planktic mind
15 min. video animation of scanned driftwood 

The word “Plankton” has it’s origin in the ancient greek. It is neutrally translated as “wandering” or “drifting”. In common parlance, however, it was used with a negative connotation as “driving around” or “being lost”. 

It is this translation that Steve Reinke is building on in 2022. In “Planctic Cybernetics” the artist and author writes:

“Fifty years ago Gill Deleuze and Felix Guattari turned from tree-thought to rhizome-thought. Now it’s time to turn from rhizome-thought to plankton-thought: Plankton thought: a suspension, from without structure, without points of entry or departure, pure flow, all immanence, no lines of flight, no need for memory, nothing to remember.”

Steve Reinke sarcastically criticizes a digital trend that is affecting our understanding of history and culture. The uncontrolled and isolated floating plankton is elevated to a negative analogy – to a new social model. Rhizomatic nodes are replaced by isolated bubbles.  

Plankton- a mental state.