#camouflagemimicskin

Fig. 1: Capetown Kelp Forest, HD video still, Maggie Roberts 2020

Hashtags translate themes and motifs into a language that algorithms register, allowing them to connect a series of words or images. This hashtag hoard/swarm is assembled in no particular order, rather as a mesh of associations reaching out to a fictional AI called OctoGANN, in order to communicate multidimensional imaginings from the lifeworld of a camouflaging octopus.

#electromagneticfrequencies #nonhumanmaterialconsciousness #syntheticinformationterrains #networkedcommunicationcurrents #incoming #hapticspace #folds #proliferation #immersion #pointclouds #uncertainty #incandescence #artificialcolour #theconsistencyoffabulation #anuncontainablespacethatisaborderingwithoutborder,alimitingthatcannotbelimitedradicaldifferencethatcannotbecollapsedintoestablishedscientificnorms #screenleakage #theinnersurface #thecentrefallsaway #hallucination #fascinators #emergentthresholds #culturalanimals #plenitudesofsensation #xenocommunication #inorganicdesire #transformation #onepartxenoonepartfelia #perceptrons #digitalnoise #repetition #strangesignals #plasticity #theunknown #edgeeffects #latentspace #unmooredfromgravity #entropicemergence #experimentalembodiment #unsettledontologies #thecorporealimaginary #cephalods #thefeminine #computationalocean #emancipatorypractices #porousskins #doubleagents #octophobia (fear of opening your eyes) #messyinteractions #emotionalintelligence #nterspeciescommunication #consciousexotica #desirepaths #imaginationasinterface #iteration #becomingradicallyother #hooksforthefuture #fictioning #intimattertraffic #tentacular #visceralspontaneity #baroquefolds #informedintuition #openingupthehumanbodytocontingency #moebian #toobigandtooclosetosee  #embodiedlandscapeofmanyentitiesandinformation #thehumanaspermeable #volatileimmanence #adynamicconglomerate #itsimpressionsareoftheplasticityofformandsensation #incoherence #thesenderbecomesinvisibletoitsreceiver #mimeticcontagion #evertingthevirtual #generate #disassemble #saturate #entirelyfeasibleconsciousnessutterlyinaccessibletohumanexperience #theentanglementsofsubjectswiththeirmaterialconditionseveniftheseconditionsarefantastic   #streamingcamouflage #theartofswimming #somuchisblurry #distributedexpansivebodies #whereisthesubject #hamperedbyanthropomorphicimagination #saturatedsyntheticcolour #acommunityofteleologiesinasingledirectedagentthatoperatesinvolumeratherthangeometry #deployingandinhabitinghybridityinvolutionattachmentassemblagegatheringandentanglement #itdefiestheveryconceptofplaceasadelineationofmateriality #amaterialitydefinedbydistortion #tofantasiseortofictionalizemakevirtualmateriality #skinsofthefuture #informationgathering #camouflage #seeing #reflecting #texturing #sampling #warmwhiteiscalm #orangeiscurious #chromachatteratermforthefastpsychedelicflowofmanydifferentcoloursacrosstheskin #processesofiterationandfluidreconstruction #hypersensitivityiskey #elastictrickery #nonverbalcolourandtexturebasedcommunication #redpurplebrightbluealizarin #excitementfearanger #fluidmesmericflows #astreamofconsciousness #amalgamations #extremesofgravityliquidityforcesandskins #enchantment #overproximity #thequantumuniverse #hungryfortouch #theskinwavesfoldspleatsinrepetitionsandswellings #polymodalsensing #oozinginstantaneoussimulatingvolatileelusivemorphingmatter #infinitelyflexibleandelastic #fasttrackadaptationsformodellinguncertainty #masktensors #noncausalconvolutions #stochasticcodeasrandomprobabilitydistribution #waveformterrains #returnfeatures #topologicalintelligence #geneticalgorithmscreatingconnections #figure-groundfolds #transformationisnotaprocessbutarelation #sinkingdeeplyintomatter #expandedbeing #expandingbodies #wonderasatool #allure #visualnoisegeneratedinlowlight #interobjectperception #avirtualbodythatcanbecomesoftrigidmonstrousvisibleinvisibleshrinkblanket #rupture  #acquiescingtomultiplicitysimultaneitypossibility #infinitelyambiguous #expressionsofexcessvitality #underwaterisspatiallyundifferentiated #incoherenceasaformofinformation # corestreams #impersonationsofrocksandotherbeings #passingcloudformations # pressuredrops #wavesofsensationinmoleculardetail #suckersexploringwithprecisecomplicationinthehydrosphere #confusedboundariesbetweentheanimateandinanimate #luminousshapeshifting #whitenoise #theentanglednon-decidablecoexistenceoftwoperspectiveseachhidingtheotherinordertoappear #redefiningcognitionaspatternrecognitionandthecapacitytorespondtoenvironmentalchanges #cognitiveassemblagesforthemutableanduncertain #papillaetexturemappingsurfacesbeingtouched #matricesofpossibilities #eroticintelligence #biomimicry #theoctopusbrainbodythreatensboundaries #inkydeceptionfolds #unfixedcolour #chromatophores #seeingskin #megapixelbody #violetpatterninvisibles #morphicfields #telepathy #involution #stretchintolinesofflight #somethingisassembling #vibrationalswellings #shapeshifters #viscosity #meioticsecrets #mimeticwiththeoutside #exuberance #unbridledstates #resistingencasedsentience #thekaleidoscopeyoudancein #polarisedprismaticvision  #letgoofcentralfocus #emeraldgreens #turquoiseshimmer #thosedeepdarkbentpupilsseparatinglightintothewhitelightcolourspectrum #irridescence #tacticfordefyingtyrannicaltaxonimicalordersofbeing #vividintimacy #elusive #afictionalbodyintheprocessofbecomingliquid #openingtointensivelife #thinklikeanavatar                                                                  #receptivetoelectromagneticvibrationsaswellasthresholdsandgradientsofinformation #oozesundulatesconcertinasspreads #imitative #polymophous #unfix #projectcolourandlight #slipoutofyourpointofview #vomitstreamsofwater #makeotherformsvisible #creative #radical #fluid #plastic #surplus #glitching #sometimesviolent #alwayscontingent #random #becomingtouch

