SCHEMATIZING (26)
By:
January 30, 2024
One in a series of posts via which HILOBROW’S Josh Glenn will attempt to depict the intellectual and emotional highs and lows of developing a semiotic schema. Series dedicated to its target audience of one: Malcolm Evans.
The interstitium is a contiguous fluid-filled space existing between a structural barrier, such as a cell membrane or the skin, and internal structures, such as organs, including muscles and the circulatory system. These fluid-filled spaces were found in the body’s connective tissue in 2015, by researchers using a relatively new technology called a “probe-based confocal laser endomicroscopy” or pCLE. The interstitium wasn’t missed, prior to 2015, because it was invisible (it isn’t), but rather because of what biologists’ beliefs — ie., that collagen tissue is a dense wall — wouldn’t permit them to perceive.
I’m interested in the subject, for the purposes of this series, because the interstitium is a once-unseen/unseeable structure — a highly dynamic and complex structure — that gives form to the body’s organs and exerts profound influences on fluid and solute exchange and the behavior of tissue cells. It’s not merely the interstitial, often virtual space existing between cells of any given tissue, but also a structured tissue in its own right.
The image I generated above using the words “spherical interstitium” is pure fantasy.
MORE FURSHLUGGINER THEORIES BY JOSH GLENN: SCHEMATIZING | IN CAHOOTS | JOSH’S MIDJOURNEY | POPSZTÁR SAMIZDAT | VIRUS VIGILANTE | TAKING THE MICKEY | WE ARE IRON MAN | AND WE LIVED BENEATH THE WAVES | IS IT A CHAMBER POT? | I’D LIKE TO FORCE THE WORLD TO SING | THE ARGONAUT FOLLY | THE PERFECT FLANEUR | THE TWENTIETH DAY OF JANUARY | THE REAL THING | THE YHWH VIRUS | THE SWEETEST HANGOVER | THE ORIGINAL STOOGE | BACK TO UTOPIA | FAKE AUTHENTICITY | CAMP, KITSCH & CHEESE | THE UNCLE HYPOTHESIS | MEET THE SEMIONAUTS | THE ABDUCTIVE METHOD | ORIGIN OF THE POGO | THE BLACK IRON PRISON | BLUE KRISHMA | BIG MAL LIVES | SCHMOOZITSU | YOU DOWN WITH VCP? | CALVIN PEEING MEME | DANIEL CLOWES: AGAINST GROOVY | DEBATING IN A VACUUM | PLUPERFECT PDA | SHOCKING BLOCKING.