Biomimics

Bi-o-mim-ic-ry
(From the Greek bios, life, and mimesis, imitation)
1. Nature as model. Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature's models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf.
2. Nature as measure. Biomimicry uses an ecological standard to judge the "rightness" of our innovations. After 3.8 billion years of evolution, nature has learned: What works. What is appropriate. What lasts.
3. Nature as mentor. Biomimicry is a new way of viewing and valuing nature. It introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but on what we can learn from it.

The above is from the first plate page of the book Biomimicry, Innovation Inspired by Nature, by Janine M. Benyus.

About a hundred years ago, the great Russian stage director Meyerhold was borrowing ideas from man-made industrialization and turning out a fabulous training technique for actors known as Biomechanics. Before, during, and after Meyerhold, Stanislavsky was discovering ideas rooted in nature, in the natural world and in human behavior, and making his own science and practical technique for actors. Perhaps his work could have been called "Biomimicry - a conscious emulation of life's genius. Innovation inspired by nature." Perhaps the credo could have been "there is more to discover than to invent." In any case, Stanislavsky as most who know him know, was way ahead of his time.

The three points listed in the above description of Biomimicry run exactly through Stanislavsky's work with actors. Point one, nature as model. Stanislavsky sought to find out what is the basic natural process that is "acting." In other words, what occurs that brings together fictional, made-up circumstance and living behavior in a way that becomes art, processed fully with human thought, sensation and feeling? The answer he called Affective Memory, and he described and articulated it and all its accompany details and qualities over a lifetime of work. This fundamental creative process he often said was akin to all other "magical" processes in nature, and he used many metaphors of such in his talks and work with actors. Point two, nature as measure. In the most simplistic sense, Stanislavsky knew that if an actor was violating what he called the creative laws of nature, the acting was "off." For Stanislavsky this measure of nature was his way of telling what kind of short and long term impact an actor's work would have on the spectators, how shallow or how deep it would it affect their sensibilities. Point three, nature as mentor. What could we learn from those characters in Uncle Vanya or The Three Sisters when they were presented to us not as metaphors or political operatives but as fully functioning living breathing human beings with all their interconnected and interdependent lives? An eco-system of a play? What would the actor-artist grasp in a visceral sense? What about the spectator? What is to be learned when you go "into the forest" or "into the play?"


Nature runs on sunlight.
Nature uses only the energy it needs.
Nature fits form to function.
Nature recycles everything.
Nature rewards cooperation.
Nature banks on diversity.
Nature demands local expertise.
Nature curbs excesses from within.
Nature taps the power of limits.

Ah, good ol' Stanislavsky! Gets better all the time!

What happened to, or where are, those who came before us?

I was flying commercial, several thousand feet above the Republic of Texas, looking down at the trees, the rivers, the tributaries, the land. Not that it matters but I was on my third bloody mary... potent little suckers. I had almost finished reading "1491," a captivating book that considers the Americas pre-Columbus, and supposes that the societys and cultures here were as vast and sophisticated, as complex and diverse as any in Europe at the time. And so looking down I was imagining the people of that time, managing their lives, farmers, hunters, craftspeople, warriors, politicians, artists perhaps. And I was thinking of the land itself, how if I was on the ground below I could just reach down and pick up a fossil, millions of years old perhaps. This area of Central Texas had once been underwater, a shallow sea and the build-up of shells as fossils, limestone as cliffs is enornmous. Maybe the water went all the way up and formed a shore along the the Llano Estacado, the high, staked plains above and to the west of Abilene. The oldest known human remains of North America have been discovered on those plains. Perhaps they were hunters following ancient herds of bison or mammoth. And then there is the Marty Robbins song, a sad but melodic refrain of lost love, somewhere out over the Llano Estacado. These thoughts, images and sounds were running through my head as the airplane dipped south and east, eventually flying along the Gulf of Mexico, over the great Mississippi just above New Orleans, bound for Atlanta and the busiest airspace and landing strips the world has ever known.

Like Old Times - Theatre and Dissent

Yesterday morning I was lucky enough to have been at a presentation by a Prescott College Student regarding Theatre and Dissent. It was shades of the old days at the Tucson Center when Esther would have two or three would be "subversives" in her office and I was being subpoenaed by the FBI to testify.

This particular student that did the presentation is a hardworking all around good person who takes on his education with full stride. He hasn't just joined a cause and gone to work. He has spent a multitude of time researching, comparing, gaging and trying to understand the complexities of this world, including the injustices and the atrocities.

Led by a powerful mentor, Mr. Howard Allen, for this course, this student took on the study of some difficult plays - Antigone, A View From the Bridge, The Mad Woman of Challiot, Julius Ceasar among them - all plays with "dissent" from moral or political or personal standards, but not your overt and obvious ones really, Antigone aside. In other words there was no "Waiting For Lefty" (although he may go one to explore Odets Paradise Lost as part of his follow-up).

Patrick, who was also present to hear, and I drank some espresso (mediocre we decided, although we do not claim the abilities to distinguish the finer aspects of espresso. Our measurement was that he said it was like the espresso he drank in Orvieto at a cafe where he was advised "not to be seen" if he wanted to to be considered a person of refined tastes) and settled in to listen. I might have made a mistake giving Howard Allen espresso. Has anyone ever known Howard not to be at full alert at any given time? No telling what he accomplished later that morning. In any case, the presentation prompted a good amount of discussion in the little available time we had so we agreed on an informal meeting over beer at a later date to finish it off.