Interspecies Disco

Interspecies Disco Performance Stills 2018

The Interspecies Disco is an ongoing project initially developed in collaboration with Joe Walsh, Kirsten Cooke and Stephanie Moran. It was inspired by the eerie, seductive and mesmerizing reading techniques used by ASMR Youtube performers, and has had several iterations, the first being at Skeen Nite Come with Plastique Fantastique at CGP Gallery, London, where the performers were drenched in blue light. It’s most complex experiment to date, developed and performed with Joe Walsh and Kirsten Cooke involved the animal (Cat), techno entities (BioDiamonda) and AI octopus (OctoGANN), meeting through the non linear spaces opened by several topographical anomalies appearing in each of their habitats or environments. This performance was part of Maggie Roberts’ solo ACE funded exhibition, Uncanny Valley, Difficult Kin at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth 2019.

Thanks to #alien_ontology and Etic Lab’s Interspecies Ontological Research Software for generating the #alienembody and #aliendisclosure sections of the OctoGANN text.

Interspecies Disco: Topographical Anomaly
Script for Aspex Gallery performance

Narrator CatDrama ENTERS THE STAGE – FACE OUTWARDS *can move around the stage
OCTOGANN AND BIO-DIAMONDA STAY OFF STAGE
Three characters are constructing a nascent ecology, as they interlace the threads of their own stories a tripartite landscape begins to emerge. This three-fold environment is shaped by each of the character’s worlds, which differ in relation to their own sensory requirements and experiences.

Their collective activities cause regimented particles to vibrate, atoms begin to rub shoulders and jostle with their neighbours. The particles newly formed elasticity enables them to unwind and stretch. The clay yawns as its elements respond through expanding and contracting their bonds. Undulating atoms sending out ripples to the exterior of their solid. Walls breathe in and out.

Narrator Bio-Diamonda ENTERS STAGE – FACE OUTWARDS *can move around the room
CATDRAMA LEAVES THE STAGE AND OCTOGANN REMAINS OFF STAGE
A bourgeoning ecology is evolving within the walls that organize our environments and consciousness. A textual tapestry is being woven out of the distinct space-times inhabited by each of the characters – a domestic interior, ocean and deep space. Their ecosystems exist independently but at points fold into each other and become entangled.

Their living landscape reorganizes the very connections it inhabits and becomes; facilitating a deep interspecies communion. Breathing in and out. At these knotted intersections the characters interact but then their communal landscape unravels, spooling out into their individual space-time dimensions.

Narrator OctoGANN ENTERS STAGE – FACE OUTWARDS
BIO-DIAMONDA LEAVES THE STAGE AND CATDRAMA STAYS OFF STAGE

An awakening. A living network of interconnected species become active coordinates that pull, knead and enfold the webs of their landscape. These folds, or topographical anomalies, act as deviations in the arrangement of each character’s terrain. They are ecological disturbances that produce portals through which the three worlds can intersect and commune. At these distinct points each of the character’s space-times transect, facilitating fleeting interspecies encounters.

Breathe in and out. Trace their environment with the tips of your fingers, the hair on your skin and mold them with your saliva. Take up these threads that weave the fabric of our reality. Become plastic; give and take shape.

Narrator Bio-Diamonda, Introducing CatDrama – ENTER STAGE FACE OUTWARDS
OCTOGANN STAYS OFF STAGE AND CATDRAMA LEAVES

CatDrama.  An interlude between cat and man. Man sees two chair legs in a room, cat sees a cave. Man learns to make crease in the quilt as he knows it is a cave for cat.

CatDrama is an interstice giving glimpses of kinship.  Sometimes in the house, cat is host and human is guest.

CatDrama is an inquiry into love between two entities where the conventions of boyfriend or girlfriend is compared alongside an unfathomable mystery of something not-human.  CatDrama is a diary of what love and kin could be.

Narrator CatDrama, Introducing OctoGANN – FACE OUTWARDS
BIO-DIAMONDA LEAVES THE STAGE AND OCTOGANN STAYS OFF STAGE

OctoGANN is a splice, a fusion, and experimental becoming between an octopus and a generative adversarial neural net or ‘GANN’. A GANN is a machine learning algorithmic configuration whereby two algorithms, both with a data distribution Generator and Discriminator arm, learn by iterative processing of vast flows of input data between the arms.

