Taking or Holding Breath
Returning to physiology, human respiration is described as a process of inhaling and exhaling in which air flows through bodily cavities, inner organs, veins, and cells at a certain time. As a result of diaphragm contractions and chest expansions, the change in pressure allows air to enter the system and flow through the body (Elliott et al., 2024; Toepfer, 2011, p. 447f). This continuous metabolism of bringing the outside in and the inside out opens the horizon of what it means to be a breathing subject. As a human and non-human activity alike, it is a way of producing energy, mostly below any level of consciousness. Because we are mostly unaware of the physical manifestations and corporeal materializations of breath, such as body movement and the internal cascade of chemical reactions, we tend to take the elusive and limitless materiality of air most times for granted.
An intentional focus on breathing allows for connection with sensory experiences and options for resisting precarious situations. The submersion of the respiratory system in cold water, known as the mammalian diving reflex, illustrates automatic responses in the effort to conserve oxygen. As the heart rate slows, blood vessels in the extremities constrict and only vital organs receive oxygen, which increases the chances of survival. (Godek & Freeman, 2022) Though complicated as a process, its overall goal is simple: preserving life by adapting to the environment.
While this process is automated in mammals, breathing, its rhythm, and their capacities are not universal. Breath and breath-hold can be transformed by lifestyle habits or occupations, as well as with physical and mental training, as in free diving and somatic breathwork. In free diving, the act of submerging oneself underwater transcends mere technological support or regulation, compared to SCUBA diving. Without gas bottles, regulators, and buoyancy control devices, it is an immersion in the purest form possible — visiting the underwater space for a single breath. Known interchangeably as apnea diving, a term derived from the Greek "a-pnoia," it signifies the voluntary suspension of breath (Harper, 2023). Reaching the mentally relaxed state necessary to duck dive into the water involves a blend of meditation exercises while floating on the surface and relying on the mammalian diving reflex. During apnea, carbon dioxide accumulates inside the body, and the stomach begins to contract when the urge to breathe and resurface intensifies. In the timespan of being underwater, the human body undergoes a metabolic shift by adapting to the utilization of oxygen and the ability to thrive for a short time frame as a mammal underwater.
Artistic Applications of Metabolic Connections
Building on the scientific aspects of shared oxygen and carbon cycles in photosynthesis and respiration, these metabolic processes provide numerous possibilities for artistic exploration. Disciplines such as Bio-Art, Interaction Design, and Performance Art can use these ideas to reflect on the intersections between environment, ecological systems, and the human entangled within.
A compelling example is Saša Spačals “Earthlink”(Saša Spačal, 2018), a project that investigates the interconnectedness between human technologies, the environment, and living systems. Earthlink uses interactive technology and environmental data to create a responsive ecosystem, similar to the way phytoplankton metabolic processes interact with their environment. In the installation, consisting of various bacteria and plants, the connections between human actions and ecological systems, and thus, fundamental metabolic cycles, are made visible. In displaying these flows of exchanges, Spačal raises questions about mediated breathing: What happens when breathing connections are technologically mediated? Who or controls the dosages?
Similarly, the performance “As I Collapse” by the Recoil Group (recoil, 2017) explores human existence through encounters with water and bioluminescent plankton. During the performanc, the boundaries between dancer and algae blur, and the individual seems to dissolve as a unified organism emerges. In this way, nature’s endurance and vulnerability are addressed, capturing the challenges surrounding ecological collapse. In a later online edition, the audience was invited to explore the shared vulnerability of human bodies and the planet, symbolized by the collapsing breath (recoil, 2020).
Both Earthlink and As I Collapse offer reflections on how breath and ecological processes are intertwined, inviting new ways of thinking about our relationship with the more-than-human world. These works, like my own practice, invite to reflect on how metabolic processes—such as photosynthesis and respiration—can inspire artistic creation and transform scientific principles into forms of artistic expression that explore the fragility and interconnectedness of life.
Pyrocystis lunula, my companions species in the photobioreactor,
cultivated at KIT Karlsruhe, shot under inverse microscope, December 2023
Ceratium Tripos, Dinoflagellate off the coast at the Baltic Coast,
shot under inverse microscope, August 2024
Beginnings
“What is the scale of breathing? You put your hand on your individual chest as it rises and falters all day. But is that the scale of breathing? You share air and chemical exchange with everyone you pass by today. Is the scale of breathing within one species? All animals participate in this exchange of release for continued life. But not without the plants. The plants, in their inverse process, release what we need, take what we give without being asked. And the planet, wrapped in ocean breathing, breathing into sky.” (Gumbs, 2021, p. 20)
Breathing is not only a biological act—it is connecting us and other respirating beings to the ecosystems we inhabit. By exploring the concept of “breathing-with” as a method for understanding these planetary interconnections, this paper focuses on the shared respiratory cycles between humans and phytoplankton.
To highlight how metabolic processes bind us to the more-than-human world, this contribution begins in a rather unusual place for a designer: a biological laboratory, where I examine microscopic algae that play a crucial role in producing the oxygen that we breathe. While sitting in front of a microscope, focusing my eyes together with and through the tubular lenses of a microscope, I am struck by the realization that my breathing and the photosynthetic activity of these tiny organisms are part of the same global cycle. I hold my breath in awe and carefully move the slides on the table so as not to disturb the small microcosm on the glass. Looking at the green-pigmented organelles of chlorophyll, I began my quest to understand their metabolizing bodies. Their existence and the act of sitting here and breathing with them are more than the inhalation and exhalation of molecules. This shared process is central to the sustenance of life.
This experience of breathing-with (Fritsch et al., n.d.) opens up a new way of thinking about our relationship with the more-than-human world. Drawing on the physiological, biological, and sensorial understanding of the metabolic cycle of “air”1, this paper focuses on respiration and photosynthesis as metabolic media. It weaves together a conceptual lineage of cultural anthropology, eco-feminism, and environmental humanities (e.g. Boscacci, 2018; Choy, 2020; Haraway, 2016; Myers, 2018; Neimanis, 2019; Verlie & Neimanis, 2023), and oceanographic and environmental sciences (Gruber, 2011; Lee, 2018) to explore how the act of breathing can become a form of collective agency.
Photosynthesis, as a form of metabolic media, enables organisms to use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into glucose and oxygen, the latter being a vital component of planetary air. This reaction not only contributes to the oxygen production cycle but also creates a link between species. Within a “sympoietic”2 (Haraway, 2016, p. 58f) framework, this function opens the door to exploring alliances and attunements in multispecies encounters. By weaving together the physiological processes of respiration and photosynthesis with creative inquiry, I aim to show how art can make the invisible connections that sustain life on Earth visible. As both a scientific and artistic investigation, this paper invites readers to reflect on the act of breathing not just as a personal or biological function, but as a collaborative process that links phytoplankton and humans.
Chloroplasts in a diatomic plankton, sampled at the German Baltic Sea, shot under inverse microscope, August 2023
There’s something with/in the water.
The start of the connection and interactions can be traced back to more than three billion years, when the planet was vastly different. The first chemotactic life forms thrived in an atmosphere composed of methane and ammonia. When cyanobacteria, the first microscopic algae, emerged in the waters, they changed the planet by introducing oxygen into the atmosphere.
Marking a new stage in the reconfiguration of matter, the metabolism of gases marked the beginning of habitable conditions for respiring beings on the planet. As derived from the Greek μεταβολή metabolē, “change”, the metabolic flows of carbon dioxide and oxygen within the invisible and intangible single-celled beings changed the planet, culminating in the "Great Oxidation" event (Sardet, 2015, p. 10).
