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Like ecosystems, language requires both cohesion and fluidity between multiple levels of meaning. In good writing and healthy ecosystems. underlying structures (spelling and grammar, landscape connectivity), and particular expressions (sentences, organisms), play together across multiple functional levels. By examining particular expressions one can discover underlying principles, and fundamental principles suggest a viability and range of possible expressions. The photo above is Gansevoort Street in Manhattan, during a visit to the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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While at Sagehen Creek field station last August, I met Ken-ichi Ueda, one of the inventors of iNaturalist, a popular website for sharing observations of the natural world. I asked him if he felt a tension between the tactile world of nature and its digital representation. He responded that the act of recording his observations sometimes takes him away and sometimes brings him closer to his experiences, through sharing them with others. Closer and further, self and sharing, poles of experience. Possible expressions unfold endlessly, and every step from experience to communication also become components of the system.
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