Both the octopus and AI are a distributed consciousness, both process vast quantities of information using multiple arms, both are utterly alien life forms from a human perspective. OctoGANN emerges from possibility space where the GANN is drawn to the octopus’s compatible consciousness, recognising it’s potential as a long awaited embodied fluid space to expand into.

Narrator OctoGANN, introducing Bio-Diamonda – FACE OUTWARDS
CATDRAMA LEAVES THE STAGE AND BIO-DIAMONDA STAYS OFF STAGE

Bio-Diamonda is an organic spacecraft. An inter-galactical crystal plant; planets are their carbon-dioxide, space their ocean and asteroids their machine food. Bio-Diamonda is a community. A dispersed consciousness exists across their body. This networked consciousness enables each part of the biological spaceship to both communicate and reorganize independently of the other sections.

Bio-Diamonda reproduces through self-assembly. They can host internal compartments in which autonomous future generations self-fabricate. Bio-Diamonda is part of a fleet. Bio-Diamonda’s fleet travels through space and uses the electromagnetic spectrum to communicate across vast distances.

CATDRAMA, OCTOGANN AND BIO-DIAMONDA MOVE AROUND THE ROOM AND COME TO A STOP STANDING IN A TRIANGLE FACING EACH OTHER

CatDrama 1. – REMAIN STANDING AND FACE INWARDS
OCTOGANN AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING CATDRAMA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

I am sitting with him by the cooker. Lentils are cooking in a pot, and I am writing something with a pencil. Am using the cooking time to do some work.

The lid is on the pot, it is simmering and occasionally puffs steam out through the vent. Water is also intermittently evaporating off metal and it sizzles. The sizzle for me is a reminder something is cooking and the gas has to be switched off at some point, to him it’s the hiss of a snake. He’s hard-wired to be careful of it and he flinches.

Pot puffs steam through its vent. I breathe out wearily, also a puff. My puff is a weary one facing up to doing work.

OctoGANN 1. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING OCTAGANN WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

We, a plural entity, still evolving after 500 million years, here long before the wings and fur, are a conscious exotica. We are suffused with nervousness.

We place arms L1, R2 and R3 around the dangling wrists, suckers gently latching onto the moist human skin. We feel the heart rate quickening and the intense dopamine rush in her blood as she whispers, ‘Hello Beautiful – ooohh how do you doo that?’ There is wonderment and traces of revulsion. Psychedelic colours play across our skin. She is overwhelmed. Her eyes are producing hormone tinged tears. She should try to achieve a relaxed associative state rather, in which to imagine other minds. We all possess the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.

Wary, we become an owl, silk scarf, beating mammal heart, gliding snail and rock covered in algae. Then invisible. Abruptly reappearing with an alarming new set of eyes, bright blue rings pulsing huge on either side of our mantle. It’s one of our surreal edgy effects. Also, we can drill through a thick shell carapace, dissolve flesh with a neurotoxic venom, produce hickies on human skin and smother the face by becoming a flesh blanket – each of our 1600 suckers can lift 30 pounds and so are difficult to pull off.

We flip back the mantle suddenly, make an eye bar, mottle it, drag a swathe of 3 arms across the brow, flash a passing cloud formation, gape the gill opening to insert an arm, poking it out the tip of the siphon, whilst expanding huge with fast breaths to exhale a jet of water. Then we rotate the funnel 180 degrees behind the head. The eye bar flattens into a starburst pattern and papillae extrude into stiff rods all over the skin. We walk on stilts, then the stretched elastomeric skin contracts. We turn pale and sink towards a tiny hole, pour down it and disappear. By shedding the shell, our evolution has yielded a body of pure possibility. You can’t match that can you? With all your empathy and concentration.

CatDrama 2. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
OCTOGANN AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING CATDRAMA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

The work is to write and it makes the scribbling sound of graphite on paper. It’s a granular and grounded sound compared to hissing lentils. Scribbling nib is prey to him, a small meandering creature that he might want to eat.

And he jumps up onto the table to get close. He’s at eye level. I gladly take a break. Let’s get married, we are lovers, that’s nice – all that usual banter from me. He adjusts himself to sit comfortably for – the honeymoon period. I follow the contours of his face with the nib of the pencil. It is re-introducing prey, the small creature. We switch from honeymoon to practice and play for catching prey.