As a result, over a period of two billion years, the oxygen level in the atmosphere has increased by a 1010–fold, creating an atmosphere with an oxygen content of 20–21% (Lee, 2018, p. 43). This world-changing event highlights the immense impact that photosynthetic beings had and still have in shaping the world as we know it.
To understand planetary relations, I turn to physiology as the science that explains functional processes within living entities. It relates to bodily actions and material processes for multiple species, such as humans and phytoplankton alike. The interplay between photosynthesis and respiration illustrates the synergy rooted in the fundamental processes of cellular energy transformation.
In scientific sense, photosynthesis, derived from the Greek “phōs (φῶς)” and “sýnthesis (σύνθεσις)”, is the assembly of active matter using light. In the process plants and algae convert sunlight into energy by absorbing light through pigments in their cells. When photons of light enter the cell, they are drawn towards the magnesium in the chlorophyll pigments. Light energy splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, releasing oxygen into the air while using hydrogen to create food for organisms. With the energy and nourishment from this process subsequently, countless microscopic plants, referred to as phytoplankton, have evolved in the water. Similar to the first Cyanobacteria, they continue to produce O2. Although small in size and mass, they are responsible for 50% of all oxygen production, forming a breathable world with terrestrial plant life. (Löffelhardt, 2007; Toepfer, 2011, p. 446)
Not only do they as a group create a habitable atmosphere for terrestrial life, as they “inhale” CO2, the gas becomes as well part of the trophic web. As phytoplankton are consumed and decomposed, the CO2 sinks together with the detritus towards the sea floor. As part of processes such as the “biological pump”3 and the “diel vertical migration” 4, they help move carbon dioxide from the surface of the ocean down to the deep sea. As they die and sink, their bodies store carbon in ocean sediments, which eventually turn into fossil fuels over millions of years.
As the waste outputs of the metabolic cycles of unicellular organisms become products or fuels for other entities, chemical and enzymatic cycles begin to cross species boundaries. In this interrelation of cycles, metabolism is world-making as a link between phytoplankton, respiring organisms, chemical matter, and whole ecosystems. Recognizing the intertwined processes inherent in photosynthesis reveals the delicate balance of gases and emphasizes the crucial role of phytoplankton within the biosphere. They are not passive participants, but active agents shaping and forming metabolic bonds within the web of life. Natasha Myers’ valuation of terrestrial plants holds even more truth for these aquatic entities:
»They breathe us into being. All cultures turn around plants’ metabolic rhythms. Plants are the substance, substrate, scaffolding, symbol, sign, and sustenance of political economies the world over. « (Myers, 2018, p. 55)
The respiratory cycle, which relies on the tiny life forms in the ocean, exemplifies how deeply connected we are to global ecologies and highlights the challenges posed by a changing world. This connection underscores the interdependence between microscopic life and human survival.
The wet lab at KIT Karlsruhe, where my experiments were conducted. It shows a space filled with apparatusses and tools, but barely any researchers.
Breath as Metabolizing Media
Metabolism and metabolizing interfaces can be understood as metaphors of how all living beings exist and interact in the world. Everything alive is connected through the process of sharing energy and resources, constantly transforming environments and life-worlds together. In this collective production of life, the power and control of breathing, breath-holding, and sharing the same air becomes an agent "through which to consider the witness of climate change as always more-than-human, and the witness and what is witnessed as co-constituting one another." (Verlie & Neimanis, 2023, p. 122). The act of witnessing and the event being witnessed shapes each other in this relationship. To not only observe these changes but also to experience them together, we engage in what they call "co-conspiracy." Stemming from the Latin conspire as "breathing together", suggesting that through these shared breathscapes—air systems that support both land and marine life—we create new, vital relationships. Through this, we can recognize the importance of breath as a collective action in this world, connecting us to an ontology of “vegetal being” (Irigaray & Marder, 2016). And as we are "composed in part through the ongoing amalgamation and reconfiguration of the respiration of all species on this planet, alive now and long dead, to be with and witness climate change is to be unavoidably entangled in processes of breathing together." (Verlie & Neimanis, 2023, p. 126)
Breathing is much more than a metabolic function of in- and exhaling, as these trans-corporeal implications, but also bodily effects in breath-holding and dive reflex show. Being a breather means to be vulnerable (Tremblay, 2022); to breathe is to dissolve boundaries, from the physical body to environmental and material relations. While trying to learn from marine species and identify with them, we are even more aware that we depend on forms of collaboration, cooperation, and conspiration.
