I decided I wanted to add an element of pseudo science to the drawing; which is how I formed these ‘diagrams of evolution’. I wanted these nonsensical diagrams to add to the unconceivable nature of non-physical evolution, I wanted them to show how self evolution cannot be measured or even perceived by outsiders to anyone but ones self, as self evolution is relative to everyone, and is an abstract concept that is hard to visualise.

To pair with the ink drawings of the natural imagery that was the start of ”The Garden of Evolution” I wanted to convey the idea of Evolution not only being a physical thing but as a non-physical cycle that everyone goes through; I wanted to re-touch on the thoughts I had had about a change of perception being crucial in self evolution (for example hypothetically if you had came out of a long term detrimental relationship, the stages one would go though in realising that they had now realised the detrimental qualities of the relationship and realising how one could grow and ‘self evolve’ after this epiphany of change in perception and self realisation) I decided to keep the natural imagery, and more abstract mark making of the circles, as It adds to the conventional semantics of a broader term of ‘Evolution’, however I decided to envision myself in these drawings, as a vehicle to convey the personal sense of Evolution I wanted to explain. I also used hand lettered typography to add to the drawings, with some of the words I had came across when researching the more philosophical side of Evolution, and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Here are just some basic pen sketches of the little natural imagery I could find in Brighton in the depths of what seemed like a never ending winter, I also found some really interesting content in the book ”How to be Alone” by Sara Maitland. Maitland describes the symbolic aspects of nature, and how nature can help you rediscover the unique delights of the world and the sense of ones self.

After reading around these different philosophical interpretations of Evolution, I started to think of what evolution most meant to me at this point in my life. I took inspiration from the philosophy of Kant about the distinction of analytic and synthetic statements , and the phenomena and noumenon , and began to think about the idea of never being able to comprehend some aspects of knowledge ( in a Kantian sense this would be penetrating to the noumenon), I started to think about ‘fixed mindsets’ and not being able to realise the truths of some situations without separating yourself from them, and learning from past mistakes. For a while I struggled with how I was going to visually depict this sense of personal self evolution I had derived from Kant’s work, and then I realised I would probably need to use something more literal to explain such an abstract concept effectively, which bought me onto the idea of creating a ‘Garden of Evolution’

After deciding I wanted to look at the broader overall concept of what Evolution means in a wider sense, I decided to do some re-search in the philosophy section of the library. I read about Immanual Kant’s theory of Naturphilosophie and Transcental Morphology, and his work surrounding the Critique of Pure Reason, and how this linked to the term Evolution. Kant believed he had discovered another attribute of propositions that allowed him to frame the problem of a priori (knowledge independant to experience – key to the truth), and made distinctions between analytic and synthetic statements. A statement directly from Kant ”In all changes in the material world the quantity of matter remains unchanged” got me thinking not just about the critique of pure reason but about the evolution of knowledge and perception itself. I also became aware of Kant’s description of the ‘Noumenon’ and the ‘Phenomenon’ – essentially the Noumenon is the ‘thing itself’ as the Phenomenon is the thing that appears to the observer, the Noumenal holds the contents of the Intelligible world and Kant claimed that mans speculative of reason can only actually know the Phenomena and will never be able to evolve to perceive the noumenon.

 

I thought for a long time about what I actually wanted to explain for the first project, I thought it would be interesting to branch out into something I had little knowledge about, thus the ‘explain’ part would hopefully become easier as I was learning myself. After initially researching extensivly the conventional darwinist approach to evolution, I decided to strip the mere phrase ‘Evolution’ back down to its literal meaning, which essentially was ‘The Gradual Development of something’. I started to think about many physical and non-physical things that can be seen to gradually develop or ‘Evolve’. In hindsight I am glad I chose to look at the term ‘Evolution’ in more broad terms, as I believe it enhanced my ability to explain the notion of evolution that I had grasped from my project and personal research to an audience.

For the next part of the project, I wanted to look more into a philosophical concept I had read about in the past. This concept is called ‘Constructivism’, and primarily is about how people learn. Advocates of Constructivism would denounce that Knowledge of anything is innate, and beleive that all knowledge is learnt. Theorists such as Pigaget talk about how if all knowledge is learnt through experience, society can be socially conditioned to all believe or learn the same thing. For example, most of the population are taught the same things at school and thus will learn the same thing. This concept also links quite well to the concept of a microcosm as you could take small situations that relate to constructivism – like the mainstream education system and say that this is a microcosm for how society is ‘Constructed’ – we learn the majority of our knowledge from authority figures, like teachers in school. When visually representing these ideas, I decided to stick with the repeat patterns I had made, as I thought it tied into the idea that we are socially conditioned to see the same things, that make a construct of our knowledge.

I wanted to look more at the concept of authority figures constructing our notion of knowledge for us so I produced a fine liner illustration depicting myself controlling a world, using the repeat patterns as a background.

For my final images before my crit, I decided to experiment visually colliding The abstarct patterns I had been working on, with the previous more figuritive illustrations about the personal philosophies of bath time. I was very pleased with these final outcomes as they created the effect that I wanted of visualising thought processes when taking a bath. This collide I think also related quite well to the topic of the microcosm, as I had visually made the bath into a microcosm of my thought processes. again with these compositions I experimented with minimal composition, and more ‘busy’ ones. I think I enjoyed the process and the final aesthetic of the compositions that had more going on in them because, for me they really helped create that feeling of a multitude of thoughts occurring in time in the bath. 

Staying along with the theme of keeping things quite abstract I started combining the coloured and black ink Patterns together; Firstly just by hand, and then combinding them digitally on photoshop. I was really pleased with the outcome of these patterns, I think the colours I used seemed really aethetically pleasing and did create the illusion of warmth, I also thought that the combination of the black ink patterns with the colour created an interesting effect of depth. I experimented with more minimal compositions and then more ”busy” looking compositions too.