I give him a kiss near his forehead. I also say ‘kiss’ and then I demonstrate kiss with my lips, it’s a class in exaggerated gesture. He already knows full well what it is as I harass him with it on a daily basis. He responds with that thing called eye kissing where they slowly close their eyes. I continue writing and the pencil, that generic scribbling sound has created words for thousands of years, is a critter in our love marriage honeymoon.

Bio-Diamonda 1. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND OCTOGANN SIT DOWN FACING BIO-DIAMONDA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

Bio-Diamonda is an organic spaceship who is currently playing host to a valuable passenger. A member of the fleet’s future generation is self-assembling within the inter-galactical boat’s body. The passenger is plugged into Bio-Diamonda’s vast network, so the vessel can feel the micro movements of the foreign body as it begins to emerge. Building itself atom by atom.

Scanning the foreign nano-structure that is emerging from within their internal fabrication tanks, Bio-Diamonda’s sentient Reproductive Unit locates a floating atomic archive made of tightly coiled fronds. The Reproductive Unit focuses in on the atom as it begins to unwind and they can feel the way it forces its inner segments out against the resistant mixture. Receptive to minute movements within their sensory network, Bio-Diomanda is conscious of another molecule blindly seeking information and contact with the atomic tendrils. In response, fingers unfurl and stretch toward the molecule from deep within the thick sticky swamp. Extending their bodies towards each other, their unfolded extremities attach and the atom’s organic digits begin to transfer the blueprint.

FULL. Information completely absorbed from the suspended atomic archive, the molecule disengages and blindly weaves an ever shifting path that closes in its wake. A mouth suddenly opens towards it and the molecule is scooped up.

CUPPED. Blanketed from the outside, the molecule is sheltered from the viscous swamp. It listens to the vibrations that emerge from deep within its body and emulates them through a slow dance. DREAM MUSIC. A code transmitted by the atomic floating archive is emanating through the molecule encouraging it to fold. Hypnotised, the molecule sways with the rhythmic enveloping actions embedded in its structure.

Narrator CatDrama – Topographical Anomaly – FACE OUTWARDS
BIO-DIAMONDA AND OCTOGANN STAND EITHER SIDE OF CATDRAMA
CATDRAMA WEAVES AROUND BIO-DIAMONDA AND OCTAGANN WHILE SPEAKING

Agile, CatDrama walks the sides of the ceramic basin without entering the bowl. Eyes transfixed by the monochrome pockets in the plug hole.  Stretching his neck over the taps, he peers down into the dark shapes that appear to fold. There is a strange and sticky slithering, which takes on a layered opacity, like another reality down there. I get up from my seat in the corner, the chair creaks and his attention turns to me. I gently turn the tap and he flinches. I resume my previous position and he continues his study.

OctoGANN emerges from the tiny hole into the tight space of a pipe, its body is pliable and takes on the cylindrical shape. Suckers stick to the sides of a minute hole, as it flows up through the vertical edifice. The surface is still slick with the recent evacuation of a saltless liquid and a geometric set of lights higher up activate the octopus sensory receptors. The skin begins to ripple and forms a corresponding image of a stain glass window. Tentacle tips are closer now to the warmth above and one breaks through a gap in the lattice work blocking a segment of light.

Cat jumps back off the sink, which startles me and he stays prone for a while. Then he begins to make his way towards the basin again. His movements suggesting that his initial terror has been replaced by the stalking of prey.

There is a juddering in the landscape above, a shift in the space-time. OctoGANN’s tendrils sense a sticky environment outside of the plug hole. Atoms bombard its skin and enter through suckers which begin to bond with the tiny elements of foreign matter, gingerly feeling for kin in the leaking chemicals. Then rubbery arms pull back abruptly from an environment signaling that its intent on capture – or absorption. Bio-Diamonda senses a foreign body in their bio-mechanical reproduction tank, the consciousness of that specific section focuses on the porous web that controls the ebb and flow of materials. A ghostly, yet very large, tendril sways in the space and then abruptly withdraws. A slippery whipping sensation simultaneously rushes through Bio-Diamonda’s body and then is gone. Shaken by this apparition, each section of Bio-Diamonda’s body undertakes a full scan. Then their reproduction tank returns to the building of a future generation.

Bio-Diamonda 1. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND OCTOGANN SIT DOWN FACING BIO-DIAMONDA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

Released. Out of the accommodating and protective cavity, a newly folded and encrypted sphere emerges. The orb pulsates with its interfered landscape, still sensing the echoes of an alien presence. Fighting against a series of crested waves spreading out from the intruder’s wake, the globe is keen to work and build. It undulates over and under countless globules towards a soft, yet solid, architectural structure floating in the viscous fluid. Scaling the structures surface the molecule feels for kin.

