Rhythms of Earth & Euglena

{Updated: 2/3/09}

This post is in honor of my favorite day in Earth's seasonal cycles: February 2.

That day goes by many names. It is best known, perhaps, as ground hog day, the day when - according to mythology - animals of that species, Marmota monax, come out of their holes to seek their shadows. Legend has it that "if a groundhog emerges from its burrow and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If on the other hand, it is sunny and the groundhog sees its shadow, the groundhog will supposedly retreat into its burrow, and winter will continue for six more weeks".

It was uncharacteristically bright and sunny on February 2 in Eugene, so I guess it's going to be a long winter. Of course, that system depends sensitively on the vicissitudes of drifting clouds. (And what will climate change do to this ancient meteorological tool?)

In other, past cultures, February 2 has been celebrated differently as a holiday called Brigid among Irish pagans or Candlemas among Christians.

Regardless of it's name, its significance is that it is the day half-way between winter solstice & spring equinox, when days are getting measurably longer (so valued up here in higher latitudes), when spring is approaching with a promise of warmth & green sprouts.

Brigid seemed an appropriate day to carry this evolving post to a new level of development. I first posted this thread on inauguration day; it has evolved in fits & starts, with several different titles. My intention is to describe a meta-project weaving courses, workshops, ECAP & 'multimedia' projects into a coherent network.

Rhythms are a significant theme in this meta-project.

Rhythms can be real or conceptual (e.g., graphical), acoustic or visual.

They can be extremely regular & clock-like (class 2), very chaotic & unpredictable (class 3), or - most commonly, class 4 on the edge of chaos' between order & chaos.

(At Euglena, we recognize Stephen Wolfram's categorization of dynamical system behavior into 4 classes. Class 1 is, by definition, fixed an unchanging. Nothing interesting there, rhythm-wise.)

Rhythms exist on many scales:

• pulsing of a quartz crystal in the clock of a computer, or a perfect sine wave output of an oscilloscope displaying a single frequency (as close to class 2 as one can get)
  
• the class 2 rhythms of quasars & pulsars (at least I presume they are class 2; are any class 3 or 4?)
  
• chaotic turning of the citric acid cycle
  
• class 4 beat of hearts and brains
• highly regular (class 2) seasonal cycles of Earth: winter, spring, summer, autumn, winter ...
  
• quasi-cyclic rhythms of ice ages & interglacials during the last 2 million years
  
• the chaotic rhythms of Earth's longer climate & biodiversity patterns (including extinctions) during the Phanerozoic eon & before

Even human organizations have rhythms. Some run like clockwork, predictable & controlled.

Others, like Euglena, are described better as chaotic at times, but it is now seeking a more common class 4 rhythm at the edge of chaos.

Empirical evidence, backed by theoretical development, indicates that most rhythms in nature are of the "chaordic" variety, class 4, on the edge of chaos. They are characterized by fractal spatial patterns & power laws in their temporal dynamics (which mean amplitude of changes are inversely proportional to their frequency: that small changes are common while large changes are rare).

This project will involve a new series of events, mostly occuring on Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays (some running all weekend).

It will involve one of my own percussion pieces called Rule 110.

More to come ...