Visual Research Proposal
GÉNÉRA
ὑφαίνω — I weave
Τί ἐστιν ἱστός?
What is tissue?
Biofabrication
We borrowed the biofabrication methodology from disciplines other than biology and medicine.
Hastily
Active Matter
Then we moved to the extreme materialism of active matter.
Hastily
Fabrication
The methodology engrained in biofabrication requires an intellectual blueprint. It imposes certain views on a tissue concept which we argue against — cells as bricks.
Active Matter
Appealing from the first view, our philosophies of active matter (self-assembly) give too much power to the matter itself, limiting our ability to intervene.
Holding-Together
We always oscillate between two extremes. As a remedy, we deploy balance machines, bringing our views to equilibrium.
The Paradigm Shift
Sewing.
A sewing machine implies tissue re-conceptualized as threads. Instead of biofabrication mediated by mental scaffolds, we haptically connect with tissue and sew it.
The Goal
I want to prove that this machine is conceptually possible and that there is a way to build it.
Dualism
Descartes believed our mere ability to think is sufficient to claim we exist. The other extreme — extended objects which we manipulate and measure. The inner blueprint is translated onto external objects resulting in scaffolding.
Scaffolding
Stemming from biofabrication, scaffolding allows precise placing of entities. Through scaffolding, we expound mental images onto the external world and materialize mental concepts.
Monism / Materialism
Active Matter approaches emerged to counter dualism, fueled by Complex Systems and Chaos Theory. Bird flocks, bioelectricity, and glassy dynamics explore self-organizing matter.
Conundrum
There is a call for autonomous and original tissue conceptualizations. The proponents of neither dualistic nor materialistic paradigms can offer sufficient answers.
Stop taking theories for granted.
We should forget not only the physical phenomena of tissue formation, but also the wikipedial tissue definition: "an ensemble of similar cells...". What if cells and ECM are epiphenomena?
Dasein
Dasein is an entity which asks about its being. We shall ask the tissue about its being, its Dasein. We need to explore states of being to fully connect to the textural. The tissue must become Zuhanden.
Phenomenological Spots
Instead of treating cells as bricks and ECM as cement, we can visualize single phenomenological "spots" in the texture. The textural phenomenon is liberated from our presuppositions.
Actual Occasions
Whitehead's concept: discrete moments of becoming that make up the universe. These occasions integrate perspectives and generate novelty in weaving the tissue.
Loom
To make the tissue Zuhanden, a new mode of being and making — weaving — has to be invented. There are special machines to facilitate the entrance into the textile world: looms.
Machines
Carbon machines bring us closer to the object. Silicon machines bring the object to us. We need a third type — a time-cutting machine (TJ-machine), which can operate with time itself.
Historial
History is a sequence of facts; historial is a sequence of meanings. Tissue is a mere interlacement of different textural historials.
TJ-Machine
A Time-Jockey machine that operates with textural timelines, arbitrarily reassembling them, cutting and sewing the threads using a special gesture syntaxis.
Generative Bowel
In the absence of a proper matrix for a tissue to develop from, we are forced to exploit its historicity and nudge it through serial recapitulation and interlacement of its historial.
If we could arbitrarily mix and interweave the textural worlds, we would come to a conceptually new type of a machine. It will be able to literally sew texture worlds and generate new tissues qua tissues.
Généra is a new way to talk about tissue and to tissue.
Généra is the only way to be with the tissue.