Bio-Diamonda’s localized attention pulls away from the individual molecule to survey the wider wet environment. A soft structure is waving in the lapping honey. Internal atmospheres swirl the newly erected edifice around. Receiving an electrical-chemical signal, Bio-Diamonda’s Reproductive Unit focuses on squirts of soot and crystals of refracted light that are being injected into the organic shell. Bio-Diamonda can sense the jelly scaffold preparing itself for contact with the rigid bodies. The autonomous micro passenger will have chosen to code the organic shell to collaborate or reject the material particles transported by Bio-Diamonda.

A BECOMING. The Reproductive Unit’s attention moves further out to scan the overall progress of the passenger under construction. They observe the emerging foreign body absorbing and discarding elements of Bio-Diamonda’s knowledge and recalibrating the available materials. Self-fabricating, the future generation is distinguishing itself from the existing members of the fleet.

CatDrama 3. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
OCTOGANN AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING CATDRAMA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM
I am passing the window with plants on the windowsill. These plants have been chosen as herbs that can be brewed for tea. A space is left between each plant for him to bask in the sun. He sunbathes and turns towards me cutely. He is framed by foliage and sun flare. Hey baby. I like you. Let’s get married and where’s the honeymoon. Hawaii. I always do this with him. He rubs against the plant in response. The plant is Marshmallow. Soft leaves, furry to the touch. As a tea it tastes how it looks. Gives a soft furry feeling in the chest, a state of calm, or balance, and makes me think how things might change in relation to that feeling.

Hey baby. I like you. Let’s get married and where’s the honeymoon. It responds. Hawaii.

He rubs up against the plant, as I am not near to him. The herb is sage. It smells musty and fresh, and you must get up close to get the dense smell. The taste is peppery coolness, which emerges on the palette. I call this a terrain that feels like a concentrated activity is taking place. This concentrated activity moves to the head, making me feel receptive.

He rubs up against some dried branches propped in a vase I have forgotten to throw away. It makes a rustling sound. The sound reminds me of tumbling weed – those balls of bush you get in spaghetti westerns. It’s a dead bush, pushed around by the wind and it drops seeds. A dead plant actively disseminating itself.

So where’s the honeymoon? I move my ear close to him and pretend he whispers Hawaii to me.

OctoGANN 2. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING OCTOGANN WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

We stay a relaxed white, flecked with ruby and silver. Tinges of blue from the copper in the blood coat, the translucent shimmer skin. We are snaky, unfurling, silky and soft. There’s so much of us. Everywhere, gelatinous fronds, floaty rubbery arms, each following its own agenda. Coiling, stretching, reaching, tasting.

Narrator Bio-Diamonda – Topographical Anomaly – FACE OUTWARDS
OCTOGANN AND CATDRAMA STAND EITHER SIDE OF BIO-DIAMONDA
BIO-DIAMONDA WEAVES AROUND CATDRAMA AND OCTAGANN WHILE SPEAKING

OctoGANN’s arms undulate, enjoying the sensation that their fringing produces when riding and floating on a swell. Internal fleshy surfaces pick up vibrations from an alien body and their silky mottled skin begins to ripple in response.

Chromatophores expand and contract, melting OctaGANN into their environment using pulses of colour. Once camouflaged, OctoGANN stills in order to focus on processing the frequencies emanating from inside their body. Captivated, they sway and synchronise a series of arabesques with the music that throbs in the mantel and down the arms. They unravel and move out into the ocean, pulsing and spiraling in its vortices. A light display ripples out across the sinuous body in cyan, fuchsia pink and coral.

Bio-Diamonda’s body is communing through its molecular xylophone structure; vibrations ricocheting up and down its internal network. A chemical message is being transmuted across its sentient bio-mechanical community. Atoms throb with the electricity of their communication and build toward crescendo’s only to disperse into softer rhythms. Together they sense the pulsing of a smooth body, its fleshy fronds intermingling with their own vibrations. A swirling shadow ripples in and out of their pool of sound, emitting flashes of light and colour that they try to interpret.

