Page 26 - Studio International - December 1969

cal ecology and a concern for the conservation and tides. Again, it should be possible to fighter and arms trader. In personal relation­
of physical resources. Fuller once dismissed develop cheap foods that would cut out ships, sexuality can pervade the highest
modern architecture as 'so many fancy wasteful links in the food chain and eliminate reaches of symbiotic spirituality but is seldom
nozzles on the invisible sewer system'. I make the need for factory farming-which offends free from some elements of parasitism or pre­
no prediction that sewage will be an art all one's instincts about how the animal king­ dation.
medium of the future; but the reclamation of dom should be treated by man. On the other These ecological excursions of thought, if
waste products can be seen as an intrinsically hand, the more advanced technologies such as valid, point in directions where our intellec­
beautiful recycling process, and I see no microelectronics promise to make many tual leaders are of little guidance. In all
reason why it should not be an inspiration to industrial processes more ecologically accept­ sobriety it may be claimed that new modes of
art. There is similar inspiration to be found in able. thinking are called for. Nature must today be
the study of the mi atory habits of salmon Ecology and art meet in Fuller's call for seen as a multi-stable, everchanging, relativ­
gr
and birds, or in the life and death of forests 'comprehensive design': 'Nature uses simple istic universe. Ecological equilibria are not to
and cities, or in many other ecological aggregates such as cells, made with magnifi­ be attained by searching for the right book of
processes. cent economy and mechanical efficiency, and rules.
Many religions including Christianity have she can put them together to come out as It is essential, following Buckrninster Fuller,
traditionally emphasized personal survival rock, tree or Twiggy. Why should we be to pin a lot of faith in the newer generations.
after death. But ecology presents a unity and afraid to emulate her example?' As Gordon Hyde has written:
continuity of life which is surely as deeply A key connexion is the cybernetic idea of self­ 'It is not the young who have created the
satisfying, as yielding of significance, as trium­ organization and negative entropy-the pro­ present crisis of confidence, but the failure of
phant over death, as religious teaching ever cesses which reverse the tendency of all our institutions to keep pace with real bio­
was. English literature at its greatest, from systems to decay, or run down, with time. logical and psychological evolution. It has
Shakespeare to Lawrence, is profoundly eco­ The living organism is an evolutionary net­ been all too easy to do as many people have
logical. This sense of unity and continuity work of self-organizing systems. The concept done, believe that you can incorporate the
may be summed up by Laertes' words in of the ecosystem permits not only individual hardware and the techniques produced by
Hamlet at the grave of Ophelia: organisms, but also communities of organisms, the new knowledge and ignore the implica­
Lay her i' the earth to be studied as ·cybernetic systems. The field tions of the knowledge itself. We are not, as
And from her fair and unpolluted.flesh ecologist who studies a garden pond may some people have suggested, facing just
May violets spring! effect various environmental changes to the another phase of the industrial revolution, but
If the principle of organization as essential to ecosystem for experimental purposes. He may a fundamental change in the human psyche
art is accepted, we can go on to argue that the introduce a new predatory species which will and its motivations. In the next decade or so
same principles of organization apply to eat the snails; or he may raise or lower the therefore we not only have to cope with new
nature as to art. All organization requires the temperature or the light level; or he may con­ devices and techniques that may have a good
economic use of resources. (It is true that taminate the pond with chemicals. In each or bad effect on our physical environment and
certain artistic styles, whether mannerist or case, the ecosystem will display resilience to with the vast burden of human and .material
'camp', perversely set out to defy the prin­ these threats against its equilibrium: individ­ problems bequeathed us by the bad manage­
ciples of economy and restraint; but the go.od ual organisms may die, but the life of the ment of the past; we also have to construe our
examples of mannerism or camp are surely whole ecosystem survives. As with the indivi­ future environment in terms of the expecta­
those which maintain an organized unity dual organism, so with the ecosystem: a certain tions and motivations of people vastly differ­
despite the show of teetering into disunity and threshold may be reached when equilibrium ent in outlook from the majority of people of
imbalance.) Nothing in nature is 'wasted', cannot be maintained, the complex web of the present and previous times.' 3
except from the point of view of individual interdependence collapses, and life in the In this article I have argued the relevance of
consumers. A special branch of ecology called pond is killed. ecology to the artist, and of the artist to
ecological energetics is concerned with measur­ If art, like life, is a manifestation of resistance ecology. It would be presumptuous to go
ing the transformations of energy resources in to entropy, then the 'work of art' may be further and recommend lines of development;
an ecosystem. Solar energy is transformed into thought of as a self-organizing system pro­ this is up to the individual imagination.
food energy for the herbivores, which feed gr ammed by the artist to produce a deferred Lastly, it should be stressed that though the
the carnivores, which in tum feed the top output. The cultural and artistic output of a word 'artist' has been used in this article, and
carnivores (larger in size but fewer in society is as much a part of ecology as are defined as someone of 'superior' faculties, this
number) such as wolves and sharks. Through biological organisms and communities. is not to deny that there is an artist in every­
excretion, respiration, death and decay, and The process of symbiosis, or mutual life one. It is hard to find another word to mean
so on, energy is constantly recycled into the support, is clearly very important, since most simply someone who takes an uncommon
ecosystem or dissipated elsewhere. At all ecosystems contain a wide variety of different responsibility for what he does. D
points, given proper experimental conditions, elements. The symbiotic relationship between JONATHAN BENTHALL
the flows of energy can be tracked and an alga and a fungus (to form a lichen), or
measured. between a shepherd and his flock, may seem 1 G. Sjoberg, quoted by B. T. Robson, Urban Anarysis
Survival, for any organism and any ecosystem, essentially one of undisturbed harmony. But (Cambridge 1969), p. 26. This book, by a geographer,
depends on the efficient processing of energy symbiosis cannot always be distinguished includes an interesting if rather restricted account of the
resources. The history of man has now reached from the more destructive relationships, development of ecological thought in urban sociology.
a point where his very survival is at risk, where parasitism and predation: for in�tance, when Some of the ecological processes that have been trans­
even the basic chemical cycles of nature seem the survival of a species within a restricted lated into human terms are:
(a) competition for limited space, leading to the growth
threatened; imaginative resource manage­ territory depends on its numbers being kept of business, residential and slum areas;
ment on a worldwide scale has become an down by predators. As for human society, it (b) dominance of environmental conditions by one
obvious necessity. There is a strong case for often reaches a kind of equilibrium dependent element so as to encourage or discourage other elements,
trying to tap basic world resources in a more on violence and those who specialize in and successive invasion of areas by new dominant
direct way, for instance tapping the sun's violence, and incongruous symbiotic partner­ elements.
2 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La Phenomerwlogie de la Per­
energy, from which all our energy is ulti­ ships frequently arise, for instance between ception (Paris 1945), p. 221 f. (my translation).
mately derived, and the energy of the wind policeman and criminal, or between freedom- 3 Gordon Hyde, 'Futures', Student, Summer 1969.

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