Surfaces

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5lX_jW3muc&feature=plcp


This is the link to watch a movie of splits and fissures developing on a stretchy surface. I tried this with a balloon, a piece of thick rubber, and a stretchy snake toy. Plastic wrap worked the best.

My task has been to make a non-deliberative, democratic, utopian, mechanism that changes (moves). My first thought was to make a game exploring the utopian ideal of health care for all, but I changed my mind. There are too many games, and I had too fixed an idea of the game that I wanted to make; I did not  feel this was a useful thing to pursue. Then I got sick, and the significance of access to treatment for strep became especially important. I could go to the doctor and get antibiotics, but the kids I teach may not be able to. I developed scarlet fever, which if left untreated can lead to heart, brain, kidney or lung problems. 

I was so miserable that I decided to take antibiotics, even though they kill beneficial bacteria as well as the harmful ones. My project became more concerned with germ warfare: me beating strep.

I researched the nature of strep infections and found out that this bacterium has adapted to infecting us amazingly well. Its surface can mimic human tissue so that macrophages cannot easily find it and kill it. Then, if our white blood cells do attack it, they are injured by the rupture of the strep bacteria. An immune response occurs in which there is a cytokine wave of activity: our throat swells, we get a furred tongue, blood shot eyes, runny nose, fever, if the response is especially strong we can even attack our own tissues, making the access for strep even easier. Strep is present in all body secretions.

Not only are there physical responses, hosts can become abruptly obsessive- compulsive, absent minded, depressed, inattentive, paranoid and have recurring tics when strep toxins attack the brain. 

If not treated, these mental conditions can become permanent. Treatment with antibiotics quickly reduces the effects. Physically, most strep cases are resolved without medicine in about ten days, and perhaps this is the ideal thing to do if no side effects seem to be occurring. What if it is left untreated? At its worst, gangrene, meningitis, erysipelas, defective heart, kidney, septic skin that flakes off, missing fingers...Mentally, obsessive behaviors and depression, and inability to concentrate.

What experiments could be done with this? This is not a bacteria that I want to experiment with. I don’t have enough knowledge of science to know what the results might mean. I can make theories and not be able to test them. 

I kept a record of food cravings, questions, behaviors and moods throughout.

Apologized to my gut for killing its lovely bacteria

Is dementia made worse by long lived strep infections?

Do people on Greek islands live longer because they have less exposure to strep, is it their relatively stress free lives that make infections less likely, or their diet?

Do kids have a pre-sickness, off-color mood swing? (anecdotally, teachers said yes when I asked)

What happens to kids who have ongoing strep infections? Do they become inattentive, and is this a reason for ADD diagnosis? 

I am unusually bad tempered. I could bite.

I am very tired

I cannot eat because I feel sick

I keep forgetting to take the antibiotics

I crave yogurt and sauerkraut

I am mixed up about which day it is

I forget everything, make mistakes, don’t remember the important stuff at the grocery store, send out teacher comments a month early by mistake (but only to one teacher)

My skin is flaking off and I have blisters on my hands

Terrible arguments with Bill, we are both tired, though he has no infection.

Wednesday

I suddenly feel better

I think a happy thought, and realize I haven’t been having any mental dialog for days

Eat lots of yogurt

Had an egg. Big mistake!

Drink lots of hot tea

Sleep a lot

Rash is going away

I rethink my experiments: are behaviors I have because of strep? Is strep controlling my actions because having me forget to take antibiotics is good for it? I make a comparison of behaviors that are good for ME and bad for IT. I realize I am behaving in ways that are good for IT, and resolve to behave in ways that are bad for IT, and good for ME

I feel an urge I don't usually have: to clean surfaces. I get a sponge and cleanser and clean the shower, the sink, do an extra hot wash of stuff in the dishwasher, including tooth brushes.

I still cannot think of ways to do actual experiments with this bacteria that are real. I can only do thought experiments that have metaphorical results.

Go for a walk

Notice the sun is glinting off ripples in the pond and the reflections are making tiny strobe-like stripes on the pond grasses, and these are reflected in the water surface. I didn’t have a camera and wished I did.

I think about surfaces: surfaces that break let in strep, or anything else

My skin is a game board, a surface separating me from out there

Surfaces separate worlds, and shape events

Surfaces can be physical, but they could also be mental constructions.

I watch the sun go down in the water surface and realize that the sun would be going up, not down if I filmed the reflection only.

Try to think of tangible experiments I could do with surfaces:

If I put a piece of metallic foil on an elastic surface and stretched it, the foil would crack.

Resolve to take pictures of things that have surfaces that hint at containing worlds: we have a lot of derelict trailer homes and houses around, the Republican signs, and the anti-gay marriage signs have been beaten up over night; they lie bent and ripped in the road, lots of people around us own small lapdogs and leave them in the car while they go shopping. I see them staring out the windows looking anxious and frantic.

Wonder what conditions allow a condition of one world to have an effect in another e.g. getting sick, fighting and warring, revolutions. Is it lots of small things that escalate and impinge on our awareness, and suddenly we do something? I can’t test this hypothesis.