TO DISAGREE

Genesis 2022

To Disagree is a personal analysis of past relationships visualized through the lens of Genesis, a lexicon I began in 2020. Morphogenesis, the original title, was cut short because I didn't want to write the whole word on every print lol.

I was introduced to morphogenesis while reading popular science author Steven Johnson's Emergence. His book provides numerous examples of self-organizing systems in nature and technology (bottom-up model) previously thought to be orchestrated by a single authority (top-down model). Morphogenesis is one behavior referenced in Emergence which proposes that embryotic cell development is a self-organized process, rather than a behavior dictated by a cell's genetic coding.

Steven Johnson loves Google.

Ants are also referenced in Emergence due to the misconception that the colony's queen runs a monarchy over her subordinates (take the movie Antz). Johnson uses colony foraging patterns to conclude ants collectively determine the optimal routes for collecting, building, and discarding material. The colony's shared geographic knowledge multiplies into a hive mentality untraceable to any one authority.

Sketch-to-Blender Processing

Genesis was a rushed project and some of the impulsive linework started bugging me after a few years. I had recently modeled an ant in Blender and figured I could use it to recreate Genesis without any mistakes. Maybe even make it into a repeating pattern. Why not? But after drawing, rigging, and rendering, the new composition seemed sterile. On top of that, the objects spatial placement was too busy when repeated.

In comparison, the initial version looked like maybe I took intentional artistic liberties to abstract the lighting and forms. Like maybe I actually knew what I was doing. Impossible. I ditched version two and started over.

The final draft pulls abstraction from version one and 3D elements from version two. By this point I had moved beyond any concept. I didn't even have a title. But a few days later version three started reminding me of pretty much every breakup I've gone through: two people experiencing one issue from opposite sides.

One Leaf, Two Sides

So back to the "personal analysis". My need to have my perspective validated often outweighs my patience for opposing points of view. But disagreements aren't inherently frustrating, it's the assumption that others need to validate my perspective that leads to tension. In reality, two opposing sides can share common ground.