Returning to the outset, my artistic exploration, in addition to the aqueous realm, is situated in the laboratory—a shared sensory space. Here, my observations of species cycles under the microscope converged by tracing the path of my own respiration. Positioned between the microscope and a photobioreactor—a technologically enhanced artificial habitat —my body also turns into a research specimen. I monitor not only plankton, but also my pulse, blood oxygen levels, and the volume of my inhalations and exhalations. As both observer and research subject, I seek attunement and understanding of how to coexist and conspire with the organisms in front of me.
On average, I take twelve breaths per minute, with each cycle moving approximately half a liter of air. Although this seems minimal, it sums up to an astounding 8,640 liters of air passing through my body daily. Even though I exhale 16% of oxygen with each breath and use only 5%, I still need 432 liters of pure oxygen to thrive (Rainer Müller, n.d.). Within the controlled artificial lab microcosm, even a square meter of plankton is “only” producing around 40 l of oxygen, reminding me how vast the scales between us are. As a stark contrast, the scale difference is an even more a powerful reminder of the vast significance and power of the plankton ocean and the “smallness” of humans on the planetary scale. Seeing these “metabolic events” (Landecker & Kelty, 2019, p. 64)—the way organisms like phytoplankton turn light and air into energy—provides inspiration for my artistic work. The connection of my semipermeable insides to the species in the “experiment” in the laboratory as the fundamental site of metabolic matterings is an ongoing beginning for creative expressions.
Breathing life in a breathless world
Breath (and the lack of air) is widely discussed in the humanities for its social, material, political, and cultural implications, in terms of oppression, restriction, and freedom. Eric Garner's last words, "I can't breathe", as he was put in a chokehold by the NYPD in 2014, became a powerful symbol in the struggle against racialized violence (Magdalena Górska, 2016, p. 23). Similarly, chemical clouds, whether mobilized against demonstrators or as a result of hazardous working conditions, in polluted areas that lead to diseases such as pneumoconiosis (known as “black lung disease” among miners), prevent us from breathing (Oxley & Russell, 2020, p. 18).
Even in privileged positions, far away from precarious and hazardous working and living conditions, our daily lives in recent years have been marked by wearing masks to protect ourselves and others from the COVID infection. These respiratory problems, coupled with linguistic repetitions of racialized respiratory violence, are intangible and yet witnessed. However, they are rarely considered in the energy discourse on global change, especially not for oxygen dissolved in fluid bodies. While the planet atmosphere is rich in oxygen, with up to 21% of the gas present, the amount that can be stored in bodies of water is less than 1%. This is because of their comparatively low solubility in water. Most oxygen can be stored in cold, dense water, meaning that the distribution of oxygen in the ocean is dependent on currents to move gas from cold to warm areas. Additionally, the respiration of bacteria and other breathing beings slowly consumes this oxygen during transport (Limburg et al., 2020).
Unfortunately, oxygen depletion in the ocean has intensified by global change, soil erosion, nutrient runoff, and temperature rise. Working in synergy, these implications alter metabolic balance. With more nutrients in the water, plankton growth increases. This becomes a problem when changing seasons cause a ripple effect on the food system. Plankton overgrowth in excessive amounts or at ‘irregular’ times leads to high levels of bacterial activity decomposing the cells. As bacteria respirate during this process, oxygen consumption in the already depleted water increases. This eventually leads to the formation of oxygen-poor or oxygen-depleted zones. (e.g. López-Urrutia et al., 2006). To put it boldly: The ocean is losing its breath under global change. The simultaneous and synergistic acting stressors on the ocean and, in turn, on phytoplankton and biogeochemical cycles are driven by CO2 (emissions). (Gruber, 2011) Given our poor understanding of the impacts on planetary interactions, not only scientific research efforts are needed to shed light on the linkages to cope with the changes ahead. Since interactions cannot be perceived by human senses alone, “breathing with” one another could at least lead to a new conception.
