Translating Lichens
“By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.”
- Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto
Lichens are hybrid organisms formed through symbiotic, interspecies relationships between fungi and algae or cyanobacteria. Drawing inspiration from the biological hybridity of lichens, this work presents a collection of Lichen Cyborgs—physical and digital artifacts that embody the entangled, hybridized relationships between lichens, machines, materials, and myself. These cyborgs are the result of translating four specific lichens found growing in the forests of Deer Isle, Maine, across various digital and physical craft practices, reimagining them through diverse material forms: porcelain, textile, plastic, cyanotype, leather, ink, and more.
The goal is not to perfectly capture, copy, or recreate the lichens, but rather to celebrate how various craft practices morph them into new beings. While some of the resulting Lichen Cyborgs bear little resemblance to their living lichen counterparts, this process of translation unveiled rich sensorial insights into the collectivity, interdependency, resiliency, complexity, and response-ability of lichens. This work not only fostered a deeper appreciation not only for these organisms, but for all the materials, tools, and processes that became part of their metamorphosis—embracing what Bruno Latour calls the "messy process of entanglement”.
READ MORE - Note that this publication is still under review!