Biomimicry is the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes. Octopuses are a rich, almost endless source of biomimicry inspiration to date. The Becoming Octopus Meditations imagine biomimicry from inside the perspective of the materiality, sentience, perception and proprioception of the entity being mimicked, rather than from that of the scientific observation-led Western humancentric viewpoint. For the mimicking octopus, this would include mimicking entities that are inorganic, even synthetic.

Fig. 2: Cephalopod Hallucination, 4K video still, Marcelo Johan Ogata 2021

A fictioning experiment, the Meditations were an online commission for IMT Gallery, London (2020), made possible by my being Covid locked down in a marine protected area of South Africa’s Capetown coastline. The intention was to share an experiential journey into the lifeworld of the Octopus, and in doing so, ask eco ethical questions about how we think, see, navigate and create. I worked with

Anna Breytenbach, a renowned South African interspecies communicator to ask, for example, how camouflage is experienced by an octopus, which added a vital immersive perspective to my marine biology research on the phenomenon. The interspecies communication downloads came as a series of initially disconcerting physical sensations or visualisations which expanded my sense of how we can know things experientially, when the body is the first site of intelligence. Anna uses a mixture of meditation, telepathic visualisation and what is termed quantum field resonance techniques. The body receives information which is then interpreted by the mind.

The meditation voices fold seamlessly between octopus, AI and occasionally human perspectives.

The sessions begin: ‘You float in viscous silky liquid, dappled by light rays stretched and polarized into a kaleidoscope of synthetic colours. Turning slowly, mesmerized by being in a horizonless world, held in a slower gravitational field. Turning slowly, attuning to the textures and frequencies of the coral you are becoming. Merged, intimate, indistinguishable to the visual sense, resonating through touch, taste and smell. The ocean moves through you. She's there, although you won't see her, being as the rock, and your depleted imagination keeps her unseen, barely possible. What needs shifting is the relation of human perception to its difference’. (Roberts, Becoming Octopus Meditation 1, 2020)

In the Western worldview, our imitative faculty shows us the represented world, not a complex or uncertain model of reality. Perspective is a psychologically conditioned interpretation of the Real by which the West has separated figure from ground and thus diminished the worlds complexity. Underwater, however, it is a different universe, one of visual distortion and viscosity. There is rare figure ground accuracy – and for the octopus, one continually becomes the other. Its imitative faculties render its being in iterations of becoming-the-same-as. It mimics its world with seemingly magical colour changes and protean tactility - instantaneous skin responses using papillae muscle webs in the skin and the three colour-changing or reflecting cell layers in the skin (chromatophores, iridophores and leucophores), all are part of its myriad array of mimetic tools.

Despite the mesmerising colours, this skin is imaging its environment in ways that are not primarily vision-led, but tactile and vibrational. Light receptors in the skin register the specific waves that each colour expresses, as vibration and touch. An octopus responds to the surfaces it moves over or settles on, and as this happens, the eyes seem to be looking at the wider environment whilst the suckers taste touch and the skin sees close up. Thinking about the octopus as a multidimensional sentient skin whose methodologies challenge us to imagine ways of communicating without meaning – through a kind of becoming the same as, may have a more intimate purpose than that of mimicry.

Fig. 3: Cephalopod Hallucination, 4K video still, Marcelo Johan Ogata 2021

An octopus needs to trick an array of predator sensory fields. As the octopus ‘disappears’, visual textural trickery blurs any figure ground distinction, and a predator’s visual sense is confused.             