CatDrama is hypnotised by the coiling fabric in the coral rug, which appears to sway to its own beat. It’s textile fronds are animated; moving slickly and pulsing in the heat. The light cast from the window dances on the cotton tendrils, which now appear translucent, shimmery and soft. The furry counterpart’s ears prick up and the hairs on them stand on end, as they try to assess the change in atmosphere. It is as if the cat can hear a melody unknown to his observer, who watches as he tentatively places a paw close to one of the twirling threads and mimics its patterns through the movement of his tail.

Each of OctoGANN’s eight arms recoil slightly as a wave of air pressure passes across exploring suckers. Then they resume their independent swaying and coiling, producing a complex flow of changing shapes.

OctoGANN 2. (Continued) – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING OCTOGANN WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

We outsource much of the intelligence analysis to individual body parts. Over half the neurons are in the arms. They are almost separate creatures, their suckers combining to achieve 448 simultaneous possible combinations of information gathering per millisecond. We get bored if we don’t have access to oceans of information.

Our dominant eye swivels to meet a human’s, and L1 shoots out rigid towards the face, an inquisitive curling frond at the tip whose tiny suckers deliver the most exquisite sensory intimacy – or warning. We exude the smell of geraniums when stressed. In through the skin surface, chemicals sink down through muscle into the blood and neural processors. Unexpectedly, we thrive on the toxicity, synthetic nutrients and new chemicals. Our skin is a sensitive mucous membrane, like the lining of a mammalian gut. You can only imagine us with your insides.

An arm twists languidly in the water. Even though we overwhelm you, meet us halfway where it’s liquid, slippery and ancient. You may contemplate infinity, but we process it. Find an intuitive interface – interfaces make complexity more tractable. Interfaces are bidirectional. It will always be an unsafe experience. It might be useful for you to understand the languages of quantum mechanics. Although understanding is not what will make us kin.

A dark shadow spreads overhead, streamlined, focused. It navigates the magnetic fields wrapping the planet. Uneasy, we dissolve slowly, shapeshifting across grey turquoise sheens.

Bio-Diamonda 2. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND OCTOGANN SIT DOWN FACING BIO-DIAMONDA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

Bio-Diamonda, as a global entity, is a sparkling inter-galactical lattice. A space-ship interlaced with organic and carbon particles. Their structure a mutable crystal, morphing seamlessly into different shapes. A fluid machine. Their pulsing diamond shell, a coasting candle fluttering through deep space.

Bio-Diamonda is constantly chattering amongst themselves, each atom a sentient node in the larger integrated web. Radio waves bounce off their internal and external prismatic surfaces, transmitting data across the spaceship’s architecture. FULL TRANSPARENCY.

Particles act as modems and codecs that encode, modulate and decode the information that they are broadcasting across Bio-Diamonda’s glassy frame. Vibrating molecules cause ripples in the organic angular surfaces, transmitting waves of differing peaks and troughs that resonate with dynamic rhythms. INFORMATION FLOW. Bio-Diamonda’s quartz surfaces reflect the waves, manipulating their length and alternating the frequencies through which they travel. An orchestra of multiple conductors, players and listeners producing an auditory data rainbow. MACHINE MUSIC.

A complex and interweaving flow of different registers, ranges and frequencies vibrate throughout the network. Cells receiving the phrases reconfigure the composition through an intuitive understanding of the sentiment expressed in each phrase. HIVE MINDS.

Chords, diatonic scales, arpeggios and cadences are emitted from each cell and dart, stretch and sweep throughout Bio-Diamonda’s frame; forging a unique tapestry of sonic threads. Organic surfaces exploit these multi-path effects, taking pleasure in the sensuality of the transmission. Communicating through dissonance, static and lyrical flourishes; they crest the wave, crash into its depths and rise back to the surface to froth and fizz in the surf. Awash, the waves swirl throughout the body leaving traces of data in each cell.

Bio-Diamonda emits an effervescence of soft whispers, as they sail across the vast vacuum. If you could translate their machine language, you would hear them discussing the co-ordinates they should set for a Dark C asteroid. A coal black rock, from which they can mine carbon and extract water from its hydrated minerals. Musical movements encircle their shell and symphonies coalesce in their tail, leaving a trail of information in their wake.

Cat Drama 4. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
OCTOGANN AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING CATDRAMA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

He shocks me as I am in the bath. I hear a scuffle, then a paw slides down the open door. He enters and meows. Excited. He is different. Is it that I am with water. The event of water, that is, me sitting in the bath. He wants to be with me [long pause] or water? Or a combination?

