and see the species’ view: what would the landscape and habitats look like in their new digital environments; would they shimmer as well?​

References
[1] Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Experimental Futures series. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Kindle eBook edition.​
[2] Margulis, Lynn. 1998. Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution. New York: Basic Books. Kindle eBook edition.​
​[3] Morphy, Howard. 1989. "From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power Among the Yolngu." Man 24(1): 21-40. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2802545.​
​[4] Rose, Deborah Rose. 2022. Shimmer – Flying Fox Exuberance in Worlds of Peril. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Kindle eBook edition.​
[5] Van Dooren, Thom. 2014. Flight Ways - Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction. New York: Columbia University Press. Kindle eBook edition.​

Note: this text is from my exhibition proposal during the "Curation for Digital" 6 month program at Node Center for Curatorial Studies, completed March 2024 (2023-24 cohort). This is currently a "wish list" exhibition exercise for class studies only, it wasn't exhibited physically, and art works haven't been approved, but who knows, perhaps one day it will be. Publishing here as part of my specture research project

Exhibition text
Shimmer in the landscape can be thought of as the transformation from dull to brilliance, the glistening of activity and the pulse of life, of interconnections in ecology in the landscape. If landscapes in the physical world shimmer due to decentralised ecology and its interconnections and relationships between species, their habitats and the land in their physical environments, do digital landscapes on the blockchain shimmer as well? This exhibition is a speculative exploration of these ideas. In an attempt to de-centre the human, and see the species’ view: what would the landscape and habitats look like in their new digital environments; would they shimmer as well?​

Selected pages from the exhibition design proposal (full proposal not shown here)