...d'aquarium

I read something about how humans personify non human things when they are lonely. I am doing something different. Rather than projecting human traits onto the "beings" in my environment, I try to take on their traits. I perform exercises in feeling and moving, being like a plant, like an octopus, I try to see how their experiences are each day, the way they move slowly and have to adapt if anything disturbs them.  I spend my days often staring for a long time at them and thinking. My work ...d'aquarium is a reference to this experience of connecting to what it must be like to be an octopus wondering how does it take in information, how does it understand the things around it? I chose to be an octopus because I spent my time during the Covid-19 lockdown reading a book about how the octopus became one of the most intelligent and sensitive beings that lives only a short life of about two years. The book is entitled, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith.