Aquariums are small. Oceans are big.

Just imagine, for a moment, the range of species and food chains in the depths and shallows of the ocean. It is mixed up with a rarely visible order. But we know that, somehow, all of these layers, species, processes, and pecking orders are a set of highly organized strata (Deleuze 335). Unlike geological strata, these are layered in a biological way, barely apparent to us. I'm interested in how we might visualize these kinds of biologically organized strata to become more familiar with their interrelated functions. It certainly takes some science to sort out these details, but we also need to include more poetic interpretations. This is why Frank is a hybrid between scientist and artist. He looks at the system in between its layers and from a step outside of it, which gives him a functional understanding of his place in it.

The acclaimed biologist, E.O. Wilson, had a great desire to connect the sciences and the arts for this very reason. He believed that these systems of knowing were too rich to be separate. “In both the arts and the sciences the programmed brain seeks elegance, which is the parsimonious and evocative description of pattern to make sense out of a confusion of detail.” (Wilson 239) If both disciplines are so good at conveying patterns of detail, then the sciences and humanities have a lot to offer as a team. There are too many problems we face without having a communication problem among some of the smartest people in the world. The elegant patterns that emerge from their successful communication can be seen in crossover disciplines like visualization and science fiction, among others. I sought to exemplify these disciplines in “The Flocking Party”. Frank's drawings, writing, and images are hybrid means of doing research. His methods share kinships with the text/image approaches of famous naturalists, such as Leonardo Da Vinci or Ernst Haeckel, before art and science were pulled in such different directions. But for the past few centuries, the two subjects retain many connections, particularly the use of text and image. We find that artists today do a lot of writing and that scientists still need images and drawings. Unfortunately, these aspects of their work are less often included in our popular perception of the disciplines.

Echoing Wilson's sentiment, the French philosopher, Bruno Latour proposes a way to further bring art and science together, as well as politics (As if reconciling the arts and the sciences wasn't complicated enough). His solution is surprisingly elegant. It reorders the categories we use to describe human knowledge, often defined as either facts or values. Generally, our facts are given priority over our values. When “facts” are used for manipulation in ways that compromise our “values”, we are helpless to stop the powers of “absolute certainty”. And experts, who know the “facts”, are often pre-selected to define reality in a way that someone more powerful wishes it to be.

“It is not surprising that no one has ever understood very well what the expert meant when, in the name of “stubborn facts,” he pounded his fist on the table: his gesture could signify perplexity as well as certainty, the disputable as well as the indisputable, the obligation to do more research as well as the obligation to stop doing research!” (Latour 105)

“Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times.” (Deleuze 161)

There is a common ground or a new cultural stratum that is formed, where the sciences, the arts, and politics share similar principles. It's a place of convergence requiring thorough communication and a balance between those involved. In “A Thousand Plateaus”, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari suggest an interpretation of how we might deal with this new stratum (Deleuze 161). Surfing on this stratum requires constantly readjusting our view of it; we have to move to the wave of other theories. To survive we must function within its shifting parameters, but we also help to define them. This way of making-due, making-a-living, making-love reminds me of a barnacle that has attached itself to a whale, a business that has found a market, or someone who has found a partner for life. My protagonist/researcher/creature/lover/stratum-surfer, Frank, recounts for us some of his movements and readjustments in “The Flocking Party”. He constantly readjusts to balance these different forces that make his life.

As I began writing for Frank, I realized that his voice would not be able to carry enough of the story and might feel unnatural if it did. I had to fracture it in some way. Frank's voice claims a kind of subjectivity, so I created another voice that laid claim to objectivity. Political parties are infamous for claiming objectivity, despite their gargantuan agendas. So I created a political party (the Flocking Party) that examines Frank's journal through the lens of time, adding their own annotations, a thousand years later. I tried to make both Frank's and the Party's voices distinct. Frank is more emotional and subjective, while the Party serves as a narrator, whose biases periodically surprise us. Here, they comment on his dream of being an infected neuron.

“This dream, for the second day running, was a definite sign that Frank was infected. We now view this early stage of infection as a rite of passage. Dreams continue to be vivid throughout our life, but we've found that they help us to learn, grow, and adapt.” (Landau 21)

The voices of Frank and the Party provide complementary explanations of the various circumstances. Their own versions of the story lie somewhere between self-analysis and historical analysis. Frank is more often the first-person narrator and the Party the third-person narrator, but each provides a range of subjective and objective representations of the situation. I felt that it was important to give the Party a specific identity, as well as Frank, to support the notion that there is no such thing as an unbiased view. The two voices on this shared stratum are complimentary. They take information into account; rarely do they present information without giving some opinion about it. These opinions must be representations, rather than facts.