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Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Servarbugfolgenate: an ecoconcept

I have been obsessed with the concept behind the action of close-observation. My research into electroreception had me at many moments picturing scientists holding up the large, thick lens of a magnifying class observing, surveying, and contemplating in a sort of bee-driven tunnel vision. I myself participated in this close-observation through the lens of my iPhone as I captured footage of bees dancing in my dragonfruit plant. While sitting on the back porch with my MacBook working on research for this very project I watched a cabbage butterfly fly by in front of me. There was an urge I felt to stand up and try and cup it in my hands, a game that entertained me as a child for hours. I thought of all the moments I’ve craned my neck upward, squinted into the bright sky, while following the trail of crests and troughs a butterfly weaves as it floats in the air.

Servarbugfolgen:

(Noun)

the state of trance you enter when you watch an insect (spider, beetle, butterfly etc) closely: such as when watching a spider spin their web, following a butterfly as it floats across the sky, watching a bee pollinate inside a flower, or watching the last struggle of a moth before its death.

Servarbugfolgenate:

(Verb)

to watch an insect (spider, beetle, butterfly etc) so closely that one enters a state of trance: I servarbugfolgenated by the dragonfruit plant again this morning|she didn’t finish her homework because she servarbugfolgenated on a moth dying on the windowsill.

Servare (Latin): watch over
Bug (probably Middle English): insect, beetle. A word now obsolete since ‘insect’
Folgen (German): to follow

There is no reason for why I chose ‘bug’ to represent the ‘creepy-crawly’ universe other than because I think it is a fun word. I think the word ‘bug’ even looks like a small beetle, the 'b' is the head and antennae and the 'g' rounding off the small curved body.

- Steph Philipov, z3417828

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In response to the e-concept: Servarbugfolgen.

While it is a common trope of Romantic literature to portray the individual mesmerised by an element of the natural landscape, after all in ‘wandering lonely as a cloud’ Wordsworth’s speaker does come across a field of ‘golden daffodils,’ — Steph’s e-concept to ‘servarbugfolgenate’ truly captures how in moments of isolation, particularly for individuals in living in the city, insects can completely spellbind one’s gaze, placing them into a ‘trance.’ This video, ‘Moths in Flight’ uses an extremely fast shutter speed — 7500 frame per second to capture the enigmatic nature of a moth’s movement, something which no matter how much we ‘servarbugfolgenate’ using our naked eye, cannot grasp. The limitations of our perception is exposed. No matter how long we sit and observe the more-than-human world, there will never be any solid ground to the claims of human essentialism. It takes only a blink to miss a crucial event.

The poem below expresses this rumination with much more eloquence:

MOTH IN APRIL

Can I concentrate, can I
Let my eyes and mind settle
On the bug

That has settled on the wood
Knob of the canvas
Garden chair?

The moth has to be thinking.
Its moth face frowns.
The hair-feelers, black-tipped, stand level.

It jumps and flies and I have
No words to describe its pin-jag track.
It flies away from the knob and back,

My fuzzy likeness,
My brother, seizing me with melancholy—
I’m on edge, is it the coffee

And not enough sleep?
Is it the sense of all I cannot see
And cannot feel, and will die without knowing?

by Alicia Ostriker

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=35371
Contents of this reply:
1. Servarbugfolgenate: an ecoconcept 8 image_header 2021-04-23T21:57:28-07:00
  I have been obsessed with the concept behind the action of close-observation. My research into electroreception had me at many moments picturing scientists holding up the large, thick lens of a magnifying class observing, surveying, and contemplating in a sort of bee-driven tunnel vision. I myself participated in this close-observation through the lens of my iPhone as I captured footage of bees dancing in my dragonfruit plant. While sitting on the back porch with my MacBook working on research for this very project I watched a cabbage butterfly fly by in front of me. There was an urge I felt to stand up and try and cup it in my hands, a game that entertained me as a child for hours. I thought of all the moments I’ve craned my neck upward, squinted into the bright sky, while following the trail of crests and troughs a butterfly weaves as it floats in the air.
  
  Servarbugfolgen:
  (Noun)
  the state of trance you enter when you watch an insect (spider, beetle, butterfly etc) closely: such as when watching a spider spin their web, following a butterfly as it floats across the sky, watching a bee pollinate inside a flower, or watching the last struggle of a moth before its death.
  Servarbugfolgenate:
  (Verb)
  to watch an insect (spider, beetle, butterfly etc) so closely that one enters a state of trance: I servarbugfolgenated by the dragonfruit plant again this morning|she didn’t finish her homework because she servarbugfolgenated on a moth dying on the windowsill.
  
  Servare (Latin): watch over
  Bug (probably Middle English): insect, beetle. A word now obsolete since ‘insect’
  Folgen (German): to follow
  There is no reason for why I chose ‘bug’ to represent the ‘creepy-crawly’ universe other than because I think it is a fun word. I think the word ‘bug’ even looks like a small beetle, the 'b' is the head and antennae and the 'g' rounding off the small curved body.
  
  - Steph Philipov, z3417828