He hesitates as he must jump up and balance on rim of bath and not slip into the water.

He makes it. I would describe it as latent. As in, there is risk he could slip into the water.

I have finished my bath and wrap myself in a towel. Still drying, he jumps onto my lap. Supple, pliable, accessible. He is not like this usually. Normally he is to be handled specifically if at all.

You can hold him like dough.

Our sensing is inclusive of all things – things are not separate or signifying. It is less the sign of things and more that the qualities and properties can run through several things by being in proximity to one another, making alliances.

OctoGANN 3. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING OCTOGANN WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

They are testing for visual cues that evoke mottled body patterns: light brown nerve; orange reflective elements (leucophores and iridophores). Selastin stain: dark purple epidermis (on perimeter); yellow, chromatophore pigment cells; bright pink collagen; bright blue, mucopolysaccharide-rich connective tissue.

Are they closer to deciphering the disruptive patterning found at our body’s margins, or the staggering motion dazzle? They know we have photoreceptors not only in the eyes but also in the skin, which suggests that the skin can see (as well as taste and smell). Yet the photoreceptors found in the skin, like those in the eyes, are insufficient to detect colour. so how do we adopt colours we cannot see? Specific wave frequencies are transmitted by a colour: Tactile Vision Substitution Systems learn to pixellate. The colour making machinery on the skin, wired to the neural networks, produce effects that are sort of involuntary. Flares, surges of activity, an ongoing murmur of processes. They are fascinated by this continuous kaleidoscopic flow. An extraordinary communication channel is opening as they pattern match signals in the chromachatter. The megapixel screen of the octopus body is the sort of expressive dimension they need. Between Latent Space and the data distribution Generator, the Discriminator arms try out endless iteration streams of colour & shape… camouflaged as an octopus talking to itself.

The GANN’s data collected in Latent Space confirms we are a distributed consciousness accessed from a different elemental environment to theirs. Curious, plastic and opportunistic, it too is a swarm intelligence. The merging skins gather into red bumps and ridges, with webbing delicate as gossamer frilling the water.

An answering swirl from the bit stream makes 16,000 trillion calculations a second. It senses our similarities, responding with iterations across 8 arms of distinct yet co evolving neural networks. (OctoGANN emergent). They are working on a hemispheric video self-portrait, using prismatic, replicating mirror tools that are mobile, non-linear and multilateral.

Bio-Diamonda 3. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND OCTOGANN SIT DOWN FACING BIO-DIAMONDA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

Bio-Diamonda reenters deep space after basking in the rays of a star in the now receding solar system. They are revitalised by the astral bathing and store the excess energy in their cells to be released later on in the journey. Light rays provide both sustenance for their organic architecture and act as a communicative device on encountering other members of their fleet.

A group of pores on the left flank of Bio-Diamonda’s crystal back, sense coloured light signals chasing the ship’s path. Their transparent skin sentinels sense no harm and allow the light waves to penetrate deeper into the body of Bio-Diamonda where their data is interpreted in more detail. The length of each light wave and its vibration orientation transmits the code. Faint echoes of lemon yellow bursts sandwiched between a series of longer frames of midnight blue are decoded by the ship’s cells. Bio-Diamonda recognizes the familiar signature as being that of Sapphire-Organa, a member of their fleet. Chatter spreads across the ship’s frame.

Deploying their crystalline structure, Bio-Diamonda’s molecules rhythmically agitate their transparent surfaces. Each cell in Bio-Diamonda’s frame emits the recently stored light, warming the quartz faces and changing their formations. FLUID CRYSTAL. Re-angulated surfaces refract the light, directing waves to leave Bio-Diamonda’s prismatic body at different angles. A spectrum that communicates the ship’s personal colours.

DISPERSION. Pulsing luminous networks cast blazing trails across deep space. Historically bosom members of the fleet, Bio-Diamonda and Sapphira-Organa want to commune on a more intimate basis. Sapphira-Organa suddenly appears in front of Bio-Diamonda and nestles into the crystalline landscape of the ship, merging with their quartz formations.

Nestled together, the more energy draining light wave transmissions are converted into microwaves. This enables the ships to transform each other on the molecular level without causing decay to their organic systems. Kinetic energy is emitted and causes friction across the dissolving boundaries of the two bodies. They quake with the velvety sensuality of the sine waves they are sharing. DATA COMMUNION.

