Julie Rauer: Epigenetic Mind
Epigenetic Mind: Process Isomorphism––the art of Julie Rauer.
The voluminous proliferation of humankind and human endeavor assure us of one fact above all others: it has been done before. Within art and science alike there is little new, and of course one must be quite cautious around the birth of the daemon named originality––indeed, a draught of cautious shame is in order in such a case, for nothing upsets the digestion of the complacent herd animal named Man, so much as an unfamiliar meal. It is with great pleasure that I wish to present to you a superb example of this most noble accident of creation, a birth twice improbable and perfect stands before you should you have courage enough to behold. Clip a cigar, a forbidden child is born! Indeed, a sight most unfamiliar, an unlikely fact: a new style, a new type of art itself. The art of Julie Rauer.
Here is a completely new mode of communication, whereby direct affective access may be gained to the associative complexity and hidden beauty within science, and that, is what lies beneath all of experience. The mind is itself an associative nexus, a connective fractal complexity, a matrix and nexus of design and chaos mediated through the underlying simplicity of affective association. A poem lies beneath process. Processes span divergent realms of taxonomy and specificity, and beneath the individuation of experience and structure, we may find essence: process isomorphism. Poetry of connection.
This work is new and profound. Science is the analytic divination of hidden meaning and mechanism, the reason for all things dark and bright; here we see science as mirror, as metaphor for all things, as metaphor for itself. Science. Now all one need do to enter this inaccessible world…is look. The highest fact is now accessible to all…as feeling. The essence of science is the essence of all things, the spirit of creation and analysis merge within its underpinnings once revealed. For all things are connected.
One need not understand, to understand. One need not know, to know. All is easy and complete. Now, one may simply look to grasp the unimaginable; just to taste the air is enough.
Beauty is the coordinated dynamic of experience, gently unfolded. What lies beneath each divergent manifestation, both physical and biological? Simplicity. Process. Nothing is separate. Did you know that? . . . for it is so. Here my friend, the limits of perception have been cut…and the marrow of all, sprung free and gathered for you, as ease. The meaning is unimportant, only that which connects might explain, the inexplicable. For beneath all complexities, is essence. Below you will find several still images of Julie’s new work, Epigenetic Mind, drawn on commission to capture the thrust of the the revolutionary new neuroscience of Rene Anand.
No more original thing, can be conceived. A child is born. ––Richard Lawrence Norman, Editor-in-Chief, Mind Magazine
"EPIGENETIC MIND: Neurobiological Afflictions Manifest Toad Flax, Colony Collapse Disorder and Progressive Asymmetry"
By Julie Rauer
Co-Founder of ART SCIENCE COMPLEX
Graphite and colored pencil on paper
9 x 12 inches
Signature date: 10.30.16
Copyright c October 30, 2016 granted, and transferred to, Dr. Rene Anand, upon completion of this drawing commission for Julie Rauer's original work.
Reflective of the myriad environmental stressors, psychobiological and developmental--a cumulative and relentless existential foie gras--the epigenetic causes of the progressive afflictions visualized in this speculative science drawing by Julie Rauer, who was commissioned by neuroscientist Rene Anand, to manifest, within the parameters of a single piece, both the multiple causalities, as well as the degenerative and harrowing emotional mindscapes of: childhood autism, young adult and middle age depression and schizophrenia, and old age Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.
Utilizing toad flax as a potent metaphor--with its non-DNA sequence mediated multigenerational epigenetic inheritance--shattering the flower's bilateral symmetry in whirling dervish to radial symmetry, then further disrupting the expected morphology to mirror the asymmetrical neuronal processing patterns inherent in both autism and schizophrenia, Julie imagines and creates a fearsome organic macroarchitecture, wholly representative of the roiling microarchitecture within. Echoing chaotic thinking, distorted cognition, and placement of self, as well as degraded speech, the "word salad" of schizophrenia, this drawing analogizes this cognitive disfunction with plant science--the invasive, morphing epialleles of toad flax.
Synchronously operating within this piece is another metaphorical subset, Colony Collapse Disorder in honeybees, which manifests the progressive and infernal breakdown of homeostatic systems in both human neuronal communication pathways and beehives--via neonicotinoids, severe environmental stressors, which further weaken the beleaguered Hymenoptera, leaving them wholly vulnerable to parasitic infestations, from varroa mites and other opportunistic invaders. Chillingly redolent of human suffering on a massive scale, potent insecticides are now a main suspect in the insidious scourge characteristic of the Parkinsonian brain--martinet monotone repetition, fallout from stolen neural plasticity--while the abandoned nihilistic CCD beehive sections stand, as apocalyptic cerebral specters, of the scoured and deserted Alzheimer's mind--absent of individual essence and connective substance.
Hijacking the glorious panacea and exquisite aural patterns of symphonic music, sublime and essential mathematics of the human soul, Alzheimer's sabotages the mind to the cacophony of dementia; heightened by the anachronistic nature, an extinction of the Renaissance mind, the mandolin--flayed as Marsyus, with its spray of broken strings, fractured neck and fret, sucked in viscous threads towards an abyssal core--exists as a mournful shade in contemporary classical music. Minotaur hiding in a perpetually shifting multidimensional labyrinth, the final, unifying metaphor visualized in this drawing is the legume root nodule erupting from this embedded face, with its nitrogen fixing bacteria as radical adaptation to a resource poor landscape, environmental perils which have so rewritten the interior world of the human mind.
--Julie Rauer
October 30, 2016
For more of Julie's art and further depth concerning this and other new work please click here:
www.Facebook.com/ArtScienceComplex
Here are a few video clips of the artist speaking informally about the work in question, from the Society for Neuroscience 46th Annual Meeting Nov. 12-16 2016, San Diego California, where the work was unveiled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDrHkdFlWa0&feature=em-upload_owner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dsfPK4DZTg&feature=em-upload_owner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbDA9gUxonc&feature=em-upload_owner
