Like the bionts of a lichen (except on a much different timescale), my final project for Fungus class is evolving. Specifically, I’ve changed my mind on how I want to include humans in the Big Lichen Picture. Instead of incorporating humans literally and visualizing the human-fungal symbiosis, I’ve decided to take the eight perspectives laid out in Trevor Goward’s Re-emergence essay and present them as human-relatable analogies.
I’ve found that in my capacity as a temporary theoretical lichenologist, philosophical thought seems a lot less intimidating than usual. By examining the lichen from eight different perspectives, I think we can also shed some light on how to view ourselves and our relationship with the systems that compose our existence. My final project has thus become a series of posters that transpose Trevor’s eight lichen perspectives. I’ll extrapolate on this in my final presentation, but for now, here is some work-in-progress:
Photo credits: 1, 2, 3, all used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence.