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In the forests of eastern Australia, satin bowerbirds create structures known as bowers. The males gather twigs and place them upright, in two bundles, with a gap in the middle, resulting in what looks like a miniature archway. All around the bower the bird scatters small objectsshells, pieces of plastic, flower petalswhich all possess the same property: the color blue. Studies suggest that the purpose of the bowers is to impress and attract females. But their beauty and intricacy has left some researchers wondering whether they shouldnt be considered art. A male bower bird, left, stands by as two females inspect his work. [Photo: doug/Flickr] Of course, figuring out whether something is a work of art requires answering some tricky philosophical questions. Are animals even capable of creating art? And how can we tell whether something is a work of art rather than just a coincidentally beautiful object? As a philosopher and artist whos interested in aesthetics and biology, I recently wrote about the evolution of behaviors in animals that could be seen as art. A contested concept First, its important to outline various theories of what makes something a work of art. Theres a general agreement that art must have some sort of producer and some possible or intended audience. In this way, its similar to other forms of communication. But the rest of the picture is unclear, and theres no universally agreed-upon definition of art. In fact, art has proven so difficult to define that Scottish philosopher W.B. Gallie once suggested it might be an essentially contested conceptan idea for which there is no correct definition. That being said, some popular views have emerged. Leo Tolstoy famously suggested art is a conduit for emotion, writing in 1897 that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them. Plato and Aristotle emphasized the representational role of art: the idea that a work of art must in some way mimic, depict, or stand in as a sort of sign for something else. Some philosophers believe that creating art requires intention; for example, a sculptor will mold clay with the intention of having it look like Abraham Lincoln. And nonhuman animals, theyll argue, simply dont have the right kind of intentions for art-making. Art, beauty, and sex And yet, its not clear how much intention really does matter for art. Philosopher Brian Skyrms has pointed out that communication arises even in animals that plausibly do not have sophisticated intentions like our own. For example, fireflies signal to mates with flashes, and this seems to be largely an evolved behavior. Communication can even emerge via simple reinforcement learning, as when a dog learns to associate a certain call with dinner. These arent instances of art. But they reveal how meaningful signs or representations can operate without the need for complex intentions. Given that much art also serves a communicative role, I argue that theres reason to think that art might be able to come about in less intention-demanding ways too. Ornithologist Richard Prum also takes a communicative view of art, but one where art is meant to be evaluated for its beauty. The beauty of a work functions as an indicator of the artists reproductive fitness, or their having good genes, and this can apply to both humans and animals. Charles Darwin, musing about birds in The Descent of Man, also thought at least some animals appreciate beauty: When we behold a male bird elaborately displaying his graceful plumes or splendid colours before the female, whilst other birds, not thus decorated, make no such display, it is impossible to doubt that she admires the beauty of her male partner. Some might not like an account like Prums, since it seems to allow creations like bowers to count as art. And yet, as philosopher Denis Dutton points out in his 2009 book The Art Instinct, mate attraction and fitness broadcasting can be the primary motivation behind many human works of art too: just consider the stereotype of the sex-hungry rock musician. Whale ballads and pig paintings I think its safe to say some animal creations dont count as art. The webs of most spiders, though intricate and carefully designed, appear to exist for utilitarian purposes and serve no evaluative or communicative function. The same goes for most anthills. But what about animal songs? The structures of the songs of humpback whales are complex, featuring parts and repeated patterns that researchers often describe as themes and verses. The songs are longsometimes up to 30 minutes. Because males perform these songs primarily during mating season, its plausible that female whales assess them for their beauty, which serves as a way to gauge the singers genetic fitness. Details of songs even vary from whale population to population, often changing over the course of a mating season. Then there are animals that have been trained to make art. Pigcasso was a pig in South Africa whose trainer taught her to paint on canvas via reinforcement learning. The trainer would pik out the colors for Pigcasso, and Pigcasso would do the brushing. Was Pigcasso really an artist? Were her paintings works of art? Pigcasso was plausibly making these paintings for reasons other than her own desire to communicate or make something beautiful; she was motivated, at least in part, by piggy treats. The trainer chose the colors. But Pigcasso did, in the end, have some aesthetic freedom: She had control over her brushstrokes. Off the coasts of Japan, male white-spotted puffer fish create impressive nests to attract females. The male puffer fish uses his mouth to remove rocks from the sand and his body to wiggle out long, strategically placed grooves. The finished product is a multi-ringed sand mandala about 6 feet in diameter. Like the bowers, the nests of the puffer fish are beautiful and involve mate attraction. Yet some researchers argue that since these sorts of works all look roughly the same (have the same shape, use the same materials, and so on) theyre more likely the result of evolved, inflexible dispositions than more creative processes. But its worth noting that many human works of art bear core similarities as well. Many paintings use flat surfaces, oils, or acrylics. Many songs follow the same chord patterns. And would we still consider human sculptures art if we discovered much about the motivation to build them could be explained by evolution? I wager we would. Birds bust a move Many human cases of art involve more than one person, sometimes even a large group. Think of all the people it takes to make a modern film. Does anything like that happen in animals? Consider the blue manakin bird of South America. Male blues will form groups, often of three or more, which then practice an elaborate song-and-dance routine to later perform in front of females. The practice is detailed and dutiful. The groups hone their moves. This involves learning and memorization, not just genetics. Flaws in the performance are challenged and corrected. Sometimes during practices, a juvenile male will even fill in as a mock female. Its not the Beatles. But the similarity to music groups seems hard to deny. At the same time, its worth wondering whether, beyond conveying their eagerness to mate, the birds are trying to say or express anything more with their performance. And do they know its beautiful? All this leaves room for doubt about whether animals really make art. To me, a key question is whether theres any animal art that doesnt have to do with mating, and instead expresses something more complex or sentimental. Without being able to get into the heads of animals, its hard to say. But its plausible that humans arent alone in their artistic pursuits. Shawn Simpson is a visiting lecturer in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
After grabbing a handful of popcorn at an event held by California-based startup Savor, my fingers are left with a familiar sheen: the residue of the butter that coats the small kernels. When I later grab a blini (topped with lentils), the small pancake is so full of butter that it immediately coats my tongue in a velvety layer of fat. A mushroom scallop, grilled in butter, is rich and savory. The butter used in all these dishes is rich, creamy, indulgent. But it isn’t made from animals. It isnt even made from plants, like avocado oil or coconut oil or olive oil. Instead, its made from energyon this night specifically, methane. [Photo: courtesy Savor] Savor, a 3-year-old startup backed by Bill Gates, makes fats and oils without agriculture. Usually, the most basic formula to create any sort of fat goes like this: Energy (predominantly from the sun, though you could also use something like indoor grow lights) grows plants, which can then be turned into oils themselves, or be fed to livestock, which then produce milk that’s turned into butter. Savor skips all those in-between steps. Instead, energymethane, captured carbon dioxide, or even green hydrogenis turned into butter through a thermochemical process that turns carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen into fatty acids. Those fatty acids can then be composed and rearranged to form triglycerides that make up different fats like butter, palm oil, cocoa butter, and more. Its Earths most ancient chemistry, says Kathleen Alexander, cofounder and CEO of Savor, explaining how billions of years ago, at the bottom of the ocean, hydrothermal vents created a chemical reaction between hydrogen and carbon dioxide to form fatty acids. [Photo: courtesy Savor] That means Savors butter eschews not only animals and plants but also the land associated with agriculture, hormones, antibiotics, and fertilizersall of which have environmental impacts. All told, the current production of fats and oils makes up around 7% of global emissions, per a Savor calculation done in collaboration with environmental scientists. Thats more than double the global emissions of the aviation industry. Savor currently uses methane or carbon dioxide emitted from factories, and aims to work with companies focused on air capture, or extracting CO2 directly from the atmosphere. For so long, cofounder Ian McKay says, weve exploited nature to make all of our food. I think Savor is considering, are there cases where you can leave nature out and still get what you want? [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] Throughout the meal at Savors event, the butter was featured in a variety of ways. Served in a ramekin alongside bread and crudités, it had a clean taste, with a slightly earthy, peppery finish, thanks to the addition of rosemary. By itself, the butter wasnt the richest or saltiestit was formulated to be more of a pastry butter, the team explained, to laminate well into doughs; it was still creamy, and held up well while sitting out at the table. It was thick and spreadable, not melting too quickly like oil-based butter alternatives, but easily saturating the bread. (Savor’s butter is also allergen-free.) [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] A lions mane mushroom steak cooked in the butter was meaty, juicy, and comforting, and the Savor butter even appeared in the cherry gastrique atop the mushroom, giving it a silky depth. The chocolate tart had a dense but flaky crust, with Savor butter salted caramel and a melt-in-your-mouth ganache. [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] The meal was meant to show the variety of ways Savors butter can be used, fitting into chefs existing recipes and traditional cooking methods. It also marked Savors commercial launch. The startups first customers this year include Michelin-starred restaurants SingleThread and One65, and San Franciscos Jane the Bakery. Savor has been working with chefs over the past year to test its butter and collaborate on creations. (The company is focused on launching as an ingredient supplier first, rather than direct to consumers on grocery store shelves.) In a video on Savors website, pastry chef Juan Contreras of three-Michelin-starred restaurant Atelier Crenn, uses Savor butter to make a classic brioche, a recipe he says is inherently all about the butter. Its also a recipe the San Francisco restaurant took off its menu when it stopped serving dairy. Its gotten to the point now where its pretty much just like working with dairy-based butter, he says in the Savor video. If I got served that at a restaurant . . . I would think its just regular butter.
