March 2026
Thinking about Thinking: an observation
When I am walking home from work, I am usually very intently listening to an audiobook or podcast, and jotting down quotes on my phone's note app which inspire me. When I get home and I read over those quotes, or re-listen to a part, I automatically have visuals from the moment I previously ingested the quote. I see exactly where I was along my 50 minute, very diverse walk, and I picture snippets of my surroundings, including any unusual sensory experiences, all without intending to.
Of course we are aware of this type of thought pattern in relation to memories, but the very frequent reccurring experience of this specific pattern- which highlights an intersection between a location, a moment, a sensory experience of surrounding matter and a feeling-really unmasked some questions about the shapes and the timelines of cognition and consciousness for me. What can this tell us about the intricacies and intersections of our cognition? Are we similar to the spider who weaves cognition into its web? is thinking a network which exists outside of our bodies as well as within?
Our senses have evolved over time and are still evolving- is our capacity for thought evolving too? What did it feel like for our ancestors when they first started harnessing their senses, before they were labeled and understood? Was it stressful, disconcerting? Can this be compared to our capacity for, and understanding of, thinking? We only have "five senses" to access the world- what data is being accessed by more-than-human bodies who have different, incomprehensible senses? Is there a world of data we could access if used our cognitive abilities differently? Are we restricted to "five senses" because language and science has put this restriction on us? What could be revealed to us if we collectively took the intelligence of plants more seriously, researched it in non-human-centred ways? What might this research look like? In which ways are we similar to the spider, the forest, the river?
March 2026
"You need a brain to think, but thinking isn't in the brain, and the brain doesn't generate it- it facilitates it...I think my mind is not just in my body, it is in my entire web of relations- fungal, geological, microbial, vegetal, ancestral- that weave together my specific ecosystem." -Sophie Strand, Supracellular: A Meditation
If thinking requires a relational web which weaves the body amongst the environment, does the web shift and move with the body?
Walking through Thinking:Thinking through Walking
How many beings does it take to keep a body alive?
What does plant do to my thinking?
Thinking as a modality or sense: what can it facilitate in more-than-human relation?
How have the bodies around us facilitated the abilities and restrictions of our bodies?
In our relational webs, where is the boundary of the Self?
Is a body of water alive?
Does human thinking exist in the same timeline as human body?
How is my body interacting with other bodies, in ways which I am not conscious of?
What information is passed through the networks between them/us?
February 2026
This video experiment layers footage from two synced cameras; the background features footage from my phone camera, and the circular video comes from a GoPro tied to my ankle, facing outwards from the side of my leg. Two microphones pick up the sound of the surroundings and my hum, which attempts to match pitch with the soundscape I find myself walking slowly through.
What is sound as matter in the landscape?
Does sound exist as airborne data?
What is the relationship between different sounds in one air body?
If sound is detected and received through animal hearing, how is it received by more-than-human/animal senses and modalities?
How does my walk home look from my foot's perspective?
How does the city (the sounds/vibrations, the air, the elemental ratios, the flavours) feel to a street plant?
February 2026
Imitating the noises, I realised some sounded emotive. A distressing sound came from the high branches of a tree/s when large gusts of wind blew through them. I suppose it was a combination of the wood fibres and twigs moving against each other, as well as the fast-moving body of wind being broken apart by the branches. And I suppose it sounded distressing to me because a) I was listening extra carefully and thinking about how to interpret the sound with my own voice and breath, and b) it sounded similar to a very sudden loud wail, out of pain or danger. I suppose it is the nature of humans, and other animals, to interpret sounds as emotion; even non-human sounds, because we are measuring and interpreting our surroundings based on our own set of modalities (emotion included in that set). This is how we seem to consciously interpret them anyway- are we unconsciously (automatically/not-through-thought) interpreting the more-than-human/world in ways which do not centre the human experience?
/What more-than-human
modalities does the human body
engage to automatically (perhaps not conscious
to the mind) interpret the world, gather data and contribute to the surrounding environment?
Spelling the more-than-human sounds
How does my skin see the world?
How do my bones see their life cycle?
When I wrote the above question, I was partly thinking about the data received by my body parts which is interpreted and processed within my body, but never reaches my mind or thoughts; the things my animal body for me and for the surrounding beings which I am mostly unconscious of. Not every part of us is conscious in the way that we understand consciousness- is this the same part of us that is more-than-human? The metallic, plantful, animal, etc, part? A method for decentring the human experience/reality could be to platform and interpret the more-than-human parts of our bodies; see and hear from alternative perspectives and angles of my own body. Our bodies are constantly engaging in ecologies we do not think about all the time; for example, in a reality where trees are central, the mammal body is a mere vessel and machine in the oxygen and water cycles which are key to the tree's survival.
If there was no mammal stomach acid, for example, in the world, how many species would become extinct?
Is blood and bodily 'waste' more-than-human?
Is there a boundary, or are we perceiving the self in ways which we have outgrown?
February 2026
Thinking through writing: Queer Nature
There’s a queerness in how bodies interact with each other. The nature of relationships exists outside of binary script and roles. Bodies make up bodies. There are wet bodies- anima, vegetal and beyond- which are stacked and layered with different species. Each communicating within their species’ realm, and across the specie barriers. They’re working together, clearly and queerly. They’re being together, within your body. Which ways is your body interacting with other bodies, in ways which you are not conscious of? (by “body” I mean the airs, the sofa, the grass, the dust, the rock, etc) The only way we can think of these unconscious relationships is by imagining them (a concrete reality science can’t touch). How many layers of species does the animal(/human) body consist of? What modalities do they use for cross-species interaction/work? There’s a queer web so intricate flowing through your bodies, through the materials you see and don’t see, through the skin (and other) barriers. How many decisions for your body and the webs are made by you? At what pace do decisions and interaction flow through the web?
Binary was a construct all along, the nature of life and relation is queer. No body can be all one of two things (no body is all pollen or all egg, or totally characterised by one or the other). No interaction or relation can be all one of two things. Not even all reproduction-related cells can be categorised by one of two things.
What does metal think of plant? What does cliff think of bird? What does water think of dust? How are we all being-with one another? What do I mean by think? Which parts of the body and form do the thinking, or the thinking-like process?
When atoms vibrate and merge, does that have a feeling?
What might feeling be without a nervous system as we know it?
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feel-sense
which part does the thinking
which parts do the decision-making sensecti
queerly
species realm
wet body
wet system
listening with my feet think with another’s body
i know only 2 cant make a life
i know only 1 doesnt make up a body