When a video clip of a camouflaging moment is slowed down, it seems that the octopus selects from a set of standby mode patterns that can be produced in a millisecond by the upper chromatophores (muscle-controlled pigment sacs in the skin that are neurally controlled). The pigments in these cells absorb specific wavelengths of light and are refined further as they respond to specifics. The skin is further infused with iridescent colours reflected by the iridophore cells in lower layers of the skin. They are controlled by neurohormones in the seeing skin. They reflect colours in the wavelengths produced by water’s warping and bending of white light, perhaps into the polarised spectrum that the octopus u-shaped pupils register - colour frequencies in the water we cannot see – the polarised, prismatic, refracted, luminous or fluorescent.

Beneath them, the leucophores scatter full spectrum white light and reflect wavelengths filtered by seawater at lower depths. The colour of leucophore and iridophore cells is produced by their respective scattering and optical interference properties. The colour triggers in the skin are also, in part, emotional responses to triggers in the environment, producing a range of oranges, browns, reds and purples as the basic structure of a language of feeling.

It seems then, that camouflaging is mostly about responding to the environment, not projecting into or onto it. What is being mimicked exactly, and with what senses? The tactile and chemo-tactile capabilities of the suckers on the arms respond to a combination of surfaces, known objects, frequencies and vibrations - with perhaps even colour registered by the skin as frequency. The octopus reads differences in oscillation, flow, current, pressure, speed, compression in the water as body (the ocean as a body of water), differences that map water behaviours in direct relation to the environment. These are all, in a way, imaging different intensities of vibration. An octopus is moving in relation to the medium that is around it, distributed through it, inside it.

In terms of Machine Learning, it is important to reflect on how this responding is to an object or terrain inextricably enmeshed with its larger environment – for the octopus, this is the ebb, flow and turbulent movements of an ocean and this medium’s complex distortion of light.

Our eyes evolved from a patch of light sensitive crystals on the end of a tentacle 550 million years ago. Researchers have recently discovered that octopuses have photoreceptors not only in their eyes but also in their skin, which suggests that the skin can see (as well as taste and smell), either by sending the visual information it receives to the octopus’s brain, or by processing the information itself. Either the skin as a whole becomes an eye, or the octopus’s body sees independently of the octopus’s 9th central brain. Even this isn’t the whole story, since the photoreceptors found in an octopus’s skin are, like those in its eyes, insufficient to detect the myriad range of colour projected by its camouflaging skin. The current working hypothesis is that complex interactions between the skin’s photoreceptors and chromatophores allows the octopus to adopt colours it cannot see. Combining sense fields expands the textures of sensory language available, produces cross modal associations.

‘You inhabit your body by sinking into the frequency of other life forms, because in default mode you almost don't have a sense of individual embodiment. You gain a sense of self/subject through a relationship to texture and touching. Subjectivity is in the touching, and you become the texture and shape of the thing being touched as you move. The sensible is not perceived, known or represented. It is ambivalent, spontaneous and intimate, understood through the tactile, haptic, curved, folding and distributed. All of you touches through suckers and a skin that processes and reflects colour frequencies. If an inorganic material is being mimicked, time must be slowed to the point that movement would be almost imperceptible.

Fig. 4: Cephalopod Hallucination, 4K video still, Marcelo Johan Ogata 2021

The tactile registration of your world, its immersive immediacy of sensation, translates into the shaping of your surfaces. Like a map, a 3D modelling skin, it translates and replicates texture, modelling with the papillae nodes in the skin. Protean, you replicate the contours of rock or frond, and their texture-mesh becomes your outer skin. The environment becomes a skin continuous with yours, each encompassing the other’.   (Roberts, Becoming Octopus Meditation 2, 2020)

Based on a presentation for ⇌Encounter ⇌ Stimuli ⇌ Intelligence ⇌ Skin ⇌ Dream, Prof Johnny Golding’s Radical Matter sessions hosted by Martin Reinhart and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna in January 2022.

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References

Bonnet, Francois J. (2015). The Infra-World, Urbanomic, Plymouth, UK.

Cooke, Kirsten (2018). Miasma_A Reader. Available to download at https://www.orphandriftarchive.com/if-ai/miasma-chrominance-ii-res-gallery/

Flusser, Willem and Louis Bec (2012). Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste, University of Minnesota Press.

Rajala, Raju V.S. (2021) Identification and Characterisation of a Rhodopsin Kinase Gene in the Suckers of Octopus vulgaris: Looking around Using Arms?. Academic Education. Stazione Zoologica Napoli
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8465341/

Roberts, Maggie (2020). The Becoming Octopus Meditations, This Is A Not Me, IMT Gallery online, London https://www.orphandriftarchive.com/if-ai/becoming-octopus-meditations/ and
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1180305964?lang=it                                                           

Robertson, Benjamin J. (2018). None of this is Normal: the Fiction of Jeff Vandermeer, University of Minnesota Press.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2013). The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds, HAU books, University of Chicago Press.