Such bizarre creatures they are! And this time, I was reminded of jellyfish - porous, metamorphic, ancient, elegant and alien. I like how both really dismantle our assumptions that life forms are fixed, that identity is stable, that development is linear… the philosophical implication is also huge right? Because as humans we tend to experience ourselves as singular, continuous, moving forward through time, but these organisms suggest identity is more modular and distributed. Not a permanent structure, just a temporary arrangement. So damn fascinating ✨
Yes, spot on! The jellyfish lifecycle is fascinating, the simple fact that an animal glues itself to the ground and becomes sessil is at once disturbing and comical.
On a more general note, marine invertebrates were a space to rethink bodies and our ancestry especially in the 1860s. Rebecca Stott has described this in great detail and coined the term 'marine grotesque'.
Such bizarre creatures they are! And this time, I was reminded of jellyfish - porous, metamorphic, ancient, elegant and alien. I like how both really dismantle our assumptions that life forms are fixed, that identity is stable, that development is linear… the philosophical implication is also huge right? Because as humans we tend to experience ourselves as singular, continuous, moving forward through time, but these organisms suggest identity is more modular and distributed. Not a permanent structure, just a temporary arrangement. So damn fascinating ✨
Yes, spot on! The jellyfish lifecycle is fascinating, the simple fact that an animal glues itself to the ground and becomes sessil is at once disturbing and comical.
On a more general note, marine invertebrates were a space to rethink bodies and our ancestry especially in the 1860s. Rebecca Stott has described this in great detail and coined the term 'marine grotesque'.