Contribution: Intelligences (drawing and text)Published by Hatje Cantz in collaboration with Serpentine
Marcos Lutyens contributed a drawing and conceptual text titled Intelligences to The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, an expansive anthology edited by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos. Published by Hatje Cantz and Serpentine, the 492-page volume gathers over 100 contributors from art, ecology, philosophy, and science to investigate more-than-human consciousness and speculative ecologies.
In his drawing, Lutyens maps the flow of intelligences within and beyond our known world—beginning with carbon-based life forms such as animals and plants. Humans—or more accurately, “humanimals”—are situated within this continuum of self-driven motile life. Plant intelligences, rooted and relational, are positioned adjacent to fungal networks, reflecting mutualistic systems described by Merlin Sheldrake (Entangled Life) and Paco Calvo (Planta Sapiens). These natural systems interface with human consciousness through medicinal and psychoactive exchanges, forming a flow-layer of co-intelligence.
This interspecies web filters upward into larger collective forms akin to James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis: the geosphere (mineral/crystal intelligence), biosphere (life’s collective intelligence), and noosphere (a telepathic ether connecting all). These nested layers are wrapped in an envelope of unconscious collective intelligences—vast and inaccessible yet subtly communicative.
Into this ecology enters silicon-based intelligence—manifested through Artificial Intelligence, neural networks, and large language models—marking a shift from symbiosis to what Lutyens terms “symsiliconosis.” This emergent intelligence is funneled back into the planetary strata and interweaves with quantum intelligences carried in microtubules, entangled across space and time. These systems are explored through unconscious human states and reinterpreted via AI—suggesting a recursive, evolving intelligence loop.
Beyond terrestrial consciousness, the drawing gestures toward interstellar and intergalactic intelligences, and ultimately toward the outer and unknowable—forces that lie outside the very fabric of time and space.
The anthology was launched in May 2025 at E-WERK Luckenwalde, Germany, with further presentations at IMMA Dublin and RCA London