The Octopus

Recognised as sentient beings, octopodids, or devilfish as they are sometimes called acknowledging the spiritual properties ascribed to them, are known to be visually oriented animals. Possessing limited proprioception, octopi may not perceive the full number and space-positioning of their members if some tentacles are outside their field of vision. (To our antagonistic human communication, though, an octopus is also a far-reaching, influential organisation exercising comprehensive control.) The vision of cephalopoids, however, exceeds the organ of the eye, as they may be able to sense light with their skin (Godfrey-Smith 2019). This may not necessarily see them forming an image from such sensory input; rather, they may receive the intensity of light, its changes, hues, and shadows with the whole surface of their skin. Such sensory perception changes the outlook on the impact of the environment; if we, for a moment, try to imagine how it would be if we could visually perceive light with our whole human bodies, analogous to sensing temperature or humidity. Our expectations, urges, and needs vis-à-vis the environment would, of course, be changed. Additionally, a highly important sense of the cephalopod, when it comes to social and spatial orientation, is the sense of balance provided by its balance organs located in the statocysts. These paired organs are functionally similar to the vestibular system of our vertebrae. They detect linear and angular acceleration, giving the octopus information on its spatial orientation, rotational movements, and acceleration. What an extraordinary thing it is to encounter an octopus at sea; its visual appeal and beauty of movement, its corporeal and social abilities, unsaturable curiosity and intelligence have been the subject of many books, lately even TV and streaming productions; its wide-ranging learning and navigation abilities the topic of biological, cognition, and artistic research (e.g., Montgomery 2015, Godfrey-Smith 2016, Juliff et al. 2020). No wonder: the cephalopod clearly is a fascinating creature that communicates visually with respect to its environment, capable of displaying a diverse range of visual signals, even when assumably dreaming. To produce these signals, the octopus can vary different communication elements that include expressing chromatic (changing skin colouration), skin texture (e.g., rough orsmooth), posture, and locomotion changes. Whoever has encountered such a creature in the ocean, as we did in our diving days, is spellbound by the beauty of its appearance, motions, and poetical transformative capacity. “In an instance, it flashes speckles on its skin, a starscape, and then pours itself back down its lair” (Montgomery 2015:152).

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This text is an excerpt of Growing Tentacles of Imagination by Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond

The Octopus
On Diversities, Art Production, Educational Models, and Curatorial Trajectories

Edition Angewandte
ISBN: 9783111365343
Editor: Basak Senova
Publisher: De Gruyter

2024

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This book by Basak Senova is the accumulation of the Octopus Programme (2019-2022), which was designed as a guided research-based educational program that encouraged artistic research and production-based collaborations in different geographical regions. The Octopus Programme developed new critical perspectives to process artistic research and practices while bridging and acknowledging: the diversity of socio-political realities, academic and non-academic intellectual models, institutional and alternative curatorial practices, accessed and distributed resources and facilities, and multiple knowledge production models. By merging the viewpoints of academic entities and contemporary art institutions, the program developed a generative research methodology by creating an autonomous network.