The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, Drawing Hats & Sentience Dial App Launch
Autumn research and experiments from Max Dovey
Have you heard of the vegetable lamb of Tartary? If not I would like to spin a tale about a mythical plant animal that I think reveals something about energy and automatization at the start of the 18th century.
Sheep plant
The story of the Vegetable lamb of Tartary by Ben Lee (available on Gutenberg) traces numerous accounts and illustrations from the middle ages onwards documenting strange encounters with a fictional plant found in Asia (a broad region refered to as “Tartary”) that apparently flowered into a baby sheep.
“It had a head, eyes, ears, and all other parts of the body, as a newly-born lamb. He also stated that it had an exceedingly soft wool, which was frequently used for the manufacturing of head-coverings.”
“When all the grass within the length of its tether had been consumed the stem withered and the lamb died. This plant-lamb was reported to have bones, blood, and delicate flesh, and to be a favourite food of wolves, though no other carnivorous animal would attack it.”
A recurring feature of the sheep plant was a stem that grows from the soil, tethering the sheep to the soil and restricting it to graze on plants within its reach - once it had consumed the plants within its reach it would wither and die.
Before cotton began to be mass imported for increased textile manufacturing, fabrics had been mostly hand woven with sheep wool. The rumour of a mythical exotic plant that grew shep was heresy amongst textile weavers and spinners when masses of cotton began to arrive in the UK.
I like to think that the endearing belief in a fictional plant that flowered sheep says something about pre-industrial understandings towards energy as before the discovery of coal and steam power productivity was determined by the amount of land, plants and livestock.
Fossil Capitalism
In ‘Fossil Capital’ Andreas Malm talks about energy production in pre industrial Britain and cites an article by historian E A. Wrigley who described agricultural Britain as an ‘organic economy’;
an ‘organic economy’ is when ‘all forms of material production are based on the land: raw materials, thermal energy and motive force - human and animal bodies are used to put things in motion - are drawn from the yield of present photosynthesis.’
Farmers grew everything they needed from the land - food, furniture, clothing, everything came from fields or forests. However that ‘yield’ was restricted by the amount of land available and production was determined by how much plants one could grow to feed livestock, metabolize into energy and to move their machinery.
Energy was ‘limited’ to the amount of ‘photosynthetic productivity’, Wrigley posits this ‘limit on productivity’ as the conditions that motivated the transition to fossil economy. Once ‘past photosynthesis’ was unlocked in the form of coal, suddenly a whole expanse of untapped energy opened up for manufacturing that Malm argues put the wheels in motion for industrialization and ‘fossil capitalism’.
Cotton and Automation
Cotton began arriving from enslaved plantation workers in India, Caribbean and West indies from 1750 onwards created a huge demand for highly skilled (and well paid) weavers who could operate manual hand looms. 35 years later, Endmund Cartwright invented a weaving machine that began to mechanise the process and could be operated by horse power, a waterwheel, or a steam engine (and later on coal), alienating a once highly skilled artisan workforce with the invention of semi automated machinery.
The textile industry grew exponentially once the barriers of growth described as the ‘organic economy’ had been broken. The automation of the machinery alienated the skilled workforce, abstracting one form of human labour into a cheaper form of labour and the mechanised steam powered looms could work round the clock maximising production and economic growth.
I think that the myth of the sheep plant agitated anxieties from agricultural workers about how colonized trade and automation was going to affect their livelihood. Once enslaved labour, coal and mechanised automation were introduced into weaving, textile production could exceed previous realms of potential productivity and become a blueprint for other types of mass produced manufacturing. An abstracted, extractive and violent recipe that merged colonisation, automation and industrialisation to make what Wrigley called the ‘Continuous accumulation of industrial capital’ that large parts of the energy infrastructure and economy is still reliant on today.
Recently…
I have been continuing my drawing machine experiments….
My latest drawing machine ‘The Drawing Hat’ uses string, pulleys, and a hard hat (with a hook 🪝) to produce a puppet like drawing machine.✏️🎭
Left and right ↔️are operated by pulleys that can be handled by both hands and up and down is determined by the tension at the top of the head. 💆
Excited to use this lo-fi 'PoseNet' rig to draw with the body and connect physical explorations to real time mapping 🗺️🧭
Coming soon…
The Interspecies Treaty Signing at Futherfield Gallery
If your in London on Saturday 28 or Sunday 29th September your very much invited to visit exhibition of the Treaty of Finsbury park 2025 and the launch of the sentience dial app.
Over the past few seasons I have assisted Ruth Catlow and a whole team of extraordinary individuals in collectively imagining and performing ecological fictions for the multiple forms of life in Finsbury Park. Through live action role play we have been world building to feel through multispecies relations and collectively write a series of pledges to promote ecological equality for all the park's inhabitants.
You are welcome to come to the public launch of the treaty, make a commitment to a life form of the park, watch videos, images and other documentation from this epic project that has cultivated so many beautiful, resonant and cute inter-species encounters. I will be leading some guided meditations as ‘Squirius’ to explore how we can use the body to think and feel as different life forms in the park.
From October 2024 you can visit the park with your friends and family to access the magical Finsbury Park Sentience Dial app and tune into all flora and fauna. Scan the park and meet up to 7 local park species representatives before making your pledge for bountiful biodiversity!
That’s it from me for now. Thankyou for reading. I enjoy writing and sharing research in this format.
If you liked this email or know someone who might I would be grateful if you reposted, forwarded it on or reached out.
Till next time
Max