In his famous 1976 book, “the Selfish Gene”, Richard Dawkins suggested a genetic approach to the study of cultural change. Towards that end Dawkins formulated the idea of the ‘meme’. A neologism that simultaneously alluded to mimesis and genes, memes were defined by Dawkins as unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. For Dawkins memes could be anything ranging from ‘tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.’

Allegorizing the viral mode of infection and transmission, and deploying on the other hand the increasingly sophisticated understanding of information patterns and processes that emerge from computer sciences,  the nascent ‘discipline’ of memetics began to talk about fertile memes parasitizing human brains only to turn it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation to a multitude of other human brains. The idea obviously was to allow memes to be acted upon by the Darwinian principles of blind variation and natural selection on the basis of fitness. Memes , which copied itself better and more pervasively were more likely to be selected over its less popular cousins. These ‘fit’ memes, it was argued, could then become one of the principal drivers of cultural change.

How do ‘fit’ memes ensure their rapid transmission? It should be apparent that the media that carries the meme – urban graffiti, folk-songs performed by traveling musicians, etc strongly influence the transmissive power of the meme. The contemporary global media network with its pervasive presence across vast geographies emerges as one of the most efficacious carrier of memes. We are then perpetually immersed in this dense continuum of memetic emission, in an manner that makes one recall the  experience of being enveloped by the electromagnetic radiation emanating from Baiju’s translits.      

But what happens to the memes that fail to pass the test of Natural Selection? Do they vaporize into amnesia or do they remain preserved within the interstices of some obscure dead media- formats and protocols no longer supported by contemporary machines?  We should remember here that a ‘fit’, rapidly proliferating meme (“race X is superior than race Y”)  may not always be one that is beneficial to the community/society at large.  Do we then need to re-visit these junkyards of failed memes, to scavenge for those that may need to be re-inscribed into new circuits of transmission? Baiju’s work has repeatedly constituted itself as a site for an intense reconstellation of information fragments, culled from a bewildering diversity of memetic emitters. A site which then acts as a recuperative space for dead fragments of information, memes fallen out of circulation.

This gesture of agency can in fact be read as emblematic of Baiju’s nuanced engagement with mediatic structures .  Rather than an uncritical celebration of such pervasive structures which seemingly rupture our  perceptual fabric, Baiju prefers the simultaneity of close observation and critique. So while he remains open to the idea of memetic transfers instead of dismissing it fashionable pop-theory, in his formulation he also underscores one of the more troubling aspects of the theory: the absence of human agency. For, much of the discourse around memetics is centered around the active meme which infects a passive human subject. One almost feels that memetics would rather gaze at the blur of informational movement across cultural spaces than strategize on the active re-shaping of that very space by human agency. Resurrected memes could be small but significant maneuvers in such strategies. 

Section YZ 

Over the last three months, Baiju and Abhishek have had a series of interactions and exchanges. The idea was to discuss Baiju’s recent body of works. The conversation however was a superimposition of multiple themes, areas of mutual interest and assorted erratic trajectories. This reconstructed interview is an attempt to capture some of those interactional traces.

AH: What happens when the smooth surface of the engineered fruit gets ruptured? What kind of placentation does it show? Something reminiscent of a surveillance network topology from a post-apocalyptic city?

BP: When we speak of topology, we are also suggesting that there are properties that remain unchanged while an object is shifting in structure. I would like to look for some kind of ideological constant, such as a ‘meme’ - an almost alive information particle at the heart of the engineered fruit. I would like to believe that the engineered fruit is a meme gradually dispersing its ideological payload like an information virus and eventually mutating into something that I cannot foresee.

AH: After this show when you take the next flight how will you gaze at the translits at the airport lobby? Will your gaze suddenly soar up and transform you into a meme yourself about to enter a field of movement?

BP: In fact those brilliant translits are one of the fringe benefits of passing through international airports. And the truth is I gaze at them all the time. I have never seen laughter and mirth in an airport lobby. But the traslites seem to emit a warm aura of comfort in that otherwise tense environment. I think after this show I will be more willing to surrender myself to the electromagnetic embrace of the light emission from translits than ever before. Because mental events are identical to physico-chemical events in the brain (identity theory*), I would assume that there is something palpably mind-altering happening when one is facing a translit within the embrace of its polychromatic light field.