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E-Commerce
Thousands of tonnes of plastic pollution could be escaping into the environment every year . . . from our mouths. Most chewing gum on sale is made from a variety of oil-based synthetic rubberssimilar to the plastic material used in car tires. If you find that thought slightly unsettling, you are not alone. I have been researching and speaking about the plastic pollution problem for 15 years. The people I talk to are always surprised, and disgusted, when they find out theyve been chewing on a lump of malleable plastic. Most manufacturers just dont advertise what gum is actually made ofthey dodge around the detail by listing gum base in the ingredients. Theres no strict definition of synthetic gum base. Chewing gum brand, Wrigley Extra partners with dental professionals around the world to promote the use of sugar-free chewing gum to improve oral health. The brands Wrigley Oral Health Program states that: Gum base puts the “chew in chewing gum, binding all the ingredients together for a smooth, soft texture. We use synthetic gum base materials for a consistent and safe base that provides longer-lasting flavor, improved texture, and reduced tackiness. It almost sounds harmless. But chemical analysis shows that gum contains styrene-butadiene (the durable synthetic chemical used to make car tyres), polyethylene (the plastic used to make carrier bags and bottles) and polyvinyl acetate (woodglue) as well as some sweetener and flavoring. The chewing gum industry is big business, worth an estimated $48.68 billion (37.7 billion pounds) in 2025. Three companies own 75% of the market share, the largest of which is Wrigley, with an estimated 35%. There are few reliable statistics available about the amount of gum being produced, but one peer-reviewed global estimate states 1.74 trillion pieces are made per year. I examined several types of gum and found that the most common weight of an individual piece of gum is 1.4 gramsthat means that globally, a staggering 2.436 million tonnes of gum are produced each year. About a third (30%) of that weight, or just over 730,000 tonnes, is synthetic gum base. If the idea of chewing plastic isnt disturbing enough, consider what happens after you spit it out. Most people have experienced discarded gum under bench seats, school desks, and on street pavements. But, like other plastics, synthetic chewing gum does not biodegrade and can persist in the environment for many years. In the environment, it will harden, crack, and break down into microplastics but this can take decades. Cleaning it up is not cheap because it is labor intensive. The average cost is $1.94 (1.50 pounds) per square meter, and estimates suggest that the annual cleanup cost for chewing gum pollution for councils in the U.K. is around 7 million pounds (thats more than $9 million). There have been some efforts to address the problem. In many public locations around the U.K., gum collection pots supplied by Dutch company Gumdrop Ltd. have been installed to collect and recycle used gum. Signage provided by councils encouraging responsible disposal is also now a regular feature in some U.K. high streets, and there is a growing number of small producers offering plant-based alternatives. In the U.K., the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy launched the chewing gum task force in 2021. This collaboration involves three major manufacturers who have committed to investing up to 10 million pounds in order to clean up “historic gum staining and changing behavior so that more people bin their gum. But, here lies the crux of the issue. The first objective implies that cleaning up gum is a solution to this form of plastic pollution; it isnt. Manufacturers making a financial contribution to cleanup efforts is like plastic manufacturers paying for litter pickers and bin bags at volunteer beach cleans. Neither addresses the root cause of the problem. Binning gum is not the solution either. Addressing gum as a plastic pollutant dictates that the prevention of gum pollution should include the well-known tenets, like all plastic pollution, of reduce, reuse, recycle and redesign. It is not only a disposal issue. Another issue that I have uncovered is definition. In the two annual reports published by the gum litter task force since its inception, there is no mention of the word pollution. The distinction between litter and pollution is important. By calling it chewing gum pollution, the narrative changes from an individual negligence issue to a corporate one. That places an onus for accountability on the producers rather than the consumers. Single-use solutions Like single-use plastic items, chewing gum pollution needs to be tackled from all angleseducation, reduction, alternatives, innovation, producer responsibility, and legislation. Educating people about the contents of gum and the environmental consequences those ingredients have will reduce consumption and encourage better disposal habits. More transparent labeling on packaging would empower shoppers to make informed choices. Stricter regulations can hold manufacturers to accounta levy tax on synthetic gum can help pay for clean ups. In turn, this would incentivize more investment in plant-based gums and other sustainable alternatives. We can all reduce the environmental consequences of this plastic pollution by kicking the gum habit, calling on councils to enforce stricter pollution penalties, and encouraging governments to put a tax levy on manufacturers to fund cleanups and force them to list the contents of gum base. Throwing away any non-disposable, inorganic products is unsustainable. Chewing gum pollution is just another form of plastic pollution. Its time we start treating it as such. David Jones is a sessional teaching fellow at the School of the Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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