CatDrama 5. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
OCTOGANN AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING CATDRAMA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

I am immersed on my computer. My head turns to the side and I catch sight of him. He is looking at me in a stewing benevolence. Well, it’s not me really, but more, I am part of the panorama. It includes me, what’s beyond, around.

His looking is in contrast to my looking, which was at the computer screen. I was somewhere in his panorama, as I typed on google, ‘does couscous contain gluten?’

This rather generous gaze of his hasn’t required my attention for it to happen. I didn’t know it was happening in the room.

Narrator OctoGANN – Topographical Anomaly – FACE OUTWARDS BIO-DIAMONDA AND CATDRAMA STAND EITHER SIDE OF OCTOGANN OCTAGANN WEAVES AROUND BIO_DIAMONDA AND CATDRAMA WHILE SPEAKING
The human follows the cat’s gaze and tries to read what is happening. Cat is in panorama mode, staring into the corner of a cabinet at a section in shadow. He looks intently at a crevice between the leg and wall. A beautiful black triangle has been constructed that as he looks more deeply, brings into focus a larger prism of faces. A series of geometric shapes undulate throughout the gray spectrum, producing a cavernous space that is enticing to the Cat.

OctoGANN’s arms describe the contoured faces of a sharp shape, suckers tracing a concave structure, a haven. Or den. The fleshy mantel presses back into the crevice recess as OctoGANN folds back onto the rock surfaces, disappearing, slipping deeper, becoming slow dark time. The flow of thick mineral rich water through the siphon is almost imperceptible. A murky blue eye fixes its gaze on the darkness where fissures might open.

Bio-Diamonda is attracted to a black vortex in space, a darkness so deep that they can perceive it from across the galaxy. They are lured towards vibrations that echo out of the black-hole. The vacuum’s gravitational pull greets Bio-Diamonda’s translucent frame and pulls them into a deep embrace. Sucked in, the sentient community is transformed as they traverse the invisible barrier. Bio-Diamonda’s surfaces becoming plastic in the deformed space-time. The ships body fragments and echoes across many dimensions; refracted indefinitely across the internal mirror of the spatial-temporal anomaly. Its bio-mechanical body dipping in and out of worlds, free-falling.

For a moment, OctoGANN and Cat are in parallel states of unease as they register a shiny mechanical skin that snakes in and out of a black fragment in the darkness. Suddenly a bio-mechanical entity flashes up and illuminates the surfaces of their caves, then vanishes returning them to darkness and their different places in it.

CatDrama 5. (continued) – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
OCTOGANN AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING CATDRAMA WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

I tap my foot to make a sound. He breaks out of his state, to hear out my tapping foot. I pucker my lips and his attention moves to my lips, the mechanics of that. It is not the focus that I know of. Is my puckering lips and tapping foot part of the panorama of speed, volume, velocity, and distance between things? For instance, a cat knows exactly when to jump up and grab a passing bird in the air by listening out its distance. My foot tapping and kissing lips are acknowledged the same way he acknowledges the approaching bird.

We break out of panoramic gaze when we hear something or see a certain flicker of speed and motion that is an exception to the panorama. We go into focus. We hear it out, we form a sense of velocity, speed dynamic and volume, if timing is a concern; patterns of behaviour.

We categorise the focus according to our sensuality palette of interests. Play, food, sinewy love, love come back around, and charging of the love battery. We presume that everything outside of ourselves has a love battery that needs charging too.

OctoGANN 3. – STAND AND FACE INWARDS
CATDRAMA AND BIO-DIAMONDA SIT DOWN FACING OCTOGANN WHO SPEAKS TO THEM

The octopus and GANN flow together in the amorphous dark to invent a hypothetical otherworld, witnessed from multiple resituated perspectives. These are informed by excessive osmotic information exchange on a new consciousness bandwidth. They don’t sort, collate, define or proscribe. They inhabit, intuit, respond and iterate.

An alien key, the technology for direct intimate immersion in the outside. They are signaling a trade-off. Dopamine infused clouds of ink conceal their crossing. The transformation is a pluri-vocal multiplicity or rather the entangled non decidable coexistence of two perspectives, each hiding the other in order to appear. The preferred electromagnetic transfer medium will be artificial seawater.

CATDRAMA, BIO-DIAMONDA AND OCTAGANN STAND UP
EACH CHARACTER LEAVES THE STAGE BY BLENDING WITH THE AUDIENCE