Timothy Choy writes: “It is a challenging and important time to breathe together.”(Choy, 2020) “I can’t breathe” in this sense becomes a collective and intersectionally situated challenge, where it is nevertheless crucial that we find a way to “breathe-with” others: humans, spheres, and plankton. As an element of relating, as an interface where bodies and the world meet, this breathing together is an ‘ongoing metabolic relation’ (Choy, 2020, p. 587).
Conclusion - Breathing-with for Conspiring Futures
Zooming in on the attentiveness in interrelations among phytoplankton, cycles and human breathing, as this vital bodily function is a way of witnessing, and wit(h)nessing spaces and cycles. Understanding how bodies affect and are affected through the intimate process of sharing breath is a way of approaching the connection to the global ecologies and the challenges facing us, plankton and the world. I therefore propose breath, or the noticing of respiration, as an experimental method for revealing subtle insights into our embodied relationship with the planetary. In contrast to “scientific” technologies of monitoring and witnessing, breathing situates the researcher-subject within ecological processes. As a practice, it is a mode of collective action, a form of “sympoiesis” as making, worlding and becoming-with.
On the last and first breath, I end by inviting you, the reader, to relax your shoulders, straighten your back and think about our co-conspiracies with plankton. Reflect on the journey through scales and spheres, macro and micro, now and deep time – while always keep on breathing. Recycling the same oxygen and carbon dioxide – in and out.
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Remark
This contribution is written from an artistic research perspective deeply concerned with ocean sciences. Within this framework, it is impossible to outline and describe all biogeochemical processes and transformations in detail. The relationships should be outlined here, acknowledging there are gaps. Its scope, though, is rather to provide a suggestive perspective on the relationships.
This work, as part of a PhD project, was supported by the SNF “Interfacing the Ocean: Towards a Sea Change in Design” under Grant 215771.
Abstract portugese (translated with DeepL)
Respirar com o fitoplâncton: Explorando as ligações metabólicas com micróbios oceânicos
Este artigo apresenta uma exploração da interligação entre os processos metabólicos vitais da respiração humana e da fotossíntese do fitoplâncton. Ao combinar as ciências ecológicas com a antropologia cultural, o eco-feminismo, as humanidades ambientais e as práticas artísticas, o artigo investiga a intrincada interação metabólica entre o fitoplâncton e os seres humanos.
Baseado na noção de "respirar-com", navega através de dimensões fisiológicas, biológicas e sensoriais para elucidar as profundas ligações entre a respiração e a fotossíntese como meios metabólicos, promovendo alianças em encontros multiespécies.
Inspirando-se no laboratório biológico e no reino microscópico dos organismos portadores de clorofila, é realçado o poder transformador da fotossíntese na formação da atmosfera planetária e na manutenção da vida. Ao mesmo tempo que sublinha o papel fulcral do fitoplâncton na produção de oxigénio e no sequestro de dióxido de carbono, elucida os desafios e os impactos sinérgicos do esgotamento do oxigénio oceânico provocado pelas actividades antropogénicas.
Para além de uma mera função metabólica, a respiração surge como uma interface metafórica para a ação colectiva e a co-conspiração, transcendendo as fronteiras entre entidades humanas e não humanas. Como tal, defende um envolvimento mais profundo com as ecologias planetárias e uma reimaginação da nossa relação com o mundo mais do que humano.
Através da investigação artística e de métodos experimentais, o documento convida os leitores a refletir sobre