Reading some of the specific and obscure instructions of Giambattista della Porta’s How to’s in his Book Natural Magick I immediately wanted to replicate and translate his instructions.

Some instructions that i found interesting for various reasons:

How can I replicate these random instructions yet translate them into a new understanding of today? A humorous and performative aspect runs through the book which later made sense when I discovered that Giambattista was an established playwright with over 20 plays comprising in 14 comedies.

Always starting with the immediate body I decided to make a concoction of my own. Small portions of the following:

Saliva
Nasal mucus
Urine
Virginal secretion
Menstrual blood

I plan on magnifying this concoction in the Nature Lab and seeing what comes up and where to take it forward? Looking at the body in the same way as this book. How many concoctions can I come up with? Can I harvest these concoctions? Do they have a clear purpose such as Giambattista’s recipes? Taking the inward and translating it in a way that responds to today. What tones will that have? Will it have an agenda? What kind of language will it use? How loud or subtle is its sound? Does it use a specific font?

Looking closely at his choice of embellishments. All with a clear sense of symbolism.

A slight de-tour from the above but still on point.. I came across a recipe for Glass-Ceramic-

https://www.cmog.org/article/discovery-waiting-happen-glass-ceramics

I started thiking about the micro.. Possibly an intervention on a property of a material could be interesting.. Not sure what and how just yet.. but something to ponder on..