(*Identity theory is the doctrine that mental events are identical to physico-chemical events in the brain. So-called “type” identity theory asserts that each type of mental event, such as pain, is identical to some type of event in the brain, such as the firing of c-fibres.- Encyclopaedia Britannica) 

AH: As an archaeologist of memes rummaging through sites that have witnessed a fecundity of memetic transmission, at what point do you decide to do away with your safety glove? Have you ever hallucinated of a memetic attack, wherein your mind becomes a passive host for virulent memes that infinitely dismantle the 'baijuparthan-ness' of Baiju Parthan?

BP: A memetic attack is something of a reality as far as I am concerned, especially when one is an artist working at accentuating and remolding perceptions. In fact I would like to believe artists are involved in a kind of guerilla warfare using memes of various kinds in their attempt to remold and shift entrenched perceptions.  Of course when one is dealing with such a malleable and contagious entity like perception and memes, there is no safety glove to protect oneself and the uniqueness of one's identity becomes a casualty. As a matter of fact I have a work titled ' A Fool's  Journey' that speaks of this condition, of one's identity as a writable media substrate consisting of memes written, erased, overwritten, cut, pasted and burned into. 

AH: One could possibly read this set of works as slices from a VR (Virtual Reality) experience tunnel. The pictorial space is almost reminiscent of the afterimages that pulsate before your closed eyes, seconds after you have put aside your VR goggles. So what intrigues me is the silent energy that animates the space between the translits: as I gaze at that space I try to imagine the possible ways one pictorial surface could morph into another.

BP: Morphing and shape shifting I would see as the morphology of the vaporous virtual-real synthesis. A totally experiential granular space where streams of 'qualia*' collide and merge and disconnect and then condense into avatars, multiple personal histories, and world-descriptions. The world-experience in such a space would exist in a kind of quantum superposition smear, with choices that one can collapse into any number of trajectories. Yes I know it sounds like one major utopian delusion. But then that too would be definitely available as a workable choice in such a granular and amorphous space.

(* Qualia- Plural for Quale- A term used in the philosophy of mind to refer to properties of monadic sensory data. For example, qualia of a rose would include the experienced redness and the olfactory sweet-ness of scent.)

AH: Apart from its powerful evocation of transcendental knowledge, Alchemy is also credited with providing Chemistry, its positivist lost cousin, a formidable array of processes and methodological tools. In retrospect, Alchemy could be considered as Process Art, where the messiness of making is prioritized over the attainment of finality. Since your own oeuvre straddles multiple media and forms- from the canvas, interactive 'en-coded' installations to translits such as these, how do you negotiate this multiplicity of processes? What if you were to plan an unattainable, impossible work which however employed your entire palette of processes?

BP: Alchemy and process art ! That is a fine comparison. I remember many years go in a press interview stating I could very well have been an alchemist in a bygone era because of a similarity of intentions. I am always on the look out for points of departure or moments of transcendence  which can be condensed into evocative (art)objects. Almost like transmuting base metal into gold. Which I must add is a very tricky procedure often yielding glop instead of gold. As an artist one is always looking for that proverbial philosophers  stone, a singular potent motif or arrangement, a super meme, that has the power to transform perceptions wholesale, something like a Guernica or the Theory of Relativity. In that sense the various processes that I employ in art making are all gradually (hopefully) moving towards a single climactic event.  

AH: Would you say that the viral network of memetic transfer could somehow pose another voice of collective remembrance at a possible variance with the more formalized process of historiography?

BP: Now that is a real tough decision - formalized historiography versus the information virus. My vote right now is for the information virus, Simply because it is so organic and being organic it gives an intimation of the forces of nature and life and chaos at play. At the same time formalized history is essential as a kind of collective memory. But it always appears to me as static and residual because of the implied factuality. It is almost as though we have metabolized time and excreted history as evidence. But then, without that evidence we could probably get lost and go in circles in the current version of reality we are living. I hope that the viral network of memetic transfer would eventually give rise to a different kind of collective memory, a memory that will be more dynamic and real rather than be static and residual.

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Abhishek Hazra is a visual artist and graphic designer based in Bangalore. He is also researching into the anthropology of cultural production, particularly of scientific practices.